VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [68]
In the end, after the job was offered, Garth still was not sure what to do. He could not make up his mind. He liked Amy and had worked with her for years. But he knew that she was untried. He was not sure how well she would measure up as Hi-T’s president. Yet that factor was small compared to Hi-T’s fluttering and flagging reputation in the marketplace.
Ultimately, it was Fanny who swayed him to accept. Most of her family lived in Roanoke, Virginia, which was relatively a stone’s throw from Highboro compared to the transcontinental trek from and back to Los Angeles – and with three young kids, two still in diapers. When Garth expressed his doubts to her one evening about a future with Hi-T, Fanny made it abundantly clear to him that this concern was minor. So Garth, wishing to avoid a quest for a fourth wife, called Amy the next morning and accepted the position.
Garth had in fact been born in Roanoke, which was how he and Fanny had first struck up a conversation in an airport terminal waiting for a plane to L.A. But he had spent most of his life on the West Coast and had become completely Californian. He looked it as well. Golden tan. Sandy brown hair with highlights. The body of a surfer, though a few pounds heavier due to age and fine living. A craggy, yet handsome face. Perfect white teeth. Many of the younger women in the Highboro offices were abuzz when Garth arrived. Amy, though she would not deny that he was an attractive man, had far more appreciation for his track record of delivering respectable gains in sales revenue over the years.
His approach to selling focused on simplicity. It relied upon a rather small number of essential tenets, and Garth was fond of rattling these off whenever he needed to sound philosophical.
“Customers always want just a few basic things,” as he said to Amy when they met in her office at two o’clock that afternoon. “Customers always want a lower price. They always want perfection not just in the product itself, but in all the details – delivery, packaging, and so on. They want the salesperson to manage all those details and guarantee they’ll be handled for them. They want to know the salesperson, and know that this person is dependable, but they don’t want to know you too well. And they want the buying experience to be efficient, but they also want it to be a little bit entertaining – you know, they want dealing with you to be enjoyable, fun. It’s really not that complicated. And it is the job of the salesperson to facilitate those few, basic things.”
Amy was nodding as he went on. She certainly did not disagree with what he was saying.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “this company is making it harder, not easier for our salespeople to do their jobs.”
Amy frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“I need to level with you, Amy.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Ever since Winner took us over, some things have not gotten any better, and some things have gotten worse.”
“Such as?”
He used his fingers as if to enumerate and emphasize his points, and his nails were immaculate.
“First, our prices,” Garth said. “They’ve always been a bit high, and that hasn’t changed. Second, our lead times have never been very good, and if anything they seem to be getting longer, not shorter. And third, whatever is going on at Oakton is losing us business. I know of two accounts that have completely gone away because Oakton has been screwing up – and I would say there are at least half a dozen others just on the West Coast that are starting to look around.”
“I just came from Oakton,” said Amy. “They’re doing a major implementation of Lean Six Sigma out there, and I firmly believe that LSS is going to resolve all your execution issues.”
“How soon?”
“A few more months and you should start to see a noticeable improvement – and it’s going to be continuous improvement. Quality and everything else