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Where Does It Hurt?

There's an old lesson from customers: "Don't sell me. Help me and I'll buy."

IBT Fluid Power's Gary Foerschler takes that idea several steps farther.

"We don't like to talk to our customers and prospects about products and prices." Foerschler reflects, "until we've clearly identified their situations, their needs, their challenges, their problems and their opportunities. When we do this, we are able to concentrate our knowledge of fluid power - and bring a problem-solving mentality to the relationship."

Problems, as Foerschler sees them, are merely situations that customers are not using to their utmost advantage. They may be paying too much for too little capacity. They may not be employing the best features of a piece of equipment, component or system. They may be over-engineered, under-engineered, improperly engineered - or just failing to take advantage of their own company's strengths.

"We have developed and honed a technique for fact finding and relationship building," Foerschler says. "We start by getting to know the customer: who they are and what they need - and then showing them solutions, not just hardware. Our organization has more than 50 years of history in fluid power - with our collective experience adding up to more than 200 years. We have earned our stripes and learned our trade."

Foerschler has recently proved his point with a food processing equipment manufacturer. The company was buying two disparate fluid power systems for two unrelated products. The specifications in place predated the engineers (two different departments) but the specific requirements were not that dissimilar.

"We started out be talking to purchasing. They recognized the inherent problems in sourcing two different sets of equipment - and suspected that a consensus specification would serve the applications equally well - yet save the company time and inventory investment over all.

"Then we spent time with each engineering group. On the face of it, the fluid components they were buying were small subsystems to large and complex finished products. They were using inherited plans and had not found it necessary to focus on the fluid issues prior to purchasing having mandating the discussion.

"The applications were different. The specifications were different. At first look, it might seem that two totally different systems - as they were currently procuring - provided the best answer to this whole situation. But, that's where our experience - and our problem-solving model - paid off.

"We kept asking questions about what the equipment was supposed to do. We helped them realize that they were living with inherited problems that caused maintenance difficulties, repair delays, inherent inefficiencies and added problems to the end users' lives.

"Pretty soon, it was clear to both sets of engineers, to purchasing and to us that a single set of specifications would work. And, the new answer didn't work as well as the old answer. It worked better - far better, in fact."

Foerschler's new approach created a solution that improved the effectiveness of the fluid power component in both applications. The engineers were happy because their underlying problems were solved by the IBT Fluid experts.

Purchasing was more than pleased because the idea of using one set of components for two applications reduced the time and money that the company had to invest in purchasing, receiving, storing, monitoring and maintaining an inventory of sub-assembly components.

End users were bound to be happy with the trouble-free systems that the new engineering would deliver, eliminating nagging problems that had existed for some time.

And, of course, Foerschler and Company at IBT were more than satisfied with the outcome. They had solved a buyer's problems, made a friend and most important of all - had created a long term customer relationship based on bringing a creative and effective solution to a problem in a way that was good for all concerned.

"This is just an example," Foerschler allows, "of how we have always tried to go about helping our customers. We train our people in the approach and we constantly reinforce the methodology by reviewing the positive results we generally get with this technique.

"From the customers' point of view, we become someone who is always there to help them. And, from our own enlightened self interest, we become the supplier who offers more than just a bunch of the same-old same-old. It works for us and it works for our customers."

If you want to get help solving fluid power application problems - or just hear more about how IBT can help you, let us know.




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