Building a Better Business Case

Understanding the Deal Determiner

"Why should I buy from you?" is one of the most important, yet often unasked and unanswered questions the buyer has on his mind, and rightfully so. And with the sometimes “at-odds” relationship between buyer and seller, this question can routinely be a deal determiner.

Accordingly, a salesperson must ensure that the prospect clearly understands the difference between similar offerings. In sales training programs, salespeople regularly cite this question as one of their biggest hurdles.

Salespeople are taught to resist their temptations to list the obvious (including price, quality, client list or company history) because they've become givens. If a salesperson's offering or company is short on any, getting sales will be a continuous struggle. Sales trainers recommend that salespeople replace this temptation and answer with their own unique selling proposition. USPs differentiates a company in more breadth and depth than price, quality, etc., and is highly specific and unique making them powerful selling tools.

The following are a few of the most common USPs. I encourage you to consider developing those relevant to your company and offering, and then using them regularly.

1. Knowing your customers' customers. The more vertical understanding you have of your client's business, the more you will sell. I recommend that you take a "big picture" approach to servicing your clients. Rather than narrowly focusing on only meeting your client’s needs, broaden your outlook to include their business goals and objectives. If you can align your product or service with your clients overall business strategy, it will become more valuable and may differ greatly from solely a needs-focused recommendation.
   
   
2. Prospect generation. By this I mean prospect/provider matchmaking. At every opportunity, move beyond only being a product or service provider by matching your client's needs with products and services offered by your other clients. If one of your clients is a specialized database software developer and another one of your clients has mentioned the problems she's having using her old, unstable database, why not introduce them? You'll be providing a valuable service to both and will gain more of their trust and confidence, further solidifying your position.
   
   
3. Free training and support. A common complaint among many buyers is not understanding how to fully use a product or service they've purchased or inherited. Many salespeople fail to ask a client if he wants to be trained to use what he's purchased. This is perplexing and is not good business. Make it a practice to follow up with a client in person after he's received the order and run them through its use. Make it an informal, purely informational meeting and stay until he is completely comfortable using it. This will gain their respect and demonstrate that you're committed to meeting their needs, not just to earning a commission.
   
   
4. ROI proof through case studies. ROI is the reason people buy and it must be proved. Third-party endorsements are a good way to prove ROI, with case studies being the most effective. Case studies outline a specific challenge one your client's was facing, shows how your product or service helped the client meet the challenge and quantifies the result (ROI). Their third-party status in combination with their real world application makes them a prized resource that should be used strategically, but liberally.
   
   
5. Value adding through your personal knowledge, experience and expertise. This is the most important, unique and effective USP you have: you! The lines between price, quality and performance are becoming so blurred that your personal expertise must be used to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Position yourself as an expert, a consultant, a partner -- and you'll prove too valuable to lose.
   
   

Even if your role is not sales related, you can forward this newsletter to a “sales” team member at your company.

You Do That? - Engineered Rack Solutions

Changing Common Misconceptions
“Ordering rack can’t be that complicated, right?’ ‘After all rack is rack!’ ‘I have been in the warehousing business for years; I know what I’m doing.’” A recent customer experience illustrated this attitude. After turning down our invitation to conduct a facility assessment, prior to ordering rack components, a client of ours placed a significant order.

Their good fortune had fueled a need to expand the storage capacity in their distribution facility. After a gentle reminder from our Territory Manager about taking time to assess their needs was turned down, we happily and dutifully took down the rack order from the client. Weeks later the rack components arrived onsite and our installation crew was dispatched to conduct the installation.

As our in-house installation crew was setting up they noticed a set of building columns adjacent to the client’s existing rack. It was to this standing rack the new rack components were to be added. The expansion, beginning from that point would span across several transportation aisles deep into the facility. The client’s error was not factoring in the proper length of beams needed to span those building columns. The rack components ordered had 80+ beams that would not allow for proper placement of rack related to the fork truck aisles. Problem!

A call to the office got the Territory Manager on the phone with our racking partner Interlake Material Handling. Once he was able to gain a production slot, a price for the replacement beams was relayed to the client. Morrison Company was able to get the normal production time of 4-5 weeks shortened so the replacement beams arrived onsite in four weeks.

The Morrison Company installation crew was re-dispatched to complete the work. The client now has beams [the ones he ordered] to use for a future expansion. By the way that warehouse manager has scheduled a facility assessment for later this summer.

Morrison Company provides a dedicated sales and in-house engineering staff that closely works with customers to best layout and design material handling and storage systems. As an integrator and not a large manufacturer of one product line, we offer a more personal and dedicated service to our customers.

Through the use of our expertise in Auto-Cad 2006 and expert knowledge of the products we offer, we best interact with our customers, consultants, installers and factories in such a way as to install complete systems that exceed our customers’ expectations. It is through these installations that we create relationships for life and not “one project orders”.

Safety Best Practices

Warehouse Safety: Creating a Safety Culture
Creating a safe warehouse does not happen by accident, it happens by planning to prevent accidents. Although forming a safety committee is a good first step toward building better worker safety practices, warehouse operators also need to work toward creating a "safety culture" inside their facilities.

"Warehouse managers are accountable for safety. They need to be aware of that, and lead by example," says Alex Sierra, health, safety, and environmental manager for Fluor Constructors, the construction arm of Irving, Texas-based engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance service company Fluor. "All company employees should feel that safety is their responsibility - that is part of building a safety culture."

