My turn for a rant!!!
It's late, I'm going to go through this rather quickly so please stay with me. I had an existing account that was shared with a Direct Branch. The Direct branch had the majority of the placements, while we had three units in a satellite office. One of those placements was a 135 page per minute production system.
I had been in touch with the manager about the end of lease and had a good relationship with him for eight years.
My guy told me that Direct would also be quoting for a new production system, since they also had a color unit at the same location. I knew my chances to hold the account were slim to none, however I put my best foot forward, submitted a very aggressive proposal 5 months before the end of the term (as did my competitor).
After hearing nothing for quite sometime I followed up with my guy. I was told that Jed in IT is making all of the decisions. My guy had heard nothing and suggested I follow up with Jed. He gave me his contact number and off I went.
I left my first call with a message that we submitted a quote and I need to follow up with him about the end of term obligations for the existing system and to get an idea of where we are at with the new lease. Waited a week, and nothing, placed another call a week later with the same message. Nothing.....no return call. A few days later the same message, of course there was no call back. All in all I placed at least 7 calls to Jed. I got nothing!!!! Typical I thought.
About a month later, I had a dream that I had lost the deal. Lo and behold the next day, I received notification from our service dispatch that he had received a call from "my guy" about removing the system. I thought, that SOB has my number and he couldn't call me? Then I thought that he didn't want to tell me directly because I would ask him "what happened"?
The next day, WTF, I get a call from Jed the IT guy. He's asking me for a copy of the cost per page lease, and looking to see if we can remove the equipment. I stated I would be more than happen to comply, however you need to call the leasing company and schedule that with them. However, I do have a question for you. "Why, did you buy from the other company", I was told it was a price thing. Ok, I can live with that, I then asked, "why did you not return any of my phone calls". The answer, "I'm not obligated to call anyone back". I blew my stack!!!!! We're an existing vendor and we wanted to tell you about the end of the lease obligations and you tell me you're not obligated to return a phone call? He went on to state that he doesn't check his phone because they are all sales calls! However, I do check emails. I thought, you rotten $#%!!!! I called this facility many times and you can't even get a person to pick up the dam phone, let alone find an or ask for an email address.
Thinking about it, you know what, I probably should have asked my guy for his email address also. But who knew that this worker was not obligated to call an existing vendor back.
Moral of the story, they entered into a new contract, because they didn't call me their cost per page lease went into a year roll over with some 2.5 million pages attached! I wish I could be a fly on the wall went that conversation took place that they now have to pay for two production systems for at least a year!!!!! But, I'm thinking they may just have the system forever, because their ineptness will cause them to fail to notify the leasing company when the renewal comes due again!
-=Good Selling=-
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