Was Re: Coil tapping

[Ron Nossaman]

> It is very sad that many on the list can not understand the concept of
>mutual cooperation, on the reverse side of the coin it is also sad that
>SOME dealers neither value their techs or customers. But please don't tar
>us all with the same brush. 
>
> It's wonderful that you are so busy that you do not need extra client's,
>but many techs need the boost to swell their income, and working WITH a
>dealer can be a fast way of getting a good client base
>Regards Roger
>

Hi Roger,

I'm not trying to throw another log on the fire here... but. Relax, it's not
that bad. I just wanted to point out that you receive an extremely valuable
service from your techs in the form of SALES REFERRALS. For this alone, you
ought to be paying them for EVERYTHING they do at whatever your mutually
agreed on rate happens to be. A good many thousands of dollars of your
annual income is a DIRECT result of one or more of your techs making a
casual comment to a prospective customer that sends them to YOU somewhere in
the shopping process. Mutual cooperation does, indeed, work both ways, but
only when both parties contribute AND acknowledge ALL of the factors in the
transaction. 

To preclude the possibility of your dismissing the above as the ravings of
some crank (though there is a rather considerable body of evidence to that
effect) I'd like to say that I do the bulk of the tuning, warranty work, and
disaster recovery for a couple of dealers in the area and a couple more from
other regions who score an occasional sale here. The out of area dealers get
NO discount on ANY of the work I do for them. The reason being that I don't
get many referrals from them and I feel they ought to be grateful enough for
competant work to pay for it. The local dealers get a 1/3 discount on
tuning, and NONE on prep, customer massage, and on-site re-engineering as
necessary to make the product work well enough to quell the customer 'FUD'
(Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) factor. In exchange for the tuning discount,
I get GOBS of referrals, enough of which are good enough pianos to justify
the tuning discounts on after sale tunings (I don't normally do floor
tunings as part of this equation because it's a one shot deal with no future
work potential). In exchange for my lack of discount on service work, they
get my best shot (sometimes AFTER someone else has been somewhat less than
successful at flushing the boo-boos), and they get my WHOLE HEARTED
RECOMMENDATION as an honest and dependable dealer (but only if it's true (my
call)). That ought to be enough parentheses for anyone. So in other words
(and I have plenty of other words left (and parentheses (it's a sickness
(ignore it)))), the scales can balance when you factor in all the variables.
You can bet your techs are.

Regards,    
 Ron Nossaman