Learning to say “no”

A job comes through the door. It’s lucrative and definitely portfolio material. Elation!

Then you take a closer look at the blueprint and specs. Deflation. It’s clear to you, based on your knowledge and experience, that the design is simply not going to work. Reality now becomes a buzzkill for what should be an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable morning as you face a difficult choice of either disappointing a customer by result or by disagreement. But there’s a third alternative, and it can be a happy one. It’s all about getting the customer to say “yes” when you say “no.”

There are six basic rules to playing this game and winning. As The Donald says, if it’s done right, everybody wins.

Rule 1: Have an Idea and Pitch It

Never go to a customer and simply say the idea won’t work. First, articulate precisely why the idea won’t work, and second, say what exactly you propose to do to remedy that failing. Once you’re armed with those two critical bits of information, you should formally present it to the client.

Also, a phone call, text, or e-mail doesn’t count as a formal presentation. Be there in person.

Len Severini, owner of Charles Leonard Steel Services, Concord, N.H., recalled a project entailing the installation of a balcony railing for a penthouse at the Hyatt in Portland, Maine. There was just one problem: The engineers had specified a steel mesh railing.

Severini knew right away that a glass rail would be more aesthetic and more practical. To him it was obvious the end user would be less than ecstatic about peering through the tiny interstices of the mesh railing. He also knew that the project cried out for glass.

Severini decided the discussion was too important to handle with a phone call, so he set up a formal meeting with the customer. There is, however, one thing you must do before you can even think about scheduling a presentation with the customer.

That brings us to the next basic rule.

Rule 2: Get Your Ducks in a Row

In Severini’s railing installation, foremost among the customer’s concerns about glass was the cost. Severini knew from experience that the glass would be within the customer’s budget, but because cost can so often be a deal breaker, it called for some serious number crunching to prove that the revised project could be brought in at the same cost, or at the very least a nominally higher one.

“We showed them the numbers,” Severini said, “and from a linear-foot cost standpoint, it wasn’t out of the question, and we knew from past experience what the cost would be, ballpark.”

So while Severini’s customer remained skeptical, armed with facts and figures and visual aids, Severini pressed on with the presentation.

Rule 3: It’s Show Time

The numbers may be the steak, but you have to add some sizzle. That means audio and visual aids and samples.

For Severini, that is what sealed the deal. He brought a model of the glass rail to show what it would look like compared to the steel mesh.

This also has worked well for Garry Kalajian, Ararat Forge, Bradford, N.H. A local man showed him a fireplace poker and asked if he could make a duplicate to send to his son as a housewarming gift. Kalajian eyed the inexpensive, mass-produced poker and knew he could make a better-looking and more durable tool. But it would cost more.

Kalajian walked the customer through the process of mortised joinery and forge welds. The clincher was when he showed him how the manufacturing was going to take place. A quick tour and perusal of Kalajian’s inventory of other fireplace tools, with their immutable joinery and smooth, barely disernible welds, was all it took for the man to eschew a $40 tool for Kalajian’s $100 traditionally forged design.

The visual aid can even be virtual. John Kozlik, estimating manager, Kapco Inc., Grafton, Wis., recalled one such design in the form of a bumper for a tractor trailer.

“They drew it up, and it looked great. But tooling it was going to be a problem,” Kozlik said. Moreover, the customer’s design would have generated a lot of scrap.

As an alternative, Kapco’s designers came up with a variation of the original plans. It involved less welding and scrap and called for the use of a progressive die, which would be more flexible in producing various bumper sizes.

When Kapco first broached the idea of reworking the design, “we could hear some resistance in their voices on the phone. They were thinking they were too far down the road. They had already begun testing,” Kozlik said.

“So we redesigned it on CAD and showed them a screen shot of the 3-D design,” Kozlik added.

The 3-D modeling helped the client change its mind—even though it had already begun testing the original prototype.

Of course, nowadays software can transform a screen shot of a CAD drawing into a showpiece.

“We use CAD as part of a conference call,” said Bob Dwyer, business development manager, Super Steel, Milwaukee.

The fabricator uses WebEx™ for their computer conference calls, which allows for the CAD to be manipulated in real time. This shows the customer how the design can be altered, taken apart, and put back together again. Because this visual engagement taps into tribal knowledge—information so embedded in the design team’s everyday experience that it rarely is articulated—the conversation typically pulls often overlooked information to the surface for further discussion.

