Frustration washed over John Ziegler as he watched his cousin Bill approach the office door just before lunch one day.
He knew what Bill wanted, and John didn’t have it. Bill, secretary-treasurer for Canton-based Ziegler Tire & Supply Co., was looking for the annual budget for one of the company’s Ohio stores, and John hadn’t been able to get it done.
The day before, he had fielded some 70 phone calls from various employees and customers who had questions or simply wanted to talk to someone at the company with the last name Ziegler.
As marketing manager and the company’s No. 3 executive, John had spent half of this morning calling distributors to help one of his managers track down specialized tires for a boat trailer.
He knew it wasn’t the best use of his time, but those kinds of tasks had always been part of the job.
Ziegler Tire, founded 79 years ago, revels in its distinction as the oldest Firestone dealer in the world. Over the last 20 years, its growth has been on a roll. The number of retail locations has more than tripled, to 18 today. Employment increased in the same period from 80 people to 210. Customers include not only drive-in consumers but also commercial clients ranging from UPS to LTV Steel Co. to Hertz. In addition to tire service, the company has followed customer demand to offer such basic automotive needs as brake jobs and wheel alignments. Sales last year exceeded $46 million.
But as the company grew, John and the other family managers realized they were barely in control.
The number of high-level management issues had grown right along with revenue and payroll, yet the Zieglers were still viewing themselves as the people in charge of handling the little details so employees wouldn’t be distracted.
“We kept trying to treat it as a small family business,” John says. “That just didn’t get it [done].”
What the Zieglers realized is that their success had come from a business culture where the little things matter a lot-the way customers are treated, problems are handled and employees are kept informed.
Even as the managers grew more skilled and effective at strategic planning, they still had to find time for such routine details as regularly analyzing per-store profitability, or making sure the salesmen understand the intricacies of unity technology. They had to find a way to flawlessly execute details, even as the company grew too large for the Zieglers to handle the details themselves.
That’s been a focus of their efforts in the last few years, and the results are telling: as sales rise, so too are profit margins-at 1 percent a year, which is pretty healthy in a mature industry such as theirs. That goes against the rule in business, where growth often brings hard-to-fix problems that eat away at the all-important margins.
The Zieglers don’t claim their execution is always perfect, but the health and reputation of their business would indicate it’s better than average.
With that careful disclaimer, here are some of the ways the people at Ziegler Tire make sure the little things get done.
Promote the people who value details
Some 85 percent of Ziegler’s business is corporate, for accounts as varied as Timken Co. and Cleveland Public Schools. The remaining 15 percent is consumer sales.
Whether the customers are corporate or retail, the Zieglers make sure everyone in the organization is focused on them. How? By making customer service part of everyday life, and then promoting the people who do it the best.
All 17 of the company’s store managers started out as tire changers or mechanics. “They know what it takes to fix a car and what it takes to please a customer,” John says.
“Our managers have worked right there with the service department,” Jack says, “so they know how to approach the customer exactly the right way.”
Treat everyone like a customer
Busy organizations may remember to treat customers right, but they often lose sight of how important it is to treat vendors and employees the same way.
Everyone involved with a company, internally or externally, ultimately affects customer satisfaction, the Zieglers say. “As you grow,” Bill says, “a lot of your company supports other parts of your company.”
“Everybody is a customer,” John says. “When a store manager calls us, he’s not calling me to say hello. He’s calling because he needs tires for a customer.”
The Zieglers say many companies don’t realize how a sharp word or bad attitude from one employee or manager can easily rub off to others, who subconsciously pass it along to a customer.
The always-be-courteous attitude extends particularly to the accounting and HR staffers, who field questions involving paychecks and benefits and related issues that are extremely important to the employees, but might seem less urgent to management on a day-to-day basis.
“When an employee’s wife calls, that wife is a customer, too,” John says.
“If she has a problem with the insurance and we help her take care of it, she’s happy. If she’s satisfied, then he’ll probably be satisfied, and that in turn will help keep him motivated
“If we don’t handle it right, he’ll go home and she’ll say, ‘I can’t believe you still work for that idiot.’ And that might affect his job performance.”
Avoid the turnover trap
Reducing turnover has been a conscious effort, Bill says, because hiring and training were taking too much time.
Recruiting is enough of a headache. Then, Bill says, it takes two or three years to get a typical person up to speed in the job.
Before the expansion was launched in the late ’70s, the company’s wages and benefits package were “way below average,” John says. Turnover, predictably, was not.
So the management team addressed the main issues. Today, John notes, wages are above average (though admittedly not at the top end), the benefits package has been enhanced and the 401(k) plan includes a profit-sharing component.
