Heating Help What a rep should be


Dan Holohan, www.heatinghelp.com I


was visiting a manufacturer’s place and chatting with a buddy who is in charge of their customer service department. I asked him who was calling these days. He grimaced and


said, “Everyone with a telephone.” And that got me thinking. A long time ago, I worked for a rep for 19 years. That was my


basic training. I was in their customer service department for a bunch of those years, and I probably took 100 calls a day. No one ever called just to say hello; nearly all the calls that I took were from crazed New York wholesalers who were either looking for their stuff or asking me to identify some antique part. Calls from homeowners were unheard of, and I hardly heard from the con- tractors. We sold to the wholesalers. They were our customers. It was a simple time. After a while, my boss decided to send me out on the road to talk


to the hundreds of mom-and-pop fuel oil dealers that dotted the Isle of Long. These folks bought from the wholesalers, and we weren’t very close to them. My boss figured that if I could make these peo- ple feel good about us by teaching them for free, they just might ask for our stuff by name when they went to their wholesalers. So I knocked on doors and told the oil dealers about what we


had. I’d take stuff apart and put it together. They, in turn, would tell me what they thought about what we had, how it was work- ing for them, why they bought or didn’t buy; that’s how I learned about the real world. I’d talk to their techs off the backs of pickup trucks in oil-


soaked garages, over cold pizzas and beers. I know I learned more from listening to those techs than they learned from my teaching. As I went from place to place, I shared what I had learned from those techs with other techs; that is how I came to be a teacher. I wrote stories about these people in a newsletter that we


called “The Problem Solver.” We sent it to more than 5,000 peo- ple each month. They liked it; that is how I came to be a writer. My buddy at the manufacturer told me how busy they were


and how their arms were getting sore from picking up the phones all day long. “Seriously,” I said, “who’s calling?” “Everyone,” he said. “They’re all calling!” That seemed so strange to me. “What about your reps?” I


asked. “Shouldn’t they be taking those calls? When I was a rep, the scariest thing in the world for us was the thought that a cus- tomer might call the manufacturer. If the customer was calling the manufacturer, why would the manufacturer need us?” He nodded, but had nothing more to say about this. When I was a rep, our customer was the wholesaler, and we


were hell bent on pulling through sales to those wholesalers by helping and teaching the contractors for free, all in the hope that the contractors would do the right thing and ask for our stuff by name. And it worked. My old boss used to pound into my thick skull the truth that we


had two categories of customers, the wholesalers and the manu- facturers we represented. Our job was to delight them both. We delighted the wholesalers by bringing them business that they may not have gotten if it were not for the help that we were giv- ing their customers, the contractors. We delighted the manufac- turers by meeting or exceeding our quotas and by making sure that the wholesalers (or anyone else) never, ever called them. Today, manufacturers’ Web sites and their social networking, along with their toll-free numbers seem to be changing things. I


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think the reason why we’re seeing this is because many manu- facturers are starting to wonder about their reps. Are the reps adding the value they used to add? Should we be paying them as much as we’re paying them? I think that any rep that encourages his customers to call a fac-


tory has lost his mind and will probably also lose that manufac- turer as a customer. There are exceptions, however, and I am always delighted to


run into one of them. The Lovely Marianne and I were in Timonium, Maryland, last fall, doing the Dead Men’s Steam School. A few days before we left home, N.H. Yates Inc. invited us to stop by their place for a visit. They were sending five peo- ple to the seminar and were within walking distance of the hotel where we were staying, so we accepted. The more you visit peo- ple, the more you can learn. Jim Yates, the president of this magnificent, old school rep


firm, spent a couple of hours showing us around and just chat- ting with us. That touched me because I’m sure that Jim had other things to do that morning. I tend to ask a lot of questions and drag out conversations because I’m curious, and I really like people, but I’m also a good listener. When stuff goes into my head, it churns around with other stuff that’s already in there. What came out of our visit to Yates was this thought about reps and what makes for a great one. Jim was telling me about other people’s problems, but not in


a complaining way. He was talking about hydronics in a way that made Yates’s broad offering look like a delicious, problem-solv- ing smorgasbord. He was bubbling over with enthusiasm. There’s a narrow doorway that a lot of equipment has to fit


through. No problem. Yates sells all of that equipment, and they can pipe it onto a rack at their place. They’ll put the rack on wheels so that it glides through the door. Send the wheels back when you’re done. Once you have the package in place, all you have to do is add the pipes and the wires. Your problem is solved and their business grows. So does yours. That’s what a good rep does. Jim’s attitude is that everyone else’s problems are Yates’s opportunities. He doesn’t just have the products; he also has these passionate people and that wonderful, old school attitude that says there’s no need to call the factory; we have everything you need right here. Everything. Jim talked and I listened and asked more questions. He’s good


with a story. He told me about the 336,600 gpm, post-Katrina pumps that now serve New Orleans, and he told me about cus- tom-made toilet partitions. How’s that for range? As I listened, I kept thinking about my old boss. Jim Yates


reminded me so much of him, as he was 30 years ago — smart, enthusiastic and so sure of his company’s capabilities. So certain that within every problem there is a business and that there is never a need for any customer to ever go anywhere other than right here because we know what to do and how to do it. That’s old school. Somewhere during the two hours, I mentioned to Jim Yates


the manufacturer who was getting all those phone calls. Jim shook his head. “That’s not good,” he said. “That’s our job.” Made me remember what a rep should be — like Yates. n


The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not reflect those of Plumbing Engineer nor its publisher, TMB Publishing.


January 2011


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