On Sep 4, 5:25 pm, "Leon" wrote:
You asked,

Yep, I did. And, it is always interesting for me to learn about
another persons life experiences. I hope you don't mind me snipping
it for brevity sake.

At age 17 I... snip

Thanks for sharing. It sounds a lot like my brother. He's managed
several retail tire stores. Now he's managing a tire distribution
center for a large national chain.

I do have a bit of experience when it comes to customer service and
support. That's what I did for 17 years at HP. I developed and
implemented the service, support, and warranty programs for new
products. I've dealt with all sorts of customers from individual's
with a printer at home to Fortune 500 companies with hundreds of
thousands of pieces of equipment. I understand customer service - I
really do - on every continent and in every culture of the world.

The last product I worked on was responsible for more than $4 Billion
in revenue (yes, Billion with a "B", one single product!). My
planning (service parts stocking and distribution, call center
organization and training, repair depot training and organization,
warranty terms & conditions, etc.) saved the company more in warranty
costs on this one product than your company's entire annual sales.
Much of this experience has absolutely nothing to do with running a
small business.

Do you think that my customers are happy or unhappy with my products
and service?

I know that they are happy per comments by many here on this news group.

So admonitions about "pleasing the customer" would, by your own
estimation, be completely unnecessary, right?

Do you think that I have a high or low level of customer trust and
loyalty?

I would say for the customers that you have sold to that you have a high
level of both.

So admonitions about "gaining their trust" would, by your own
estimation, be completely unnecessary, right?

You know my product line, how much repeat business do you think I
should expect?

I am "familiar" with your product line. Not knowing the full range of your
line I could not guess as to whether you have repeat business.

Well, the answer is pretty darn close to ZERO. Once a person buys a
TS-Aligner there just isn't much need to buy another. It doesn't have
any consumables. It doesn't wear out. So, "repeat business" just
isn't a very good measure of the success of my marketing programs. I
live on referal business, google, and the occasional magazine article.

Based on what you know of my business and products, do you believe
that I'm always looking for easy solutions?

Again, only being familiar with your products I can only respond with a
reasonable answer. Any business person should look for the easiest
solutions however the customer should always be the first consideration when
making changes to a company policy or the way it interacts with its
customers. Sometimes a simple solution for you may affect your bottom line
negatively if the customer gets less than what he feels is fair. There is a
fine line between what is considered by you as an acceptable loss of
customers and what is not acceptable.

So, I guess nothing in your knowledge of me, my company, or my
products could possibly justify an admonition like "Nothing worth
doing is always easy".

Does it seem to you like I'm disinterested, inattentive, or
argumentative to what people are saying in this thread?

No, No, and Yes, at times.

Ya, I suppose you would probably consider this to be one of those
times. Sorry. It's meant to clear the air, promote understanding -
not be argumentative.

Ed, because you are mostly seen here sporadically and because you are
often mentioning your product here on this group I get the impression that
you come here more to sell vs. be a regular active participant to discuss
IYHO the best way to finish a product, where to get the best deals on
hardware, and so on. Because you do offer sound advice even though it is
often centered around your products this is fine with me. Same goes for
Steve Knight. We each use this group in a way that each of us feels is
best for us as individuals. Perhaps not as apparent I too have benefited
from receiving repeat jobs/customers through this news group.

If there was a point here, I missed it. Most of the time I spend on
the wreck is in the fall. There just happens to be a lull between
building up inventory during the summer and the holiday sales. I
announce the annual promotion and hang around until I get too busy.
So, you probably associate most of what I say with the annual
promotion. And, I tend to spend most of my time helping people with
machinery adjustment/alignment issues.

Anyway, it
has always been my experience that customer satisfaction is the ultimate
goal. With customer satisfaction and positive interaction with "yet to be
customers", comes new customers and money. I know that profits are
important however sales come first. With out sales, there are no profits.
With increased sales come more opportunities to generate larger gross
profits margins.

You do realize that I have been selling the TS-Aligner products since
1991, right? I'm not all that new to the whole customer satisfaction,
sales and profits thing. I don't pay people to rave about my products
newsgroups. They do it because they really are extremely satisfied.

Let's just touch on the "increased sales" thing. That's what the
dealer channel is all about. It's large scale exposure and
distribution like I could never do on my own. That's "the big
picture". I'm not going to drop customer satisfaction. I'm still
going to do everything I can to to promote positive interaction with
prospective customers. But, I just can't continue to sit on a
facility that can produce 100 times more product than I currently
sell. I have to do something. And the dealers just don't understand
the products or comprehend the sales potential. If it were made from
plastic in China and had a 10,000x markup they would understand. But
since it isn't, they need to see some demand before they will commit
to buy.

IMHO common mail in rebates do not generate enough increase in sales to
offset a possible loss of long term customer loyalty.

Just think about what you are saying. How is a rebate going to
adversely affect *MY* long term customer loyalty? Maybe if they get
****ed off at a poorly administered program, right? Well that's just
not going to happen in this case. And remember, there really isn't
much in it for me when it comes to repeat business.

Often rebates are
offered by the manufacturer to help the retailer move the obsolete or over
priced product off of the shelves to make way for a more popular, better
version of, or less expensive product. It is often that the replacement
product trumps the older version and is a better value than the older
version even if is not discounted. Basically the manufacturer takes the
hit rather than make the retailer suffer the loss associated with an over
all reduced price of inventory.

Rebates are also used to gather demographic info. And, sometimes they
are used to generate mailing lists for junk mail or sales leads for
telemarketing. None of these conditions apply to my situation.

Mail in rebates like product coupons are
seldom paid out because of the strict nonsense required to obtain the
refund. Many customers forget or give up while waiting for the refund.

Again, this just doesn't apply.

Having said that, I don't for a moment believe that your intent is anything
other than to do only the honorable thing for your customers. You seem a
bit too "hands on" to risk dissatisfaction from you customers and I commend
you for this. This country needs more businessmen like you and business to
be run like yours to rebuild its reputation and faith with it's customers.

I appreciate the compliment. But, you have to admit that it makes
your previous admonitions completely unnecessary. If you really
believe this then why all the fuss with the platitudes? I understand
and acknowledge the potential for problems. OK? Yes, these would be
valid concerns if I were thinking of hiring some scum bag company to
administer a program for one of the reasons you state above. But, you
know that this just isn't the case.

I think the whole problem with your thread was the mention of the much
resented "r" word.

Hmmmm..... OK. Sorry about that. Which "r" word are we talking
about? "Ret___" or "Reb___"?

Ed Bennett


http://www.ts-aligner.com
Home of the TS-Aligner