Bill Strand Part II

Thank you to those of you who responded to the first part of my interview with Bill Strand. As promised in Part I, in this post Bill will share some insight about building goodwill and earning a great reputation.

Q. Bill, let's continue by asking you, what made you (your company) remarkable?
A. Well, in addition to the standard requirements of having a great product, and a great team committed to providing outstanding customer service, we looked at every loss as an opportunity to create a win. Put that in bold...every loss (or mistake) is an opportunity to create a win.
I'll explain...
Although every company in business today would love to win every project, and never make a mistake in production, or need to provide a warranty, that is simply not realistic.

We knew that, try as we might, there would be projects we would not win. In those cases, we would turn that loss into a different type of win through being a gracious loser and not burning any bridges. We would say thank-you for the opportunity to bid, please consider us for future projects, and call us if you need anything. There we many instances when we would be able to supply parts and accessories for projects that were using the competitor's product. We looked at it as an opportunity to show the customer the high level of service we provide and to keep the door open for future projects, not to mention, we earned some profitable sales.

When it came to production and order fulfillment, we always aimed for perfection, but sometimes mistakes were made and the produced product could not be shipped to the customer...perhaps the color or finish was wrong. In those instances, we would take the opportunity to donate the product to charity. There were always groups needing our product and, most often, color or finish was not of any concern to them. When you give good products away, you create goodwill and enhance your reputation.

Our warranty and our fulfillment of that warranty also contributed greatly to our goodwill. We offered the best warranty in the business and did not shy away from accepting claims. If a customer was having trouble with our product, we would fix it. Our warranty was for ten years, but if after twelve years, something went wrong, we would consider the big picture before denying the claim.

Over the years, we provided countless value-added services that we did not charge our customers for. In most of those cases we provided the customer with a "No Charge Invoice", which detailed the goods and/or services we were providing, but instead of showing the price of each item, we would put "N/C". This reminded the customer that we were giving them something that was costing us money, and was tremendously effective for building goodwill.

Overall, our policy was to always deliver more than the customer paid for. In any business, if you aim to do that, an excellent reputation is earned, and your goodwill becomes an invaluable asset.

Well this concludes our interview with Bill Strand. We appreciate Bill taking the time to share his experience with us and all of you. If you have any questions or comments for Bill, please feel free to send them our way or post them.

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