Sales Management
Milliken next spoke with VP Sales Alex Wascov and asked him about his biggest concerns. " On- time delivery, " said Wascov. "We're selling a piece of an expensive promotional campaign. The customer has bought ads, Internet, direct marketing mailings, point-of-purchase display units and coupons, commission payments to the retail channel so they'll push the product, people handing out samples on the street—you name it. It's all scheduled to hit, to have impact, on a specific date. If our product isn't there, the customer goes nuts. We have orders as small as 1,000 pieces, but we sell some of those for a high price per piece—they're just as important to the customer. In October, since you ask, we were late more than 20% of the time. Two years ago I hit the roof if it was 5% in a month. The factory doesn't agree with me on this, they take a bow for being "on time" if they get a partial out. But that's nowhere near good enough for the customer. You try getting the customer to give us a second look if we've been late once. I'm telling you, it's getting worse not better, year after year." Milliken nodded. "The second biggest problem is the boxes popping open with not enough glue or no glue at all. Sometimes there's too much glue laid on so it bleeds out, it looks bad or you can't open it because it's stuck so bad. Don't get me wrong—we have a beautiful product, great designs, classy printing. But the glue problems are real, or sometimes the product is just missing some Finishing piece. Delivery is the big issue, though."
Milliken asked why customers sometimes wanted to "move up" or expedite a due date to receive product sooner than they had originally been promised, assuming schedule was part of a coordinated marketing project. Wascov said that, first, some customers had learned or heard that Bayonne on-time delivery was not to be trusted. Second, the customer may have originally wanted the material sooner but someone had settled for the standard date, and then later come back to get what they really wanted. Third, some other component of the marketing project might become available earlier than anticipated, giving the customer hope that all of the pieces, including Bayonne's, could come together sooner. Fourth, sometimes the customer was putting together the project for some other company that wanted more lead- time for example, it was not uncommon for retail channels to demand that promotional materials be staged sooner than originally promised.
Hoping to switch away from this litany of woe, Milliken asked, "Other than the problems, how is Bayonne doing?" Wascov looked immediately happier. "Great!" he said. "We're grabbing into new markets, getting aggressive about taking customers we've never had before. This year for the first time we've had some big, solid hits, like up to two-hundred thousand piece orders in candies, pretty much a whole new product for us. Same thing with those little corporate gift sets. I told my sales people to do what it takes, price aggressively to the market, and boy they surely did. Dave Rand complains about the margins, but he doesn't complain about getting the volume. The designers had to learn a few new tricks, and the Fold and Glue operators too, plus we got into some FDA requirements about coatings, adhesives, and liners, but amount of business we're pulling in is great. If we could just get a track record for delivering on time we can win a lot more customers too, especially with the kinds of products we haven't touched before, just over the river. You know how much promotional material money there is in Manhattan?!"
Sales Management
Milliken next spoke with VP Sales Alex Wascov and asked him about his biggest concerns. " On- time delivery, " said Wascov. "We're selling a piece of an expensive promotional campaign. The customer has bought ads, Internet, direct marketing mailings, point-of-purchase display units and coupons, commission payments to the retail channel so they'll push the product, people handing out samples on the street—you name it. It's all scheduled to hit, to have impact, on a specific date. If our product isn't there, the customer goes nuts. We have orders as small as 1,000 pieces, but we sell some of those for a high price per piece—they're just as important to the customer. In October, since you ask, we were late more than 20% of the time. Two years ago I hit the roof if it was 5% in a month. The factory doesn't agree with me on this, they take a bow for being "on time" if they get a partial out. But that's nowhere near good enough for the customer. You try getting the customer to give us a second look if we've been late once. I'm telling you, it's getting worse not better, year after year." Milliken nodded. "The second biggest problem is the boxes popping open with not enough glue or no glue at all. Sometimes there's too much glue laid on so it bleeds out, it looks bad or you can't open it because it's stuck so bad. Don't get me wrong—we have a beautiful product, great designs, classy printing. But the glue problems are real, or sometimes the product is just missing some Finishing piece. Delivery is the big issue, though."
Milliken asked why customers sometimes wanted to "move up" or expedite a due date to receive product sooner than they had originally been promised, assuming schedule was part of a coordinated marketing project. Wascov said that, first, some customers had learned or heard that Bayonne on-time delivery was not to be trusted. Second, the customer may have originally wanted the material sooner but someone had settled for the standard date, and then later come back to get what they really wanted. Third, some other component of the marketing project might become available earlier than anticipated, giving the customer hope that all of the pieces, including Bayonne's, could come together sooner. Fourth, sometimes the customer was putting together the project for some other company that wanted more lead- time for example, it was not uncommon for retail channels to demand that promotional materials be staged sooner than originally promised.
Hoping to switch away from this litany of woe, Milliken asked, "Other than the problems, how is Bayonne doing?" Wascov looked immediately happier. "Great!" he said. "We're grabbing into new markets, getting aggressive about taking customers we've never had before. This year for the first time we've had some big, solid hits, like up to two-hundred thousand piece orders in candies, pretty much a whole new product for us. Same thing with those little corporate gift sets. I told my sales people to do what it takes, price aggressively to the market, and boy they surely did. Dave Rand complains about the margins, but he doesn't complain about getting the volume. The designers had to learn a few new tricks, and the Fold and Glue operators too, plus we got into some FDA requirements about coatings, adhesives, and liners, but amount of business we're pulling in is great. If we could just get a track record for delivering on time we can win a lot more customers too, especially with the kinds of products we haven't touched before, just over the river. You know how much promotional material money there is in Manhattan?!"
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