You Know He Died Once!

Don’t forget to have fun

Sooner or later as an Ag Sales Professional, you will have a customer service issue like the one I had. It’s not a matter of if, but when. So, get good at handling them to keep from losing a customer over it.

Driving up to my customer’s feed mill, I noticed Mel (the owner) sweeping up around the bulk bin on the side of his warehouse. That bin held the bulk feed which he bought from me. Noticing his angry look when he saw me drive into the parking lot, I knew this was not going to be a good sales call. Better meet this head on I decided as I walked over to say hello and see if our appointment was still going to happen.

“See what your driver did?” Mel blurted out. I went into question mode as a good salesperson does when there’s a complaint. What happened? Has it happened before? Was this delivery different? Did he miss the bin opening or did it overflow? Was there old feed in the bin that might have caused it to overflow? Mel could see the genuine concern in my questions and tolerated them for a while. Seems the driver not only overfilled the bin, spilling feed on the ground, but he left the lid open AND didn’t clean up the spilled feed. As my frustration built up over what the driver had done, Mel went on. “Then the #$%* went over and flushed his truck all over my parking lot!”

I didn’t actually believe it. So, I had to go see for myself. When drivers haul two particular feeds on the same truck, we provided them with bags of flush (corn or pelleted midds). After dumping the first load, the driver runs the flush through his truck which cleans out the boots and augurs to prevent contamination from one product to the next. The method most drivers use is to either flush it on top of the first load of feed or flush it into a dumpster at the customer’s place. It takes no time to just ask the customer their preference. This particular driver just decided the corner of a gravel parking lot was fine. So, there I was in dockers, polo shirt, brochures and sales papers on the ground as I shoveled corn and gravel into a wheelbarrow and headed back to the warehouse to throw it away. Not the end of the world for a salesperson to grab a shovel once in a while, but the damage we had done with this customer was the hard part for me to tolerate.

“I don’t know where you found this driver, but I don’t want him delivering here ever again!” Mel emphatically explained. Clearly in the wrong, the only thing I could say was, “I promise you Mel, I will discuss it vigorously with him and his boss, as well as my boss. I will do everything I can to make sure he doesn’t come out this way again.”

With the mess cleaned up, we moved the meeting inside where we should have been from the beginning. Bridging from the awkward welcome in the parking lot to a presentation on our latest products and promotions took a little longer. I opened with, “Besides dumping feed on the ground and flushing corn all over your parking lot, how are we doing as your feed supplier?” After a few chuckles, we moved on. The mild attempt at humor seemed to break the ice. Mel could see my true frustration with this situation and he knew me well enough to know I was going to follow up on it.

Wrapping up the sales call, I confirmed with Mel that I would follow up on the driver issue and get back to him. This was before cell phones, so I had to find the nearest payphone. Racing down Highway 33, I stopped at the only payphone in the area. Unfortunately, it was in the parking lot of one of those triple X magazine stores. That’s how bad I wanted to vent on my frustration over what the driver had done.

I spent over a year calling on this customer. Convinced them to bring a few of my products in. Then convinced them to give me a shot at their larger volume bulk feed. We got four loads into the sale and this driver blew it by dumping feed and flush all over the customer’s parking lot. I couldn’t wait, so I wheeled into the parking lot past the neon blinking signs, past all the semi’s and pulled up to the pay phone. Dialing my collect AT&T number first, then entering my memorized 12-digit ID number, I finally got to the point where I could enter a phone number. After getting through to my sales manager, I blurted out, “You won’t believe what Mike (the driver’s name) did!” The back story on Mike is that we had problems with him in the past. Since he was a contract hauler for us and drivers aren’t the easiest to find, we had to work with the truck owner to sharpen Mike’s customer service skills, to put it politely.

In my mind, Mike’s time was up and I went off the deep end on how bad he screwed up this time. The momentum of my frustration built to a point where, my sales manager interjected, “You know he died once.” At first, I didn’t understand. “He what?” I said. “Yeah, he died when he was about 10. Drowned in a pool and they brought him back to life,” my sales manager explained. The comment stopped me dead in my tracks and I’m sorry for what happened to him, but at that moment in that environment, sitting in my car in a XXX parking lot on a payphone (who knows how disgusting that was), all I could do was start laughing.

The humor had done its magic. It broke the tension, put things in perspective and allowed us to move on to how we would handle the discussion with the driver and the truck owner. Over the years, I told that story many times as we discussed my manager’s style of leading the team. This was just one of many and to this day, when I drive past that parking lot, I can’t help but think of my manager and laugh. The payphone is long gone, but the lesson of using humor at just the right time is not.

It’s important to add a note here as I have certainly gone too far or assumed I could use humor where I shouldn’t have. You can’t use it to dismiss a serious problem. The humor comes in as a method to get you and the other person back to a better perspective or cut the tension. The other person needs to see that you are going to resolve the issue in a more serious manner. Lastly, you need a level of trust between you and the other person. A solid relationship tolerates the humor where a tense relationship probably needs a more serious tone, especially in a stressful situation like the one above.

Epilogue: The driver and the trucking company did get on the phone with us. Turned out, Mike did not like delivering to this customer, for whatever reason and admitted to what had happened. Promising never to do it again, we billed them back for the cost of 300 pounds of feed and credited the dealer for it. We retained the business over the years and Mike eventually moved on to another trucking company.

So, have a little fun today and interject a little humor!

Epilogue Part II: This story is about one driver behaving badly. It’s not meant to speak badly of drivers. If you read my blogs regularly, you know how important I think the whole team is in keeping customers: drivers, sales coordinators, manufacturing, warehouse operators and yes, even accounting folks. Here are some of those articles that speak to their important part of keeping and growing your business through excellent customer service.

Who’s in your corner?
Silos in Agribusiness

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