Unreasonable?
When I was working for American President Lines in Atlanta, Georgia in the late 80's I worked with a good friend of mine, Bob Sappio. Bob was district sales manager, and I was district Operations manager.
Bob was trying to close a very big retail account, looking to take the business from our biggest competitor. Bob had identified what was at that time a very innovative way to create a pricing mechanism that would work for this customer. Without going into a lot of details, Bob came up with a mechanism whereby instead of offering the customer a Savannah Bill of Lading, we would offer them a Pooler, Georgia Bill of Lading. Pooler was a suburb of Savannah.
So Bob told me to find a container yard in Pooler that could hold 100 40' ocean containers. Problem was, Pooler was a very small town, with no container yards. Now many years later, when we still laugh about this story, the lore has grown and I talk about Pooler being a town with one dirt road and one traffic light. It wasn't that bad but it might as well have been. After two trips to Pooler i kept telling Bob the same thing. There is no facility we can use as a secure container yard for 100 containers of retail product.
But Bob wouldn't take no for an answer , so out I went again. And i found a mechanic who had a back lot; and we paid to fence that lot and place a guard there. And we taught the guard how to check drivers in and out of the yard.
And we won the business.
At the time, I thought Bob was totally unreasonable. That he needed to find another solution. But truth is, if we don't stretch ourselves to go that extra mile; if we allow ourselves to say no too soon. Then we leave opportunities on the table.
Bob was trying to close a very big retail account, looking to take the business from our biggest competitor. Bob had identified what was at that time a very innovative way to create a pricing mechanism that would work for this customer. Without going into a lot of details, Bob came up with a mechanism whereby instead of offering the customer a Savannah Bill of Lading, we would offer them a Pooler, Georgia Bill of Lading. Pooler was a suburb of Savannah.
So Bob told me to find a container yard in Pooler that could hold 100 40' ocean containers. Problem was, Pooler was a very small town, with no container yards. Now many years later, when we still laugh about this story, the lore has grown and I talk about Pooler being a town with one dirt road and one traffic light. It wasn't that bad but it might as well have been. After two trips to Pooler i kept telling Bob the same thing. There is no facility we can use as a secure container yard for 100 containers of retail product.
But Bob wouldn't take no for an answer , so out I went again. And i found a mechanic who had a back lot; and we paid to fence that lot and place a guard there. And we taught the guard how to check drivers in and out of the yard.
And we won the business.
At the time, I thought Bob was totally unreasonable. That he needed to find another solution. But truth is, if we don't stretch ourselves to go that extra mile; if we allow ourselves to say no too soon. Then we leave opportunities on the table.
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