Boss Life (31 page)

Suddenly, he's sweating, but he keeps smiling and delivers his answer with surprising confidence. “Oh, you know how it is when you're young, you can make mistakes and fall in with the wrong people.”

“So you were in jail?” He hesitates, then admits that he was. “What for?” I'm not sure I'm legally allowed to ask this question, but I don't want to hire someone with a conviction for a violent crime. “Listen, I just want you to tell me the truth. I suspected that you might have done some time. If I weren't interested in giving you a chance, I wouldn't have called you for the interview. Your minister had nice things to say about you. So tell me what happened.” He relaxes a bit. He and some friends robbed a local drug dealer. Nobody got hurt, but they got caught. He's been trying to stay straight for the past two years. If I give him a chance, he'll make sure I'm glad I did. I do want to hire him. He showed up on time and he's made a great impression with his confident demeanor. Will meets with him and confirms my impressions. “I'm OK with it if you want to give him a try.” I offer Nathan twelve dollars an hour, full time, benefits. He's delighted. He'll start on Monday. I watch him go through the door, walking tall, a man with a new job. A good day for everyone. It's one of the best things I get to do.

—

WE BOOKED ONE MORE SALE
on Thursday for $15,419. Total for the month: $187,909 with a week to go. On Monday, I rush through the good numbers: $30,781 in sales last week, for a monthly total of $187,909. We took in $7,880 more cash than we spent. And we received twenty-three inquiries, tying our best inquiry week, also this month. Then I introduce Nathan. “I'd like to introduce our new helper, Nathan Johnson. He'll be doing what Jésus was doing, keeping the place clean and helping bring in materials.”

I've been thinking about something the Vistage speaker said about on-boarding a new employee: you want to tell them how the company works and explain how they fit in. Fill their mind with your message before they come to their own conclusions. I ask Bob Foote to give me a minute. We go into my private office.

“So you are going to be in charge of Nathan Johnson minute-by-minute. Will spoke to him last week at the interview and he thinks that he's OK. But he's going to let you take charge of him. Here's what I want you to do. Don't just hand him a broom and walk away. I want you to tell him why it's important that we have a helper. That keeping the shop clean makes the other guys more efficient; that they rely on him to do a good job; that his trips to the loading dock for materials are essential for feeding the factory; that everyone will respect what he does if he does it well. And that he can ask you any questions about how it's going, and that he's free to ask me questions as well. Can you do that?” Bob says he certainly can; he'll have that chat right away. Terrific.

Out on the shop floor, Will Krieger is heaving a 5-by-10-foot sheet of melamine onto the CNC machine. It weighs about a hundred and forty pounds, but he manages to shift it onto the machine bed. “Is this Brand Advantage?” He confirms that it is. “How long to cut all of them?” He tells me that they will be done by midday tomorrow. “When will the legs be here?” They are shipping today, if I sent them a check last week. I did. We sold the Brand Advantage job for $40,266, but the leg sets are costing me $15,574. Subtract as well the sheets, crating, and shipping, and the balance is not adding nearly as much to the bottom line as I would like.

—

WEDNESDAY MORNING
is our second monthly company meeting at Bob Waks's office. We report that we've been having a decent month using his new methods and spend the rest of the time going over the Sandler way of addressing our problems with customers. Sometimes that advice makes sense, and sometimes it doesn't seem to fit very well. We discuss some instances where we think the method won't work. To my surprise, Bob accepts our judgment. He tells us, “Every company lives in a different world, and I want to understand it. We need to be flexible to be effective. It's OK to adapt the training to what's happening at the moment.” That's a reassuring message.

After an hour, Bob and I have our private counseling session. His first question: “What did you do about the commissions?” I tell him that at the beginning of the month I was worried about cash and did nothing. But since things are going a lot better, I paid them out in yesterday's payroll. “You gave them everything you owed them?” Uh, no. Just what they racked up since the last payroll. “And how did they react?” Happy, as you might expect. They've both been more cheerful over the past couple weeks. I think that just making sales has been the most important factor. They don't feel like they're failing at their job anymore, and we're getting close to making our target for the first time in six months. Maybe they can see that I'm feeling better, too, although we're still behind on cash. Sure, I've changed our advertising and our sales methods, but what if I'm doing something else that's causing another problem? I blundered into the AdWords situation without realizing what would happen. How can I know that whatever I do next won't cause bigger problems?

“You can never know, unless you never change anything. And then a competitor will show up and eat your lunch.” Bob's right. I can't avoid taking risks, even if they don't always work out.