That last element, according to Bill, cements employee loyalty. “If the company is successful, the people feel successful and they don’t want to leave.”
As a result of the compensation overhaul and focus on company culture, Ziegler Tire today enjoys an average employee tenure of 12 to 15 years.
“It’s easier to do the little things right,” Bill says, “when everyone knows their job.”
Set a simple goal that everyone can understand
Ziegler Tire has no mission statement, but it operates around a short and sweet motto: “Whatever it takes.”
It’s easy to focus on the details of customer service, John says, when everyone knows it’s accepted and expected that you’ll do whatever is required to make the customer happy.
“It’s the little stuff we try to ingrain in the managers,” he says. “They’re three words you hear a lot, but we try to live by them.”
In the case, for example, of a customer complaint, “We say, ‘What will it take to make you happy?'” John says. Customers usually ask for less than the company might have offered.
When a customer walks in upset about a tire that blew out on a pothole, the Zieglers don’t turn him away because he didn’t buy the road hazard insurance.
Instead, the manager might offer to split the cost of a new tire, and then allow the customer to buy the warranty retroactively on the other three tires.
“It’s not whether they’re right or wrong. It’s what they perceive,” John says. “Don’t tell them what you can’t do for them. Tell them what you can do.”
Don’t forget to reorganize at the top
Ziegler Tire’s top management team consists of President Harold Ziegler, Secretary/Treasurer Bill Ziegler, Marketing Manager John Ziegler and Jack Ziegler, who retired from the day-to-day two years ago but still serves as chairman of the board.
Harold talks of retirement sooner vs. later; Bill and John constitute the third generation.
While the company’s employment nearly tripled in 20 years, the Zieglers didn’t worry about expanding their management team proportionately.
Harold , who’s been president since 1978, found himself performing tasks that someone else could have-should have-handled. Ordering license plates for the company’s 120 trucks is important, but it doesn’t require the expertise of the No. 1 person. Only three years ago, he finally delegated the task to an assistant.
“That’s the stuff that’s hard to get away from,” Harold says. “You’ve just always done it.”
John says the family finally realized, because of issues like his failure to complete a store budget, that it was time to expand the management team. “We were too busy,” John says. “We couldn’t get everything done.”
Four key middle managers were promoted from within, covering retail, commercial, retread and accounting.
“Some of the things we let go of were the fun things,” Harold says. “[I] like to sell. I never liked the paperwork. The office [work] just isn’t fun. The selling is still in my system.”
Along with responsibility, the family had to give the new managers authority, too-a difficult step in a company where every piece of paper historically had a Ziegler’s signature on it.
“You have to let go,” says Bill. “It’s very easy in a company like this to try to do everything yourself. But we had to give our managers as much as they could handle and let them do it.”
Don’t overmanage your employees
A generation ago, Ziegler Tire had four stores and four brothers. It worked out well from the standpoint of balancing work.
What it also meant, however, is a Ziegler was always within eyeshot of every employee. “There was a lot more micromanaging in years past,” concedes Bill.
Even as the locations began to outnumber the Zieglers, old habits continued; “I used to have my hands in everything,” John says.
The Zieglers today have succeeded at stepping away from day-to-day management of the various stores and departments-but only because they identified it as an issue and made a conscious effort to change.
Top managers sit down with department heads generally once a month and will check in as needed. If the manager needs to improve inventory turns, John might help to develop a plan. Then he backs off, trusting the manager will call if he needs more help.
“At the end of the month, it’s report card time,” John says. “It’s either, ‘Good job,’ or it’s, ‘We need to do more.'”
Customers like details too
Ziegler’s success in the commercial end of the business has resulted, at least in part, from its attention to detail on behalf of those clients.
For example, five years ago the company bought software to help analyze customers’ tire usage and help them make better decisions about tires and retreads.
For example, the service showed one client how he could retread and rotate old tires to the back of his trucks to get as much as 450,000 miles out of one tire.
“We’re helping them be more profitable,” John says. “If he can make more money in his business, then I’ll make more in mine.”
Aim to be a 10 and maybe you’ll be a 7 or 8
“We drop everything for the customer with a problem,” John says. So if a customer walks in with a flat tire and no appointment, he or she will get some level of immediate attention-even if all the racks are full.
“We’ll go right out and say, ‘Let me take that out of the trunk for you.'” The customer will immediately be calmer, John says.
He acknowledges that many deflect the cliche that there are no problems, only opportunities. “I say, damn it, yes, you do have an opportunity-an opportunity to make that person happy. If you take care of them in 15 minutes, you’re a hero.”
That’s where the word of mouth kicks in. “We have people walk in and say, ‘I’ve never been here before, but my neighbor Fred recommended you.’ That’s as good as it gets.
