The Mundane vs. The Insane

Day 1,951, 10:15 • Published in USA Pakistan • by Frodo Tea Baggins

Just a piece I felt like writing something.

As I've posted before I used to work in a parts department, of course in a small town relatively unknown. This of course was not the easiest of jobs when you consider the owner and his wife were in the process of trying to retire and were constantly reducing stock. The upside was I did get on the counter with someone who shared my views and we worked well together and could build our own reputation, for better or worse.

Now our reputation was not regular, in fact we took hell from the office staff daily over our techniques, however we chose to ignore them because it is definately my belief we were on the right path. Parts is sales and sales are built on certain aspects, one of the most important being relationships. Whether buying or selling, the relationship is always a key part, and getting prices where you want them always involves some key to knowing who you are dealing with.

Naturally let's start with the customer because that is always number one on any list. From day one much to the chagrin of these office people, it was a point to learn everyone's nickname and when we talked about them we referred to them as such. There is no disrespect as these names were branded on these fellows since high school, if not before, and was a common way of referring to them. I never had a mind to pay any heed to the girls in the office when they would tell us these people had real names, it didn't matter. Peanogger was Peanogger and Pints was Pints and if I make a courtesy call to NAPA and ask for Bushy nobody questions me, they just say OK one second.

They next part was antics. This of course also requires knowing your customer and how far you can push things. You don't push things around someone who is too serious and those people are out there but most people are pretty good. I think it was best said by my co-worker, 'Little Hughy' one day after the office staff made some comments one day. He turned to me and said it straight out, 'I don't care what they think. I'm here and when that customer walks through that door he's already pissed off. He's here because he's broke down and he's already losing money, and there's no way around I'm about to cost him more. However if I can make him smile while I'm giving him the bad news and he leaves feeling a little better than when he walked in then I've done a good job.' I'll also toss in a protip here, as a customer you don't want to be overly serious and 'pissy', having a good attitude can equal a price break, being an ass means you will pay more, we had that power and believe me we would use it.

Now with that said there's a part two that involves purchasing and another relationship. Of course when buying you want the best price and the same rules apply but you are now the customer. To say the least we were not a huge volume customer that could rely on bulk purchasing power to get good discounts so that left it to working relationships. Again I got a lot of hell over some things from the office but I don't regret it, I was doing what I did best. One supplier that comes to mind our sales contact was a young lady who I built, you could say a flirty relationship with. In a matter of one month I could call up and leave a message on her answering machine with no name or call back number, just a crazy message and saying call me back. The pnone would ring everytime within 5 minutes with her always laughing. Naturally the girls in the office would give me some crap about possible harassment and some other politically correct crap, however this was a healthy working relationship. I knew this girl was engaged her wedding was 2 months away, the shipper lost her wedding dress and her mother was freaking out over it, she said she didn't even care anymore she was so sick of wedding planning and would get married in her jeans and a tee shirt if she had to and not care. This may seem like a waste of time beause I'm on the clock doing this, however remember I need a good price without the volume discounts, I have my angle.

Likewise our main warehouse we somehow had a similiar working relationship. The office staff likely would of had a freak out if only they knew that for months one of the girls from the warehouse would call us every evening about 5:00-5:15 pm just to chat because she was bored. I mean they only served a couple thousand stores and we were likely their smallest customer, but she'd call us daily. Now to take the edge off what some may be thinking it didn't stop with the girls. Another of our suppliers was for Timberjack which was handled by at the time Wajax. Every piece of advice was to deal with Al, something I quickly learned to reject. Sure he had been there forever but he was to comfortable because of it and was prone to mistakes. I quickly learned Tom 'Mr. Believe it or Not' Ripley was much more reliable. A little joking around can go a long way and soon when Wajax was stuck, Tom was calling me. When a 230 Timberjack broke down in Portugal and John Deere has discontinued the master cylinder I got the call, 'I'm gonna try you because nowhere else in the world do people use those small machines but in Barry's Bay and Bosnia.' This led to a whole string of jokes, fake accents and little Bosnia references, regardless turns out a master cylinder from a 1950 Ford truck would bolt in perfectly which I happily provided at full list price (there's no price breaks on knowledge) and even more dealings. Before it was popular I also started providing them with R12a which I was selling at 100% markup, if I gotta fight over the price of a chainsaw chain with every second person I'll make up the money where I can. But go figure I was shipping stuff out of a nothing town of 600 people to North Bay because they didn't know about it.

In the end there's only one lesson here, there's nothing wrong with being a little crazy. Others will tell you different but sometimes you just got to trust yourself. These examples are not absolute every situation is different and reading them properly is always the key, but using your own mind is the most important. Political Correctness can bite me.

Your Goddess,
Aeriala