—

ON THURSDAY
, Nancy and I try something daring: we take Henry to New York City. Our plan is to take him to Times Square and, if that goes well, have lunch. On arrival he starts crying, but as we maneuver him through the crowds, he starts grooving on the energy of the city. We have a quick meal at a diner, and on the way back, Nancy and I marvel that we all had fun. It was a joy to see him in Times Square, dancing around as he looked at all the lights. It's easy to focus on his bad moments, harder to remember that most of the time he's good.

I'm back at the shop on Friday morning, Henry in tow. I can see Bob Foote and Nathan Johnson working on the crates for Brand Advantage. The tables are complete. Bob tells me that they'll be on the dock by four p.m. He hopes they get picked up today. Good. Monica has been asking us every day to confirm the ship date. In the sales office, Nick says the phone's been ringing off the hook and he closed a deal yesterday worth $12,698. That gets us to $200,607 for the month. We've hit our target for the first time since February. He's done a great job implementing the new methods and his monthly sales total shows it—six sales, totaling $115,465, more than half of our total for August. I sold three jobs, worth $50,340. Dan was even worse. He closed just two, worth $34,802.

Should I put up with his performance anymore? I'm supposed to be holding my salespeople accountable. On the other hand, we've hit our target and I wasn't such a hot performer, either. I can't claim that the new methods are an inevitable path to success if I didn't match Nick's results. I decide to give Dan more time.

D
ATE
: S
UNDAY
, S
EPTEMBER 2
,
2012

B
ANK BALANCE
:
$76
,
626
.
16

C
ASH RELATIVE TO START OF YEAR
(“N
ET
C
ASH
”): -
$60
,
528
.
16

N
EW
-
CONTRACT VALUE
,
YEAR
-
TO
-
DATE
:
$1
,
211
,
222

On Sunday, I drive Henry back to his school. When we get there, I talk with Annie, his housemaster, who asks me whether I'm looking for a helper. “We haff a verker here,” she says in her Finnish accent, “who is fferrry interested in finding a chob.” She sings the praises of this young man, Kristian Scheld. I listen politely. “He sounds good, but I hired someone last week. Tell Kristian to send me a résumé, but I don't promise anything.” Let's see if he can follow this instruction. It would be good to have a possible backup for Nathan Johnson.

I head back home and collapse. Briefly. Tomorrow I'll be driving to see a potential client in Newport News, Virginia. I've subjected him to all my new tricks, and he's very enthusiastic about moving forward. But he's crystal clear about what he wants next: for me to show up in his office, so he can see whether I'm for real. This could be a hundred thousand dollars' worth of work, so I agree. Six hundred and twenty-four miles of horrendous traffic, and a night in a cheap motel. That's my Labor Day break.

When I arrive at work on Wednesday, the crates for Brand Advantage are on the loading dock. I promised that they'd ship last Friday. I track down Bob Foote and demand an explanation. He's apologetic. “They didn't get them on Friday, and the truck they sent yesterday was too small, so the driver left a note saying he'd be back tomorrow.” Fortunately for him, the crates go out by day's end. Brand Advantage owes me $22,448 on the fifth day after delivery. I really need that money. I have $76,626 in the bank. It's not a payroll week, but I need to pay my rent, the electric bill, and some vendor charges, more than $28,000. And payroll next Tuesday will be about $25,000. My working capital could drop below $30,000—that's the edge of failure.

Dan and Nick are working through the inquiries from August. We got more calls last month than we've ever received before—an average of twenty-one a week, up from 16.8 in July and 11.8 in June. Some were from repeat customers, some from Eurofurn. Did my AdWords adjustment work? Maybe. I need more time before I'm sure.

Other August numbers aren't so hot. We had a very mediocre build total, just $144,926. The ship total was worse: $102,881. That's not surprising, considering the terrible sales in June. There just wasn't enough work for the shop crew. They all showed up, though, and I paid them. I also spent a lot of money on materials for the orders that we'll build in September. My cash outlays for August total $197,926. By accounting rules, subtracting my ship total from my spending, I've lost $95,045. My cash flow isn't quite that bad. I went into August with $82,941 and exited with $76,626: a net outflow of $6,315.

There's nothing to do but keep going. Dan, Nick, and I put our heads down and work our prospects. Yesterday, the day after the holiday weekend, was quiet—just one call—but five potential customers call on Wednesday. And we make our first sale of the month. A returning customer orders a custom countertop to go with his table, for $3,422.

