How to Win RFPs Without Competing on Price

Welcome to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast, where every week your hosts, Mark LaCour and Matt Bertram share proven strategies and real-world tactics to help you connect with customers and close more deals. Let's do this! Howdy, welcome back to another episode of the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing Show.

I'm your host, Matt Bertram. We're here at the CellWell conference, and I have a special guest for you, Lisa Prusek with Max Sorry. She's the CEO, and we're going to talk about how to build relationships and think through RFPs. Lisa, welcome to the show. Thanks, Matt. How are you today? Great. So we were talking in the pre-interview a lot about your background

and really great ways to think through how you should approach RFPs. That was something that I really latched onto, and a lot of people are responding to RFPs all day long. And it's kind of a race to the bottom. It is. How do you deal with that?

It's interesting. When I met my current business partner, Raya Gariswamy, who had started the supply chain and distribution company about 12 years ago, so we were, you know, a couple years in, went through COVID, had some, you know, good challenges there. You know, he said to me, I'm really struggling because 90 to 95% of the business that I'm winning

is all on RFP, and I want to break into commercial. Okay. And so I said, well, tell me more about this. So he started to tell me, you know, it's a race to the bottom, like you mentioned, Matt, where, you know, you get an RFP, you read through all the things,

you know, you're looking at, okay, what are they asking for? What's included? What's not included? You know, is it our sweet spot? Have we built relationships? And this is important. Have we built relationships with all of the manufacturing companies, you know, going separately with them, right?

Representing them and saying, hey, I can, you know, answer RFPs for you or I can get you in the door for other places. What relationships do we have on that side so we can get the lower pricing? Okay, lower than manufacturing pricing. That's one key thing. So that's building relationships,

which we're talking here at Solwell all the time, right? Yeah. It's all about people. And so you wouldn't think that though. You'd think RFP is like, you know, this like black hole, just put these papers in and cross your fingers and, you know,

six weeks later, maybe you get rewarded, right? Well, I find with RFPs, if you're not helping craft the RFPs, sometimes you're just fodder for whatever someone needs another vendor in there. And you don't have an idea of what's going on. And so, you know, I tend to skew away from RFPs, but there's a science and a strategy behind it.

A little bit of a science. So you want to get those relationships on the one side where that's who you're drawing from. Those are the goods or goods and or services that you're selling, right? And try to build those relationships so you can, you can agree that well, if we can win all this business, we can drop our pricing a little bit

so we can be more competitive. And yet you and I talked about, is there a possibility, is there a way in these RFPs to look for a way to bring in a service which wouldn't be on price and to combine the two so that you differentiate yourself if that's allowed within the RFP process. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, but what typically can happen

is you can bid low, win the contract, have a lower margin for one year, and then bring those services in and build that relationship and then increase the price. And so, that's another way to look at it, not to be extraordinary of a price,

but go up on your margin a bit because you brought something extra to the table and we're able to build that relationship. And that relationship isn't going to be built, Matt, on let's go to dinner. I can bring you breakfast or take you to golf because that's not allowed. So it's actually a delivery relationship.

Was I on time? Did I fill out all the forms correctly? Did everything arrive correctly? I love the story that my business partner tells during COVID where we were delivering a big shipment and it got to the customer

and there was nobody to offload it off the truck and put it in the warehouse. So my business partner put on his still-toed shoes and his gloves and got a lift and a thing to dolly to take it around, offloaded the truck and put it wherever they asked him to put it himself. And when he brought me on,

it was actually the Dallas County and when he brought me on to introduce me later, a couple years later, they were like, they remembered that and they mentioned it to him while we were there. And so that's the above and beyond that they're going to remember. And when they can figure out a way not to go to RFP

and go directly to the people that they know deliver time and time again, sometimes they'll do that without going back out to bid. So those are kind of some of the tricks of the trade in the RFP side of things. Yeah. Yeah, I think that looking at that long-term relationship

and what people value in oil and gas is people that they know they can call at four in the morning. So he got the truck or not four in the morning, I'm just saying. Absolutely, yeah. But people want to know that if I get stuck in a situation,

you're going to be there to help me and you're a partner in this. And so building those long-term relationships because, well, someone I guess could die if you mess up depending on what you're selling. What you're selling. And so I think oil and gas is really slow to change in that way.

They are. Okay, so moving outside of RFPs, let's start to open up some other areas. Sure. Yeah, interestingly enough, so it's kind of, it kind of skirts, so we'll make the transition.

We're in a three-year, this is our third year, engagement of answering the RFP for BP on the energy side of our business to bring EV charging solutions, battery storage solutions, wind, solar, these type of things, but from an EPC integrator perspective,

which is engineering, procurement and construction. And so we're a small company that's offering a nationwide offering to be an EPC company. And so we're in our third year of answering this massive RFP for BP, but it's very commercial. So it's really on the commercial side

because we've already gone and won like Harris County with them for EV charging and things. And yet they put it out as an RFP, so I think you could go through a specific process. But to your point, it was all centered around safety, quality, answering these type of things.

Do you have a safety manual? Do you have a quality manual? Are you ISO certified? Are you doing all these things? And so, and I joked with my business partner last week, I was like, wow, I feel like, I feel like this is such a long process

because they're trying to weed out people that are just like, Oh, forget it. I'm not going to keep going, right? Because it's so laborious. It's like, didn't we already answer that last time? Or, you know, we're going back trying to figure it out.

