Free, Perfect, and Now Connecting to the Three Insatiable Customer Demands: A CEO's True Story
Why would a highly successful, profitable distributor with 37 warehouses, and over 600 sales people totally change its approach to the market, restructure its entire focus and rework its operating systems?
Because they realized what desires customers have in common. They want things Free, Perfect, and Now. But, no one can live by giving away products or services to meet these desires. The challenge is to come as close to meeting them as possible, while making a profit. The way Marshall Industries did this was to totally reinvent itself, and the lessons learned by Marshall are well explained in this book.
Marshall changed because they asked how they were going to compete and thrive in a world that seemed to be eliminating distribution. They asked how they were going to compete in a world of mass customization, shrinking margins and global competition.
They recognized that survival depended on transforming into an organization which responds faster, adds value to the process and becomes an invaluable part of their customers' supply chain. As a result, they grew from $500 million sales to over $1.7 billion in six years.
Robert Rodin gives a detailed explanation, and his perspectives, on the changes they made and the results that followed. He goes through the internal changes, the philosophical evolution in the company, the cultural development and his fanatical dedication to involving everyone in the company in the change process.
He took the sales people off commission, reasoning that their focus on dollars and quotas did not align with their customers' needs for service, information and support. He moved IT people into the operating areas to better integrate and align the response within the company with the customers' needs. He positioned the company as an integral part of their customers' planning, design and support systems.
At the end of each chapter, he has included some notes of the practical application of the information just explained. There are some valuable pointers in each of these sections. With the promise of ever-faster changes, the philosophies espoused by Rodin are essential reading for anyone who wants to keep ahead of the competition.
For more information or to order your copy of Free, Perfect, and Now from Amazon.com, click on the title.
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