The next morning, the three of us complete our sales training. The final lesson: what to do when an active client suddenly stops answering our calls. We used to just give up and move on, but Bob has a better idea.

“Give them the
‘No
.' Make them say they are done with you. It's easy to do: just give them an ultimatum. Send an e-mail, or leave a message, saying that it appears that you, the salesperson, have been unable to come up with a way to move forward. You apologize for this, and then say that you intend to close the file and move on. Just say that, nothing more. If the client wasn't finished, if they were just toying with you, then they'll get right back to you. Believe me, this will happen. And if they are truly done and you hear nothing, then you can strike them off your list and move on to greener pastures.”

Bob suggests another useful tactic. “Suppose you're afraid that your client is thinking about going to a competitor, or you're worried they are going to take your ideas and give them to someone else. Or anything, really, that you think might go wrong. Here's how you deal with it in a non-threatening way. The technique is called ‘My Biggest Fear.' You ask the question like this: ‘You know, Mr. Client, my biggest fear is that you are going to . . .'” Bob asks us for a list of ways that a deal can go wrong and starts listing our answers. So many fears: the client might give this job to someone else; might not be able to find enough money for the job; might recommend someone else to the decision makers; and on and on. Bob continues, “Whatever your fear is, that's what you confess to the client. In a humble way. You aren't trying to bully them into anything. You are going the other way, making yourself look pathetic. If they are human beings, they're going to feel some sympathy for you, and you'll get the difficult issue out in the open so that you can address it.” Brilliant. I can't wait to give it a try.

After class, I shake Bob's hand. “You've been great. All this has been very, very useful.” Bob smiles. He's heard this before. But I know, from my own encounters with my many satisfied customers, that it never gets old.

The lectures are over, but we'll continue to work with Bob until June of next year. I'll see him twice a month: a one-on-one session, to analyze my performance as sales manager; and a group session with Dan, Nick, and Emma. We'll all review how the sales process is going and get Bob's advice. Each session will cost me more than twelve hundred dollars, but I'm confident that I will get my money's worth. That good feeling is reinforced the following day. I close a deal worth $14,326. Dan tops me with one worth $21,039. Nick hasn't sold anything, but he assures me he's got some good ones coming in. We've booked $38,787 in a week shortened by a holiday, and there's still half a day left. Not bad.

My happy mood is erased by a phone call from Monica at Brand Advantage. She's very upset. The shipment has arrived. Five of the thirty tables are damaged, the tops ripped off in transit. I'd love to slam down the phone and cry, but that won't help anyone. So I ask her to send photos and assure her that we will do everything we can to fix them as soon as we can. “I'll have someone at your facility on Monday. We're going to take care of this.”

Monica doesn't sound reassured. The tables are supposed to get their branding—I still don't know what this means—on Monday, in time for the first event next Friday. I tell Will Krieger and Bob Foote what happened. Bob looks especially down. I ask him: “Didn't you make supports for the tops like we did the first time?” He confesses that they did for two of the crates, but not the last one, because they were rushing to get them onto the loading dock. I'd like to kill him, but that won't do any good.

He offers to be the one to go to Atlanta. Damn straight, I'm thinking. The trip is going to be awful: early-morning flight, then hard work all day, a cheap motel, and another dawn flight. The three of us consider how we can make the tops stronger. We decide to screw threaded metal inserts into the existing bolt holes to reinforce them, and to also glue the tops to the bases with auto-body adhesive. I book the flights for Bob, then head home for the weekend.

On Sunday morning—surprise!—a message from Shiva in Dubai:

We would like to have your revised proposal on the executive meeting table as we have not yet finalized this issue
.
Please find attached CAD drawing for the sixth floor showing meeting table for 38 people
.

Having heard nothing from her since I sent my last proposal in July, I've assumed they chose someone else. Apparently not. Now what should I do? If this job comes back to life, I should see whether our new sales tricks work on a foreign customer.

The new design she has sent is strange: the top of the table, an open square, will have a continuous strip running around the inside edge for the power/data hatches. Eighteen of those will be positioned at even intervals, with longer pieces, the same width as the hatches, filling in the spaces between them. They want both the hatches and the filler strips to be removable, and they want two sets, one in ebonized oak to match the rest of the table and the other wrapped in gray leather.

This makes no sense. Why not choose one or the other and be done with it? And important information is still missing. I don't have a target budget, or a time frame. Shiva hasn't even said when she wants us to submit our proposal. I could just e-mail her these questions, but that would go counter to our new sales methods. So I reply by asking her for a phone conversation to discuss the project.

