The Money Movers

The "Bull Dog"

My first call saw me walking into a grain; seed & feed supplier to whom I had sold a premium "front cover" the year before. I looked at the fellow, Mr. Niewoudt, stocky chap, quite a bull of a man, sitting at a desk purposefully located in the middle of this large warehouse, the smell of grains and musty feed, reminiscent of a stable like odor permeated the air.

He looked at me and offered me a chair to sit down, facing him over his desk. With a strange kind of stare he reached into his drawer and pulled out a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, the blue metal tint caught the sun and reflected off the wall. My heart skipped a beat, not knowing what to think, this was not a normal occurrence in my life and my every sense was screaming at me to get the hell out of there.

So young man, you come in here a year ago, tell me I'll have 5,000 guides printed with my name on it and from what I have seen I never even got the benefit of 500 buyer's guides bearing my name??? What do you say to that? Mr. Niewoudt I stammered, I would be happy to go into it if you would only put the gun down, it's making me pretty nervous. He said without skipping a beat, out here in this part of the country we shoot horse and cattle thieves, sometimes liars as well!

I immediately put a call through to Les, at head office. I explained the scenario to him that the client felt completely abused and asked how he suggested I remedy the situation. He started laughing on the phone, explained that somehow the additional books that were printed with the clients name were distributed in an adjacent area but were definitely printed and that he would submit delivery receipts for the guides that were delivered to the various drop off points.

I shared this with the client, managed to convince him that he got even better coverage than his home area as he actually knew all the clients close to home. I then suggested he do the same thing again for the new edition and that to make up for any misunderstanding I would throw in an "outside back cover full page ad" at no extra charge. Well, that was a definite learning curve in handling irate clients but ended giving me the corporate nick name of the "Bull Dog”.