The Customer Must Remain the Focus

If you are in the world of material handling, you have no doubt been faced with the dreaded “lead time” question. If you are not in this world, good for you, you must have received an education or at the very least some guidance from someone in your life to do something smart and fulfilling.

Even so, you probably already have some idea that lead times in most industries that deal with something be manufactured are simply horrible. Weeks turned to months at the beginning of the Covid situation, then to quarters and finally to, in some cases, literal years.

And this doesn’t just apply to new orders… oh no, they are delaying shipments already booked too.

As sales forces all over America are learning (and probably worldwide as well, but I don’t live anywhere but here so they can deal with their own problems), you have gone from the guy (gal/them whatever, its 2022 and I have to say this now or be cancelled) who delivers the equipment to the guy (et.al) who delivers the bad news.

And believe it or not, delivering that news is still a chance to build your relationship with that customer. It SUUUUUUUUUUCKS!!! No two ways about it. Especially the 20/80 customers (the 20% of your customer base that traditionally give you 80% of your sale, for those who don’t know) because you know how they will react and you also know how much the equipment, rack, whatever means to their operation. All the more reason to be up front and honest with them. Never make a customer call and ask, “Where is my (insert product here) and when will it be here?” It's the worst. The customer was probably thinking it for a few days hoping you would call for some other matter then he could slip the question into a casual conversation. By the time he picks up the phone to call you, generally, they’re already a little pissed. And a pissed customer is, well… a pissed customer. Getting them back to at least neutral now takes work.

Sure, you can throw yourself on their mercy (my personal favorite), beg for forgiveness, offer a few terms like budget meetings, inventory, personal time off etc. to explain why you had not made contact, but in reality, you know you should have handled it. Happens to the best of us. Guess what? Happens to managers too. Yeah, they forget shit sometimes too.

So now you go to see that customer with the bad news. How do you drop that bomb? The one where they were expecting something next month but now it looks like this time next year is when they “might” see it.

Well, I say start with the truth. “The world is a mess.” This will not come as news to them, especially if they are in manufacturing themselves. If your product is tech heavy, go ahead and tell them the whole truth, “computer chips are in high demand and low supply”. Tell them the Pandemic caused massive manufacturing slowdowns or shutdowns and as things get ramped back up its going to take time to recreate those “just in time” shipment quantities after the backlogs are caught back up.

In most cases they will understand, as I said, they are dealing with them too.

But not making that call or stopping by to deliver that news in person (something I recommend because I can see their body language and gauge the reaction better than voice tones alone) then you are not doing yourself any favors. You’re begging your competition to get their nose under the tent. (That's a camel reference... you follow? Nevermind)

Putting the customer first means doing so in the bad times even more than when times are good. The relationships you forge in the fire fight of pandemic ridden, inflation (non-transitory as promised) world-wide cluster-F*%kery, are the relationships you’ll be able to take to the bank for years.

Be first, be honest, be humble when you win, reflective when you lose.

These are the traits of the best salespeople. Admittedly, I lack the last two…