Ian Heaven interview Just like Heaven
Ian Heaven is general manager of D.A.D and has worked at the business for nearly 27 years. He told Simon King that he is both delighted with the growth of the business and proud to work for the distributor
Simon King: Tell me about your role Ian Heaven: I joined the business on May 20, 1995. I’d met Adrian previously to that because I used to sell to Adrian and his brother, Robert, down in Gloucester, when I was a rep for Servis UK. I had a conversation with Adrian one day and bought into what he was going to do – and basically, I’ve been with him ever since really.
SK: How has the business changed in the 27 years since you joined it? IH: Adrian has been a success; when I started with him, we had a 2,000sq ft warehouse, with no extra space. Our standing joke was when we open the building in the mornings, we had to take stuff out, so that we could move around inside the warehouse – we used to pray that it didn’t rain.
SK: Tell me about your relationship with Adrian Gillman IH: We have a unique relationship because Adrian’s an all rounder, this is why he’s got on so well. He will do anything – I’ve unloaded lorries with him, we’ve swept the warehouse fl oor together and we’ve been on a journey. A typical conversation between Adrian and I would be Adrian taking a lorry to buy some stock in Manchester and he’d ask me to sell the stock between Manchester and Gloucester, so I would be ringing customers. We started off slowly and we’ve now got this 200,000+ sq ft warehouse. This is why I respect Adrian, because if he says sweep the warehouse fl oor, it’s a job he’s done himself, as he’s done everything.
SK: What do you do in your role? IH: When I joined Adrian, it was to sell, but it quickly sort of diversifi ed from that, within a couple of weeks of being there, he’d given me the keys to the building, so I was a key holder.
As we got bigger and moved to Bristol Road in Gloucester, I became more of a general manager rather than a selling job. I’ve seen all aspects of the job; at 5am I
14 Ian Heaven
Telesales team – Sean Lordan, Gisella Shiels, Jamie Woodall and Ben Grace
was meeting drivers telling them if their lorry was on site or if it was at the service depot and an hour of that time would be taking drivers to their vehicles that had been repaired over the weekend. I also planned some of the routes, which
Richard Gillman does now, and I continue to sell to my customers.
SK: What does an average day look like? IH: Now I’m more involved with my customers and I sit with the telesales team, which I oversee with Sean Lordan, the tele sales manager. I put, on average, between £800,000 and £1,000,000 a month turnover dealing with my customers. I don’t have a set area, I work with the customers that I brought into the business – the furthest north is Glasgow where I have one customer; I’ve also got one in Sunderland and I’ve got quite a few in the Midlands and a couple of customers in Cornwall. A lot of my customers now tend to be contract rather than retail. My biggest customer is a local authority that supports vulnerable people.
SK: What do you enjoy most about your job? IH: I like talking to people and I like helping people and understanding their needs. Needs vary as per different customers – contract customers basically want a budget cooker washing machine and fridge-freezer. Some of the retailers want bigger rangecookers and higher priced items, so it’s just understanding the
customer. The fi rst day that we operated from Tewkesbury was absolutely hilarious, because we didn’t have any lights on the loading bay, so there was six of us with torches trying to load 14 wagons at 5am.
SK: How did business change during COVID? IH: Between Adrian, myself and the sales team during the fi rst lockdown, we sold thousands of chest freezers, every chest freezer that we could get was accounted for and sold. There were customers I knew that had a small storage space and were asking for 80-100 chest freezers! There was some people that we dealt
with that basically shut up shop, and diverted the business phones to their homes, but my admiration for the people that kept the doors open and made themselves available is immense. There were some great stories that came out of it. Some masked up their engineers and gave them protective clothing so that they could go in and fi t a cooker for someone that didn’t have one. There were some wonderful retailers out there that really helped people.
SK: What’s the best thing about working for D.A.D? IH: All of it’s been good – it’s been challenging. If you have a respect for the person you work for then coming into work is easy. I respect what Adrian’s done. It’s easy to come to work really and a lot of my customers are friends.
March/April 2022 | D.A.D Special
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