Do you have an electric motor vendor or partner? - HECO

If you sit back and think about the relationship that you have with the company that you are doing your electric motor repair/replacement business with, are they really serving you or serving themselves? Do you have a vendor who actually cares about your uptime and reliability of the products that they repair and sell? When meeting new prospective clients, we often hear that our current vendor is “always ready to serve us” or “I can call them 24/7 and they jump through hoops”, all things that a partner can do. It is very seldom that we hear from prospective clients that their last vendor solved an issue that they have had for years or hear them rave about how much money that vendor saved them or increased their uptime and production.

Finding a partner who believes in The Golden Rule is often hard to do. Vendors are easy to find. Vendors haul in donuts weekly, ask if there is anything that they can either pickup or sell you and only want to talk about their kid’s ball game or the last fishing trip. All good things to talk about, but do they also tell you what their shop found wrong with the last motor that came in? Do they provide a report or photos of the failure in that motor? Do they tell you what can be done to make that motor last longer? Are suggestions ever made on a new motor that might last longer for your application? Are predictive services ever offered to increase plant reliability?

Let’s face it, a vendor wants the motor that he is repairing or selling to last long enough to get through the warranty time period. Some even believe that if you fix it too good it will decrease their future business. A partner does everything that they can to solve the issue and make that motor last as long as possible and go on to solve the next problem. A partner asks questions, investigates the problem, dives in and solves the issue. True partners do everything that they can to increase uptime and save you money.

When you think about your motor vendor do you think in numbers of how many motors you sent them last year or how much money that you spent with them or do you have a partner? A partner comes in and talks about how many less motors were repaired last year and how much money they saved you.

Since our inception in 1959 our founder has used the philosophy of repairing it better than anyone else, solve the issue and then go on to the next issue and treat our partners in a manner that we would want to be treated. This philosophy has been passed down through the generations and on to all of our employees. A recent example of this is we recently received a purchase order for an $80,000 motor. By partnering with this company, we knew their usage and spare inventory. We knew that they did not need this motor. A call was made and we explained why they did not need this motor and the motor was not purchased. This is the difference between a vendor and a partner and takes us back to The Golden Rule.

Author: Bob Bolhuis, Business Development Manager (Motors & Equipment Management) at HECO bbolhuis@hecoinc.com

Posted in Product Sales