Advertising legend David Ogilvy told the story about how he was touring the Dove soap factory one day when a facility manager, in a moment of candor, told Ogilvy that Dove soap contained nothing unusual that distinguished it from their competitors’ soap. However, while on the tour, Ogilvy noticed a copious amount of white goo being poured into a vat of the nascent product. When he asked what the goo was, he was told, nonchalantly, it was cleansing cream. No one involved in manufacturing had ever mentioned it before because they didn’t think it was significant.

The light went on in Ogilvy’s head, and the slogan was born: “Dove soap doesn’t dry your skin because it’s one-quarter cleansing cream.” That’s tribal knowledge.

Because a visual aid is interactive, it works from two directions. It shows the client how you would design something, and it allows the client to show you how they might add to that.

Nonetheless, it’s important to present a visual aid in a prescribed manner:

1. Tell your audience what they are about to see.
2. Show them the visual aid.
3. Tell them what they just saw.

It sounds almost trite, but any advertising professional would follow the same approach. It greatly enhances your chances for a successful pitch.

Rule 4: Fortune Favors the Brave

Of course, you will never get a client to say “yes” to your “no” if you don’t say no in the first place. As Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

“I encourage my people to have a backbone,” Super Steel’s Dwyer said. “If there’s something that you see that doesn’t work, say to the customer, ‘We’re happy to do it your way, but you may want to consider this instead.’”

If a shop is too timid to speak up about a bad design, thinking they’ll keep the customer by always agreeing with them, they are deluding themselves and will end up with the opposite consequence. Nothing loses a customer faster than a bad result on a job.

What you’re looking for is a customer that hires you not only for the actual fabrication, but for your ideas as well.

“We’re selective about jobs and customers,” Dwyer said. “We ‘weed in’ the good ones. We’re not moving pieces of steel through here; we’re moving solutions. We’re not a low-penny house. We provide solutions and ideas, and this instills confidence in the customer for us. It cements relationships. In the end, [the customer] isn’t paying for a job; they’re paying for expertise.”

Rule 5: Involve the Customer, but Keep It Impersonal

“Partnership is the new buzzword,” Dwyer said.

And he’s right. The more a customer feels it has pride of authorship in an idea, or at the very least has been a valuable contributor, the more likely it will be to sign off on that idea.

It’s also the very reason customers can dig in their heels and resist any changes to their idea. Which is why Kozlik advised against putting a pronoun in front of the idea.

“We have a phrase,” Kozlik said. “How do you tell people their baby’s ugly? Sometimes we get a design from a customer and we say, ‘No way. It can’t be done. It’s unmanufacturable.’

“So we’ll work with the client, but we take the personalities out. You never ask whose idea it was. You never say ‘your idea.’ You say ‘this idea,’” he continued. “Otherwise, people get defensive. We direct all communication at the design. Keep it strictly experience-based, strictly technical.”

Rule 6: Know When to Hold ’Em; Know When to Fold ’Em

When you’re making a stand for an idea, timing is critical. If the client seems inimical to the idea and just sits through the presentation in silence, be prepared to fold your tents, beg off, and reschedule. Customers’ moods are affected by life’s demands, both personal and business. You may well have simply caught them on a bad day.

Dave Court, Bay Hill Forge, Northfield, N.H., experienced one of those moments.

He said he had a disagreement with a customer over a set of custom iron curtain rods for their mountainside home overlooking a lake.

“They were pretty nice people,” Court recalled, “but that day they were in a tizzy.

They were wrong, but didn’t want to hear it.”

Court, sticking to his guns, just walked away from the job.

Years later another customer came in. He began telling Court about a house he had worked on whose owners were being sued by their neighbor. Seems the new house’s presence was going to obliterate the neighbor’s spectacular view of, you guessed it, a lake. The day the neighbor found out that the new house was to be built was the same day that Court had his falling out with the customer. Now you may have guessed it, but only after the fact. At the time Court had no way of knowing what had put his customer in such a combative state. In retrospect, he conceded he should have just rescheduled.

Timing is everything. Learn to sense when it’s the wrong time.

So as you go forth in your pursuit of excellence in fabricating, remember these six rules. They’ll help you go forth more boldly—and with better customer relations.