The Wastebroker Blog

Buying What You're Selling

One of the most baffling truisms I find in so many businesses is the dichotomy in the message being preached by the sales side of a company with that being preached by the purchasing side of the company.  It often goes something like this:

Sales:   “Our job is to make sure our customers know all the benefits of our product/service
.  .  . we must make them understand our value add.  .  . price is only part of the buying equation.  .  . it’s all right here in our brochure.”

Purchasing:      “I have no use for your brochure.  What’s the price?”

Most companies teach their employees that buying and selling aren’t at all related, and I think that’s silly.  Doesn’t it make much more sense for the company to be speaking the same language out of both sides of its mouth?  After all, you’re expecting your sales people to be able to position your product/service to your customers as a benefit to the success of their business.  Shouldn’t you expect the same benefit focus to guide your purchasing?

Why doesn’t it happen more often?  Two reasons:  Ego and habit.  Ego breeds delusion and sounds something like this – “We have a unique value proposition for our customers.”  We convince ourselves that our value proposition is, like our mom always told us we were, “special.” 

Habit is the curse of repetition, the belief that the lesson we were taught early in our careers by one of our clueless managers – that vendors exist to be brutally beaten into submission – somehow continues to make sense today, even though it is opposed to what our own company preaches and sells, or at least in “those” offices of the company.

The fact is that Selling and Buying are not unrelated.  They are the same.  And the same expectations are necessary in your company to make both successful.  Your customers should know, understand, value and pay accordingly for the benefits that your product/service brings to their business.  On the flip side, your buyers should know, understand, value and pay accordingly for the benefits that your suppliers’ product/service benefits your business.

Let’s face it; there aren’t too many places in this world today where you can sell a penny’s worth of value for a dollar; it just ain’t happening, at least not more than one time.  Customers are too smart for that.  You also aren’t likely to buy a dollar for a penny, no matter how many times you ask, demand or slam your hand on the table.  Your people are too smart to fall for that.  Aren’t they?

Big Things Start Small

Big Things Start Small

How many times have you heard someone mention a giant company like Harley Davidson, Miller Brewing or Allen Bradley and say something like, “Huh, must be nice.”  Companies like these are so large today that, for most of us, the thought of building a company as large, successful and widely recognized seems, well, not possible.

And you know what? They’re right.  It is impossible to create a company like Miller, Harley and Allen Bradley.  What’s not impossible, though, is to build one, and each of these companies is living proof of the reality of this possibility.

To make this a little easier to get our arms around, let’s go back in history a bit.  In 1855, Frederick Miller, the founder of Miller Brewery came to the

United States from Germany.  While Mr. Miller was a skilled brewer, he was not a skilled businessman.  Nonetheless, he came to this country to make the most of his opportunities.  And that he obviously did.  He purchased his first brewery, the Plank Road Brewery, the year he arrived.  Here and there, Mr. Miller simply began to build his business, barrel by barrel.  Today, Miller’s sales are more than $12 billion annually.

The Allen Bradley Company began in 1903 as a two-man operation.  Dr. Stanton Allen and Lynde Bradley, a high school dropout, had a dream of developing an electrical component that would assist the transfer of power in various kinds of machinery.  Their first product, the “carbon pile rheostat,” was both an innovation and a learning experience.  While it worked to successfully transfer the power as they had hoped, one of its primary materials was charcoal that quickly turned to dust when used, making the reliability and durability of their rheostat less than ideal.  Messrs. Allen and Bradley didn’t give up and in 1980, the company exceeded $1 billion in sales before being sold to Rockwell Automation.

Harley Davidson, the American’s American icon, also began in the most humble of ways.  Like Allen Bradley, Harley Davidson was started in 1903 by two partners, William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson.  Their “factory” was a wooden shed measuring 10’ x 15’, about the size of the office I have today.  Their goal: to build a unique racing motorcycle and ultimately sell it to someone.  Today, Harley Davidson is both a product and an experience.  Its corporate office is located just down the road from its original wooden factory shed. Its sales eclipse $6 billion annually.

So what’s the lesson for us in these three companies?  Well, for one, great big things can start in real small places.  Each of these great companies began humbly, overcame many obstacles like the switch from analog to digital technology (Allen Bradley), prohibition (Miller) and quality problems that nearly bankrupted the company (Harley Davidson), but never gave up.  The second lesson is that things take time.  Each of these companies is more than 100 years old and all began to experience significant growth after the period where many businesses are already considered “mature.”  Great things don’t appear magically like some kind of Kodak moment.  Instead, they usually happen gradually yet progressively, like the movement of a clock.

The biggest lesson for me in these stories is the power of human beings to create things from nothing.  To take an idea, a skill, a desire or a passion and create something powerful, successful and sustaining.  Whatever our minds can conceive, we can create.  That’s an awesome thought.  It can also be a scary thought.   So let’s go way back in time for inspiration, way before Miller, Harley Davidson or Allen Bradley, before the United States and before the birth of Christ.  There’s an ancient Chinese proverb that simply states, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  How hard is it to take the first step?  You’re right – not very.

Retiring Retirement

I’m not against the concept of retirement, but I don’t understand its popularity either.  It strikes me as being something that millions (perhaps billions) of people look forward to, but most have no clear idea why.  Once you’re looking forward to retiring, you can’t possibly be focused any more on what you are still capable of achieving.  Isn’t that a waste?  Especially if you just assume that “retirement” will be such a big improvement.