"Maintaining an efficient safety culture is a continuous effort," Gagliardi agrees. Gary Gagliardi, vice president of Safety Resources, a safety consulting firm located in Indianapolis. "Safety is not a one-time deal; companies cannot accomplish a culture of safety with one or two yearly meetings. But emphasizing safety throughout the company has a positive influence on its success."

Unfortunately, the benefits derived from safety training and practices are hard to directly quantify. As a result, many companies work to meet only basic government requirements. But such shortsighted thinking can burn companies over the long haul.

"Because safety efforts are not direct activities that generate profit, people tend to forget them," says Bob Shaunnessey, executive director of the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC), an Oak Brook, Ill.-based organization dedicated to warehouse management and its role in the supply chain. "But ultimately, having a safe workplace puts companies in a position to be more profitable."

Safety Savings

An emphasis on safety can generate cost savings -- both direct and indirect. Warehouse operators who take the time to analyze their safety training and practices can reap financial benefits, says Patrick Floyd, senior executive vice president of operations for Total Logistic Control (TLC), a third-party logistics provider headquartered in Zeeland, Mich.

TLC, which operates 83 distribution centers nationwide, implemented a comprehensive safety plan that generated fast and measurable results.

"TLC reduced its recordable incident rate from 11.5 in 2000 to 3.63 in 2006," notes Floyd. "This helped reduce workers' compensation costs from $2.53 per man-hour to 30 cents per man-hour."

The 3PL also makes safety an essential responsibility of its facility managers, office managers, and other supervisory personnel.

"Our managers' annual key performance indicators are based upon how well their facilities comply with OSHA, safety, and process improvement," Floyd says. "They cannot ignore safety concerns. If they do, it affects their performance as a leader and it affects their compensation."

To keep safety top of mind for employees, training needs to touch on all key areas that affect warehouse safety, notes Brock. APL, for instance, offers separate programs on topics including slips and falls, forklift operation, heat exhaustion, ergonomics, and hazardous materials.

"Safety is not separate from what warehouse employees do every day," she says. "Safety is a key aspect of how they do their job, and that's the mindset they must have."

Morrison Company has conducted facility assessments for all types of logistics firms. Identifying safety and handling efficiencies should be part of your near term profit building strategy.

Continuous Improvement Best Practices

Driving Continuous Improvement in Plant Safety

This is a three part article summarizing topics from M. Franz Schneider, CEO of Humantech Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., is an internationally recognized expert in human performance.

Many manufacturing and industrial companies attempt continuous improvement techniques to drive quality and reduce cost. A well-structured ergonomics initiative can be a powerful accelerator to both reduce costly musculoskeletal disorders and create rapid improvements in productivity.

Continuous improvement succeeds best on the notion that every employee is responsible for identifying and acting on opportunities for enhancing processes. It’s a powerful concept that can result in significant improvements in the short term and dramatic progress over time.

It’s also a powerful concept that can result in chaos. To be effective, your organization must move toward common goals at an agreed upon pace. One of the biggest barriers to achieving this simple synchronization is the verbiage used by different departments to identify their functions.

“We do safety,” says one. “Well, we do quality,” says another. “Yeah, well, we do order fulfillment,” says a third.

These old silos and job definitions will not let a company be agile enough to optimize the benefits of continuous improvement. In the ideal, everyone works on safety, everyone pursues quality and everyone assures order fulfillment.

The reality of continuous improvement is that a person’s job description is not a guarantee of future employment. Rather, the key is an employee’s ability to engage in daily improvement from multiple perspectives, accruing multiple benefits. Employees depend on ideas generated at the shop-floor level rather than pie-in-the-sky strategic business plans generated from 30,000 feet.

Gen. Colin Powell has a lifetime of experience in leadership in demanding situations. He always is clear that people closest to the frontlines should not be second guessed by people sitting in offices. “The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise,” Powell said.

He echoed many of the earlier thoughts of lean manufacturing guru Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System. “In our factories, we start our kaizen (continuous improvement) efforts by looking at the way our people do their work,” Ohno said. Two leaders, worlds apart, recognized the essence of continuous improvement and achieving excellence: Sustainable gains cannot be achieved unless people on the front line/shop floor lead the improvement process.

The 30-Inch View

In their own words, Powell and Ohno are talking about what I refer to as the “30-inch view” of people and performance. At 30 inches – roughly the length of a worker’s arm, or the distance between a worker and his or her workstation – issues are dealt with conclusively on a one-by-one basis. At 30 inches, people converse, reach for tools and sit at computers. Unfortunately, many employees face multiple barriers to productivity, quality and safety within their 30-inch range of control.

Beyond 30 inches, people have difficulty reading, hearing, speaking and working. At more than 30 inches away, problems become less intimate and appear to be someone else’s responsibility.

With a 30-inch view on continuous improvement, the value of ergonomics to safety, quality, production and the ability to meet customer needs is evident.

When everyone in a company understands that value is added on the shop floor, not around fancy meeting tables, then that company is able to leverage its continuous improvement effort over an entire plant population and the 220-plus days that people work in a year. This is how Toyota, widely regarded as one of the world’s best companies with world-class facilities and processes, still implements more than 1 million improvements every year.

To be successful on such a scale, companies must overcome significant hurdles. But the good news is that when implemented correctly, continuous improvement becomes self-sustaining. When the shop floor drives and achieves visible gains (visible from 30 inches away, for example) on a daily basis, it is motivating and builds teamwork, resulting in even more improvement activities. Shop floor employees drive continuous improvement in numerous organizations in North America and companies benefit from the effort every day.