Wayne pressed his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. He tried to mask the frustration, but his furrowed brow gave it away. He’d gotten into sales because he loved exceeding customers’ expectations. Now, it seemed like every other call was someone asking why their order was late. “Why can’t those folks do their job right the first time?” he muttered.
He rolled his chair back from his desk and called back to the office. “Hey Paul, you know when Simon’s order will be ready?”
Paul rounded the corner. “Oh, we changed the schedule because we thought we had plenty of time. I’ll need to check with the guys in the shop.” Paul knew he’d have a little argument on his hands. The shop guys hated to have their work shuffled around.
It took everything in Wayne’s power not to roll his eyes. He pasted a smile on his face and uncovered the mouthpiece. “Hey Simon, I’m so sorry about the mixup. I’ll need to check into your order and get back to you.”
He placed the receiver back on its base. He’d come in early this morning, excited to make more sales. Now, he felt like someone had knocked the wind out of him. He hated selling anything he couldn’t believe in. And he’d never believe in a company who didn’t keep its promises.
He thought about the shop across the street. He knew their sales people went home at night with smiles on their faces. More than once, when no one was looking, he’d checked their online reviews. He knew it was wrong to be envious, but he wondered what it would be like to sell for them instead.
Wayne enjoyed fishing with his son, but his mind was a thousand miles away.
Wayne’s weekend epiphany
That weekend, Wayne went fishing with his son. His body was there, but his mind was a thousand miles away. Before leaving home, he had stashed a pencil and notepad in his fishing gear. Once they got their lines in the water, he started scratching out some diagrams, numbers, and notes.
He used to work in the shop, and he remembered that he was pretty good at knowing how much they could get done in a week. “Is there any way we could use that to estimate our schedule?” he wondered. “We could track when people are working or on vacation. We could track the size of the project. Then, we could get our lead times accurate within a few days.”
Shifting mental gears, he started thinking about the deer he’d had processed at the meat shop. When he paid, they gave him a paper tag with an order number. Every week, he got an email that told him how many orders were in front of him. On the last week, he got an email that his order was being processed and would be ready in the next few days. He kept a close eye on his email, and he was able to pick up his meat as soon as it was ready.
“If a meat shop can do this, why can’t we?”
As thoughts came, he jotted them down.
- Customers with internet access could log in with a special link
- If they have email, we could email them (like the meat shop)
- (Maybe use that new email-to-fax service to send faxes?)
- Cell phones = text updates
- If these ideas don’t work, we could at least look up an order while we’re on the phone
- Send email requests for reviews?
He felt his son tugging on his sleeve. “One minute,” he said.
- When we record an order, we could calculate the exact date to put on it
- Suggest production manager have a weekly check-in to make sure we’re on track with our orders
A smile started working its way across Wayne’s face. He could hear the customers saying “thank you” over the phone. He pictured a bunch of new, 5-star reviews. He even felt a spurt of adrenaline as he imagined wiping the smile off his competitor’s face. But his conscience kicked in, and he straightened his shoulders. “That’s not what it’s about,” he reminded himself. “But our customers would love this…”
| He pictured the good reviews that might come pouring in. |
Paul opens the door for Wayne’s ideas
Monday morning, Wayne burst through the front door. “Where’s Paul?” he hollered. “I’ve got to talk to him!”
Paul stuck his head out of his office and invited Wayne to come in and sit down. Wayne was too excited for any of that. He shoved his notebook across the desk to Paul. “I figured out a way to make everyone around here happier—you, me, the shop guys, and best of all, our customers! I don’t know how to pull it off, but here’s how it would work.”
Paul listened as Wayne spilled his ideas then paused to catch his breath.
Leaning back in his chair, Paul said, “You know, I came across an idea this weekend. I almost threw it out because I wasn’t sure how it would work. But something made me hang onto it. I’ll make a phone call and see what this would take.”
“Software helped me care for my people”
Later that year, Wayne leaned forward in his chair. “You need it by the 15th? Yes, we can do that. We’re booked until the 11th, but if you order today, We guarantee you’ll have it by the 15th.”
He looked up to see Paul standing by his desk, listening with a smile. Wayne collected the credit card information and finished the sale. He hung up the phone.
Paul walked back to his office without saying anything. He didn’t need to.
They’d rolled out a new software solution called Silverloom. Since then, Wayne had stopped nagging him about customer complaints. He’d doubled down on sales. The shop guys got their heads together to set new production records. And their customers? It seemed like every day he saw more 5-star reviews popping up. In fact, the phone had been ringing a lot more lately.
Who would have thought, Paul said to himself, that software could do so much to help me take care of my people.
