Q1 2010 / Audio-guided product development
Frank Scornavacca
President
SGD, Inc.
frank@sgd.com
The most important lesson I’ve learned about dealing with
customers in my 45 years of marketing and sales in the specialty gases field is
to listen when the customer speaks – particularly if the customer is answering
a question.
This is because an effectively phrased question is the most
powerful tool a supplier has to influence and energize the thinking of the
customer. Good questions allow a supplier and its customers to focus on
specific problems.
Many customers don’t always know what they really need. They
know they have a problem, but they don’t know the right piece of equipment that
will solve it. Usually they try the “hit and miss” technique and order what
they think is a possible solution.
They make it easy for a supplier to become just an order
taker. A customer calls and asks for a regulator or other item, and if it’s in
stock the supplier simply pulls it off the shelf and ships it.
It is an easy clean sale, but devoid of real customer
service. Yet, if this is the only way the firm does business, it’s missing out
on a lot of opportunities.
Specialty gas vs. the consumer market
The specialty gas equipment market is not the same as
consumer products. In the consumer products arena, a seller can create a
product for which there is no real need, then create a market for it using
promotion and advertising techniques to succeed. On the other hand, in the
specialty gas equipment market, new products must actually serve a useful
purpose.
Listening is the major tool of marketing in the specialty
gas field. At SGD, unless the item ordered is standard, we rarely hang up the
phone without asking a few questions. We often learn that the original order
isn’t what the customer really needs to solve the problem.
Yes, this is a time consuming process, but in the long run
it is an investment that brings in a lot of future business and leads to
becoming a customer’s “supplier of choice.”
One thing leads to another
Asking the right questions and listening carefully to the
answers can also lead to creating a whole new product or service for a customer
– one that might be needed by others in the industry with similar problems.
Remember, if a firm continues to modify its products and services it also
continues to expand its base of potential users. In our experience over the
years, this practice has led to several very successful new products now
included in our catalog.
Some examples of our success using this technique include a Telemetry
Unit that will have broad applications, the Low Gas Pressure Alarm and the Whisper
Valve. The following are some case histories that illustrate their development.
Case History I: the Telemetry Unit
A distributor called and wanted to know if we could provide
a telemetry device that would work on bulk cryogenic liquid tanks used to
optimize product delivery.
Many distributors own their own bulk tanks and contract for
gas supply from one of the majors. Currently, distributors must use a telemetry
device provided by the supplier of the bulk gas and pay a rental fee for the
unit as long as it is in service. Besides being costly, this arrangement ties
the distributor’s customer to its current bulk gas supplier making it difficult
to change suppliers should that become necessary for business reasons. Many
distributors would therefore prefer to own the telemetry unit, provide the same
service, and collect its own rental fee.
Our team decided we could modify some of the programming
that went into our Auto-Logic and Ultra-Logic electronic changeover units to
develop a device with all the features necessary to replace the unit the
distributor currently used. The most notable features included the following:
- It operated with any device that provides a 0-5 VDC, 0-10VDC, 1-5VDC, or 4-20mA signal.
- It communicated via phone line and ethernet.
- It came with adjustable alarm points.
- It allowed data logging of system information.
Case History II: The Low Gas Pressure Alarm
A distributor salesman called asking for an alarm designed
for use in conjunction with shielding gases used in welding stainless steel gas
lines in hospitals. He said that it was required to conform to a new NFPA
regulation: NFPA99 2002 paragraph 5.1.10.5.5 that mandates the continuous
monitoring of purge gas while welding or brazing gas lines.
After careful questioning our team came up with our first
alarm model (Figure 1) powered by 110 VAC. While this Low Gas Pressure Alarm
was developed to adhere to a specific NFPA regulation, its use has now extended
to include any application where a decrease in gas pressure could be
detrimental to the operation. As word spread, we soon received requests to
develop a battery operated unit further expanding the product’s applications.
We soon recognized that others could use this unit and
publicized it. Some of our medical and laboratory customers said that it looked
“too industrial.” This led to a redesign producing a more aesthetic unit (Figure
2).
The Low Gas Pressure Alarms have both audible and visual
alarms and are now available in brass or stainless steel models with a wide range of alarm pressure
settings. The most popular model comes standard with the appropriate CGA
connection for easy installation between an existing cylinder and a regulator,
or can be provided with pipe threads or compression fittings for permanent
installation into a gas supply system.
Case History III: The Whisper Valve
Another example of a new product generated by our problem solving system is the Whisper Valve (Figure 3).
It originated when an excited distributor salesman was about
to lose a good customer and asked for our help.
It seems one of his customer’s technicians, while carrying a
tray of finely machined parts, walked past a dewar of liquid argon when the
safety on the dewar let go. She jumped out of her shoes, the tray went up in
the air, and $10,000 worth of parts were damaged and lost. The customer was
very upset and was considering switching suppliers.
We explained that even if the customer switched suppliers the problem would not go away. The rep said the customer did not understand. All they wanted was a solution and was starting to think a new supplier could provide it.
The result was that our team devised the Whisper Valve which
the customer installed and has used to this day.
When we developed the first Whisper Valve to help the
distributor salesman keep his customer, it was for dewars having 230 psig
safety devices. But once the word was out we had requests for valves for 350
and 500 psig safeties. Later, we were requested to develop one for 22 psig
safeties. The Whisper Valve is easily installed on the vent valve of any
cryogenic container and silently relieves the container pressure slightly below
the normally installed relief valve.
However, the Whisper Valve story didn’t end with one
customer. Many users of gas in cryogenic containers complain to their suppliers
that the loud activation noise scares employees and causes work disruptions
resulting in damaged product and lost time, or at least the significant losses
of product. The Whisper Valve reduces loses to about two-cubic-feet-per-hour.
In another event, the chemistry department at a university
stored its liquid nitrogen containers in the hallway outside various laboratories.
A new student entered the building when a safety on one of the containers
opened. The resultant noise sounded like a bomb when it went off and he called
the local bomb squad.
The building had to be evacuated and thoroughly searched
before any further activity could take place in the building and the downtime
proved costly to the university administration. Whisper Valves were eventually
ordered for all the cryogenic containers on campus eliminating the risk of a
re-occurrence.
Effective listening is
the big lesson
All these products, like many others in our own catalog,
could not have been developed and marketed if we had acted strictly as order
takers and had not asked key questions regarding the potential use of the
product ordered – or the problem they needed to solve.
