To illustrate the need to continually evolve your business, Bob Vitale tells a story >about the men who worked on
coal-fired locomotives.
“All of a sudden, the guy shoveling the coal would stop and
lean on the shovel. When you
saw that happen, you knew that
train had already started to slow
down,” says Vitale, founder and
CEO of 70-employee Midwest
Industrial Supply Inc. “Never
lean on the shovel.”
Vitale says executives must
always embrace change —-both in their company and in
their customers’ companies —
or their business will lose
strength in the marketplace
and, ultimately, grind to a halt.
Smart Business spoke with
Vitale about how success at his
$15.3 million company — which
provides dust control and anti-icing solutions — depends on
the success of his customers.
Q. What are your keys for
growth?
Focus on the customer. Look
through the customers’ eyes to
determine what it is that they
need and what are their business issues. Then, combine
your skills and strengths in a
sustained way to solve the
customers’ business issues
and create value.
Provide customers with a solution, something of value over a
longer period of time — years,
not just a month — and work to
retain and build those high-value customer relationships.
Q. How do you build
customer relationships?
You have to know something
about the customer’s industry and talk to them in terms of
how they would judge the success or failure for the kind of
service and product package
you are providing them.
Ask what is changing in the
customer’s world. Also, ask
the customer and yourself,
‘What can we do to bring more
value next year?’ You have to
be prepared to change or
improve what you do to better
serve them.
By allowing customers to
turn over the management and
problem-solving in a particular
area, they can focus on their
core business. They can
confidently know that
they have the best possible steward working to
manage an important
area that might have all
kinds of consequences
and problems if it was
not handled properly.
Q. How do you earn
the trust of your
customers?
It is absolutely important that we do what we
say we’re going to do,
that we deliver to our
commitments and that, in
effect, we accept responsibility for our conduct
and work.
And, if we ever fall down and
don’t do something as well as
it should be done, we accept
responsibility for that and
immediately correct what
needs to be corrected and
always strive for a high-quality
performance.
Q. How do you communicate
that customer-service vision
to employees?
Our road map to success is a
14-page booklet that goes to employees. It is the complete
statement of our mission and
core values; it prescribes all
the attitude, behavior and character of our organization. The
road map shares our vision of
where we want to go and what
we want to become in the next
five years. Then we have our
scorecard, which allows us to
check to make sure that we
are achieving the things that
we have set out as being the
most important things for us as
a company to do.
When you’re smaller, it’s easy
to communicate what you’re trying to do. As more people
come in who are new, it’s very
important that all of the things
you’re doing — your mission,
vision and values — are communicated to everybody.
When you go from two people to 70 people, the order of complexity in communication is
such that without one clear
road map, it becomes very
hard to keep everybody going
in the same direction.
Q. How do you establish a
road map?
It is very hard to do. We started five years ago, and we keep
it alive and fresh with a once-a-year review. It’s got to be a real,
living document. The fundamental mission and values don’t
change, but you have to address
all of the things that have
changed in your world and your
customers’ world and reflect the
current values that the customers expect to get from the
money they’ve spent with you.
There’s an old saying I’ve
had above my desk for probably 30 years, and it says, ‘Most
people grow themselves out of
business.’ They either can’t
manage it, or they can’t finance
it. That’s the whole point. As
you grow, you’re always going
into unexplored territory;
you’ve got more things that
you’ve got to do well, and you
have more people.
Everybody in the business
needs to grow and learn. You
need to maintain and improve
your individual skills, capabilities and expertise every single
year.
It’s a good reminder never to
put your feet up on the desk.
Keep them on the ground and
moving; don’t relax. There is too
much opportunity and possibility out there in your world.
The minute you stop growing
and stop working for improvement, you are starting to slide
backward, and you’re going in
the wrong direction.
HOW TO REACH: Midwest Industrial Supply Inc., (800) 321-0699 or www.midwestind.com