The Monday meeting on the tenth is short. We received $8,484 more than we spent and now have $85,110 on hand. The rent bill didn't arrive until Friday, so we'll be paying that tomorrow along with payroll and the AdWords credit card. And a bunch of other vendor bills. We'll be sending out more than $60,000. Brand Advantage owes me $22,448, so it's critical that we get the tables fixed today.

Bob calls before lunch. “It's pretty bad,” he reports. The bolts on the five tops in the skimpy crate have ripped right out. “I'm going to put in the inserts and glue them like we discussed. I think it would be smart to do it to all the tables while I'm at it.” I tell him to go ahead.

I spend the rest of the day perfecting my home-brewed CRM system. We've been using it since August, and it's starting to look good. Dan and Nick helped me decide what information we should be recording for each client and the best way to organize all that in FileMaker. Now I can see the promising inquiries and who is in charge of them, and which salesman has a better close rate.

But only if they use it. As I've been working on FileMaker, we've debated whether gathering more information is worth the additional work to record it. Keep in mind that a lot of the inquiries do not end up as sales. It's discouraging to do a lot of clerical work to track inquiries that go nowhere. I wish data could be recorded without any effort on our part, but that's simply not possible. In the end, I make decisions that the two of them can accept about what we will record and what we won't. I'm glad they aren't fighting it. It should help them process more inquiries. And it's the information I need to hold them accountable.

Bob returns from Atlanta on Wednesday. He worked until three a.m. on Tuesday to complete the fixes. And he can finally tell me what the branding is all about. It turns out it's the kind of logo decal that you see on trucks and buses, applied to the tops of the tables. They'll change the branding for each event.

I don't know why Monica and Ginny couldn't convey any of this to us. We could have put the bolts all the way through the tabletops if we'd known they would be covered by the branding. That would have been very strong. I need to know whether they'll pay me, so I ask Bob, “Were they happy when you left?” He doesn't know. All the Brand Advantage people went home hours before he finished.

I thank him for his efforts. He's done a great job in a difficult situation. What motivated him? Did he do it for himself, or for the good of the company? His future is tied to the company's success, but not as closely as mine. He can walk away if we go broke. I'll be wrapped in tentacles of debt.

On Thursday, I finally hear back from Shiva. She won't commit to a phone call, so I send her my questions: When do they need the table, is there a target budget, and when do they need the proposal? Again, I've missed her working day and won't hear from her until tomorrow at the earliest.

—

EACH MORNING THIS WEEK
, I've walked through the shop. Even with our new helper, it looks like it always has: dust on every surface, random offcuts around each machine. Surrounding the workbenches, too many pieces of interesting wood that the guys can't bear to throw away. Woodworkers are packrats, and the shop looks like a giant nest.

Is it too early to see the effect of replacing Steve Maturin? Certainly the August build total was not impressive, but there's a good reason for that—not enough jobs to work on. But now we've had a solid month of sales, and the first week of September has been pretty good, too. When can I expect Will Krieger to transform the shop into something much better? I'm trying to damp my rising impatience.

On Thursday afternoon, the question suddenly rearranges itself into a much better one: what am
I
going to do to help Will change things? I realize I've fallen into the same pattern of behavior that was such a failure with Steve Maturin: letting the shop manager run the place however he wants, without any input from me. I have great faith in Will's abilities. But he's never managed anyone. And this issue is much more complex. He'll need my help.

It's really a problem of culture. The shop has become a mirror of Steve Maturin's personality: all work, no communication. Every bench hand is left to his own devices and doesn't have much to do with the other guys. And they receive minimal guidance on the best way to do things. The result: errors and inconsistent results. We always deliver a well-crafted piece to our clients, but it's often after considerable rework. And when the problems are the result of correctible mistakes from the office, nobody on the shop floor takes the time to tell Andy Stahl what needs to be fixed, so his errors reappear over and over.

Our shop culture has its origins in the way I managed my first employees. Back then, I knew nothing about being a boss, but I found myself in that position anyway. How should I act? What kind of employee behavior should I encourage? Never having worked in another woodshop, and knowing nobody who did, my ideas came from books and magazines. They all agreed: the ideal woodworker is a Heroic Solitary Craftsman, who solves every puzzle with some kind of technical magic. A hard worker who uses modern machines when they are convenient, but who reserves his respect for traditional hand skills. My sources said nothing about teamwork. Nothing about managing a group of workers. Nothing about coordinating the efforts of the sales staff with the engineering department with the shop floor, or making shop operations efficient by incorporating technology.