Lasting Relationships

So, I was asked by Marketing to write a blog. I had to google “what is a blog?” to know what to do! Well here we go…

I have worked at Hotstart for 40 years. I started in production working in many departments building our engine heaters before moving into Customer Service. I’ve answered a lot of calls over the years, letting me connect with the folks that use our product every day. 

Building our heaters meant I had in-depth knowledge that was valuable in my customer service role when I advanced in the company.

In the last 25 years, I’ve been working in Outside Sales in our Generator Market. This role meant I could also travel and meet the people I’d been talking to on the phone. It wasn’t always easy. I’ve actually talked to some very difficult people on the phone initially and then have become great friends with them when I’ve gone and visited. Good friends, beer drinking friends! Once they get to know you, they trust you. When they trust you’ll take care of them, it all comes together.

Tradeshows allowed for me to see customers on an annual basis. If I couldn't make it out during the year, we knew we could reunite on the show floor and catch up.

As convenient as calls or email can be, you can’t always know everything that is going on during a call. While on a service trip to Pennsylvania, I joined a tech at a water treatment plant that kept having heaters fail. They were on their 3rd or 4th unit by then. The installation looked good, so we pulled the heater apart and found debris that we cleaned out. I asked the tech to get coolant from his truck and saw he was using a high silicate antifreeze. If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have necessarily known to ask about it. We switched to the proper antifreeze for the engine, flushed the system, got everything back installed and they haven’t had an issue since.

Another customer had an installation that wasn’t ideal. I could see from the setup that frost plug adaptors could help. We got some ordered and shipped overnight. The next day, I helped to install them and it worked a lot better with just a little fix.

There are also times when I’ve helped the customer just by chance. I had a scheduled visit with a buyer of an engine packager. Pulling into the parking lot, I saw 7 generators waiting to be shipped. I checked them out and noticed the heater outlet hose was routed up and around the top of the engine. I went in and asked the manager to come out and see how the routing would have been bad if they sent them out as is. They pulled all the plastic off the generators, rerouted the hoses, sealed them back up and were able to still ship them that day. If they had sent them out without a change, it would have been an issue for the end users. Even though I was there to see the buyer, I was also able to educate the guys that were installing the heaters. This helped them prevent future issues/failures with other installs cause they learned a better way to do it.

Being able to help customers in the moment is really satisfying. While visiting another customer, I saw they were rebuilding a generator that had a competitor’s heater on it. I asked if they were replacing the heaters and they said they were looking to get one from the OEM. I let them know we make direct replacements if they were interested. They were going to pay $799 from the OEM. They asked me to quote ours, so I went to the car, called Spokane to get pricing, came back with a quote of $300 for an in-stock heater - they ordered right on the spot. He saved both time and money on that project.  

For a time there, we had 7-8 people traveling regularly to visit customer across different markets. When I would be in the office talking with customers, I would let them know I would stop by the next time I was their area. People were always welcoming even if I hadn’t been there in a while. Nobody wants to meet with a sales guy, but people always made time for me because of the relationships we built.

The friendships I've made over the years has been one of the best parts of working at Hotstart!

There’s no replacement for visiting customers face to face. Covid totally changed the way people did business so I hope we can get back to seeing people in-person. There’s so much out there you can learn just from seeing what they are doing and figuring out how to help them be even better.