How Important Are Values in Business?

A few years ago I purchased a new vehicle at a dealership that was 100 miles away from my home. There were at least a half dozen dealerships selling the same vehicle closer to my home, but at the time, this particular dealership made me the best offer for the exact same new car. When the car needed an oil change, the dealership sent me a coupon for a large discount on the oil change and my husband and I made a day trip to have it done there.


While waiting in the visitor lounge for the car to be ready, an elderly lady was addressed by the head of the service dept. He told her that her car was ready and after a complete check out, it only needed air in the tires. She asked if they had checked her brakes. He told her they had and the brakes were fine. She insisted that maybe the brakes might need to be changed. The service manager assured her that was not the case and the car was safe to drive without her spending money on new brakes. She left a happy customer. Several months later my car needed some minor repair and rather than drive the 100 miles, we took it to our local dealer for service.

While waiting for our car, there was another elderly lady waiting for her car in the lounge. In walked the service manager and informed the woman that her car needed a lot of expensive work done on it. She was upset and told them that she had just had some of that work done less than a year earlier and had not driven the car that much since. The serviceman insisted she needed the work done, at a very high price, and started telling her that she could get in a serious accident if the work was not done. He continued to use scare tactics to pressure her to agree to it.

I was struck by the difference in the two dealerships. I can tell you that the first dealership is still in business today and doing well even in a bad economy. The second dealership is long closed down. If a company does not stand on strong values, integrity, and honest dealings with its customers, it will slowly but surely erode away. I’m proud to work for a company that will (and has) turned away customers when we were not the right answer for their needs. We will tell a customer what other company they should contact to get the product they need when we know where to direct them. It is more important to us to have satisfied customers and good referrals than to take on a project that is out of our scope of expertise. Our sales team is instructed from management not to oversell a customer. Their directive is to sell the right product for each customer’s specific needs. Our standard of measure is “Would you sell that product to your mother if she had the same need?” If a company always does what is right by their customers, their customers will always be right beside them.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.