The biggest problem with retirement as it’s popularly defined is that there’s a presumption you’ll now have a much better life.  But think about that for a moment.  For most of us, the value in our life comes from the impact we have on other people’s lives and, for the vast majority of us, that impact is felt most strongly by the people we affect in our families and in our work.  And what do so many do when they retire?  They stop working and they move, generally, away from their families and closer to a lot of other retired strangers.  Where’s the attraction in that?

I believe that most people do not plan to retire well.  The retirement industry and all of its related propaganda build the ideal retirement lifestyle as being almost exclusively linked to your ability to “save” enough money while you’re working to retire “well.”  All our life, of course, we’re told that money does not buy happiness – except in retirement apparently.  What the propaganda does not address is how you will continue to make a valuable contribution in retirement.  It wants you to take yourself out of the game.  And there’s the catch.  To make a valuable contribution, an energizing contribution, an energetic and sustaining contribution, you have to stay in the game.

So your planning for “retirement” can’t be solely focused on savings (although this surely can’t be ignored).  It must also be focused on your individual sustainability.  Planning for your individual sustainability, in my view, has three components:  money, health and worth, with worth, personal worth, being the most important.  If you focus on worth, money and health will be there ready to support you.  If you focus on either one of the others, alone or together, and disregard worth, you’re rolling the dice and, like at any casino, house odds are better than yours.

I meet, in general, two kinds of people in the world:  The first kind is working with a goal on retiring.  These are the people who can tell you exactly how long it will be until they “can” retire.  They’ll tell you the date, in fact.  Consider what that does to your thinking and to your individual worth.  Can you be effective in your work?  Sure, to a point.  But, more than likely, you’re no longer focused on what you can accomplish rather than what you need to do.  And need without can is not very challenging.  The second kind is usually a business owner or someone who is well paid, but unhappy with what they’re doing.  The only way they can define themselves between now and retirement is by what they do.  They mistakenly feel like where they are is who they are.  If I sold my business now, what would I do?  I’m too young to retire.  Or, if I quit my job, what would I do?  The ambition seems to die with these people, their individual sustainability is used up day by day, rather than banked and grown with daily deposits.

Some might argue that I don’t know what I’m talking about.  “You’re only 41; I’m 60.  I’ve got 20 years of work on you.  Talk to me when you’re 60.”  Fair enough.  But the “work” you may have on me is more than likely time you’ve put in, not time you’ve planned for your individual sustainability.  You’re in the retirement trap, you’ve got a picture of retirement nirvana and retirement fairies dancing in your head.  But I’m pretty sure that you’ll soon wonder why you let it happen to you.  Imagine how prepared you would be to retire with not just a bank full of money, but with the additional worth of your individual sustainability account overflowing as well.  Wouldn’t be any need to retire, would there?  And that’s the point.  Too many of us fall into the trap that retirement is the end.  But retirement should be the reward, not the end.  If it were the reward, we would want to make sure that every day we were retired would be the opportunity to do what we love and what has the biggest impact on others.  Not a day to wonder what to do.

Hibon Blowers - Friend or Enemy?

Is it just us or are Hibon blowers becoming more like boat anchors than the dependable high CFM, high vacuum blowers they are marketed to be?  Are the folks they "authorize" to work on their pumps a joke (or is that just our guy?).  Our recent experience with these blowers is really making us question both the quality of the product and, just as disturbing, the quality of the service and repair network as well.

We've been using Hibon blowers for about 10 years.  Our first was, I believe, a VTB 20, a 1400 CFM full vacuum blower that we used on a unique, home built truck for pumping car washes and other wet sludges.  It was an awesome unit, so awesome, in fact, that it is still in use today.  Next was a couple of 2100 CFM blowers, then another 1400, then......the 5500's which is where the problems really started.

In 2005, we purchased two new PresVac wet dry machines equipped with 5500 CFM Hibon blowers.  Both failed within a week of service (one failed the first day).  When torn down for inspection by our "authorized" Hibon repair center, both blowers were found NOT to have been torqued properly at the factory????  Then, it gets worse, because we are forced to wait an eternity and a day to get a new blower.  In the meantime our $250K machine sits, looking pretty, but unable to do a darn thing it's built to do. 

This year, we had one of our 1400 units fail, cracked housing our service man tells us.  This was in May.  In early July, yes you read that right July, we still had no parts.  Oh really?  We located another "authorized" Hibon service dealer and, magically, he was able to get us the parts - although first we got the wrong ones, before we got the right ones.  Now our original guy is putting it back together, since the guy we got the parts from only works on small blowers.  If things go right, we should have our blower back soon, TWO MONTHS from when we delivered it for repair.

Are you having similar problems with Hibon?  Are you having a great experience with Hibon and we've just caught some bad breaks?  Let me know because the way we're feeling these days about Hibon, our days of being a customer are numbered! 

Enjoy Your Day!  Mike

Tips on Improving Your Business and Your Life

What is the most valuable thing you do at work?  Have you ever asked yourself this question?

My guess is that most people would be stumped by this question, primarily because they've never thought about where their true value lays.  And who can blame them?  Most companies think it's their role to tell people what to do, and most people believe that what they are to do is what the company defines as their role.

But that's a mistake.

If Thomas Friedman is right in his book, The World is Flat, in the not-so-distant future, many people will see the effects of their own commoditization -- and it won't be pretty.  Commoditization occurs when the market forces in the world dictate what something is worth.  Whether we're talking about minerals or people, having market forces be the sole value-setting mechanism is no fun.

The good think, though, is that while a mineral is unable to think or speak for itself, you, on the other hand, can.  And you must!

Here's my suggestion.  Start now.  Start today.  Don't wait!  The quicker you discover the most valuable thing you do, the faster you can start the process of de-commoditizing yourself, and that's the side of the future where you want to be.