Doing Business the Right Way
Every couple of weeks I field a call from a potential customer with a request I know won’t be right for doing business. That said, I’m wired to help people out, and so I tend to keep the conversation going. Here’s a great example:
The other day, I had this great conversation with a woman in the South who manufactures specialty vehicles. Her company had been commissioned to make a customized golf cart, shaped like a baseball hat, and then ship it to the Pacific Northwest. She didn’t have a way to get the cart into a truck, and didn’t want to use a forklift for fear of damaging the materials.
She wanted to rent the yard ramp for, literally, a couple of hours. I did the math for her: $1,200 for the yard ramp rental fee, with the nearest ramp from one of our depots, which is about $800 away, each way. We agreed that $2,800 was steep.
Still, don’t want to send clients on their way without ideas. So, I started brainstorming with her on the yard ramp loading dilemma. Since the cart only weighed 1,400 pounds, I suggested she hire a handyman to pick up some lumber and custom-build a pallet specifically for this cart. Then have him put a small wood ramp on one side so she can drive it up onto the pallet, secure it, and forklift lift it up to the truck.
And the details: build the pallet in such a way that the golf cart was facing forward, not sideways, so when they got to their destination they could drive it off or have the forklift pull it off the truck. I projected she could get the handyman to do this in an hour, and for about $100.
She was over-the-top excited and appreciative of my idea. I asked her to do me a favor and let me know how it works out…and when it’s time for us to do business, we’ll do business.
At The Yard Ramp Guy, we help the customer develop better ideas, which leads to better relationships.