And yet I was just like, we're going to stay the course. And if we don't win at the end, nobody can say that we didn't, you know, completely try it or whatever. But that's also based on relationships and, you know, somebody to call and go, hey, how do you want us to fill this out or what have you, but it was very extensive.

That's oil and gas. These big oil and gas companies sometimes get bogged down in their red tape processes, you know, to the point where we're literally in a three year process to be an EPC company. And actually we're the ones that brought them to Harris County in the first place.

We actually sold into Harris County and brought them with us. And so this little company brought the big company. And so that can happen. And that happens on relationships. And that happens because of our supply chain and distribution side, we built those relationships with the procurement people,

Matt. And that's what I think we should talk about next. So interestingly, when I was at the chemical company, what I learned was the procurement people sometimes are the decision makers and they're not necessarily the end user. And so the end user, for instance, the laboratory managers

in this case would call our company. We made calibration standards, so specialty chemicals. And they would call us and say, I need this, this, this, and this. We would say, okay. And then they would say, we'll send the quote over to

procurement. So the laboratory manager or the cohorts in the lab, you know, need certain things, you'd send the bid over to procurement and procurement call you back and say, well, this is too much money. We need this or that or the other.

And we're like, no, wait a minute, time out. This has to meet a standard. This is a, you know, this is a certified reference material. What are you talking about? And they'd be like, no, it's too expensive. And I'm like, well, okay.

And so we had to realize these people who were making the decisions about cost and price and so on, sometimes didn't have any idea about what they were actually buying or why they were buying or why they needed to spend the money versus not. So then we had to educate the procurement group. We actually went and met with them, brought them in with

their own laboratory management and had a conversation for an education. When do you need to spend the money on a certified reference material? For instance, in this case versus just a reference material and what's the difference and why is the pricing different?

So that our customer service group wasn't, you know, up against this like battle of, hey, we're just, we're literally giving you a quote that your people asked for. And I saw that a lot. And I see that now in the energy company and the energy space

as well. So I want to punch that out even more. Okay. So I agree with you. I think procurement. Also I've seen it in the HR space as well.

Yes, absolutely. And so what are different strategies and how, how did you approach them to say, hey, like, we need to talk about this more and bringing in people inside their organizations to have like together, together to have a little bit of a seminar, to have them understand because

yeah, they're, they're just looking at stuff and trying to get pricing. And it's so weird that a procurement person sometimes is the decision maker and knows nothing about what they're doing. Yeah.

And, and they're the hold up in a lot of cases. So I think that's a really great point. Yeah. So it's interesting. So not as a sales person's role, right? When you're a leader, whether you're the CEO, CEO, my case,

of course, CEO a couple of times in these examples that we're using, they bring it to your attention, right? Your team goes, oh, issue in problem. So you say, okay, tell me more. You want to ask questions as we all know questions are key, right?

Tell me more about this. And as we were getting into it, I was like, okay, what have you tried, you know, what's really going on, right? So we were able to distill it down to the procurement folks are just trying to do their job, right? They know that the company doesn't have an infinite amount

of money to spend on whatever and they're buying everything. Yeah. Right. So you're not going to figure out, well, why is this so expensive for that or the other? And, you know, they want to go back to the suppliers and have

that battle at that level. And so, you know, when it's brought to your attention as a leader, you know, you ask all the good questions and then you say, okay, what are some of the ways? So I went to my quality department. I went to the director of quality and I went to the director

of technical sales. We didn't really sell. We went in and said, how can we help you? What are your goals? What are you trying to do? So we were never, nobody had a target on their back.

Like we have to sell X amount or anything like that. So I said, okay, well guys, what's really going on here? And that's when we started peeling back the onion of, okay, there's this procurement group over here that's just like buying pencils and, you know, this, that and the other. And yet they don't know anything about the chemistry that

they're talking about. You know, these instruments need to be calibrated so that commodities that are sold around the world can be sold on quality. Yeah. Right. If you need a certain standard, you can't sell them.

Yeah. It's going to stay on the, it's going to stay on the boat. Right. It's not going to get offloaded. And so we said, okay. So then we thought, all right, where's the pain point?

So I had, I had the director of technical sales call over to the laboratory manager and say, you know, hey, Chris, you know, what's going on? Oh, that, you know, there are always, every time I try to order something, I can never get it ordered the way I need it and so on and so forth.

We said, okay. So we came back and we said, all right. I can say, what if we got a meeting together so that we could talk about how could we help you? What solution could we bring to the table to help you have these conversations, streamline this process or everybody's on the

same page so that we don't have this bottleneck and this like back and forth and because the listen, the procurement people are just trying to do their job. They just don't realize sometimes it's not always about price. Yeah. Sometimes it's about the quality.

Sometimes it's about, you know, some other things that they have to consider and yet their teaching and training is, you know, get us the lower price, get us the best thing for the lowest price and the fastest amount of time, you know, and make sure that it arrives when we need it. Everybody has a different role to play and everybody has

different goals that they have to meet. And so when you can align the goals within the organization, in this case, we were just trying to help, right? You're problem solving. You actually understood that this is an ongoing issue. So you were helping.

Everybody. Yeah. You were helping everybody figure that out. Yeah. So let's stay on procurement for a little bit and from a messaging standpoint, right?

So not maybe every salesperson listening can do that, right? True. You can put that together. Yeah. You know, it's a different target persona that you're reaching.

Yes. The messaging is different. Yes. Like what are some like lesser tiered things? Sure. Like that other salespeople might be able to try.

Yeah. So from a salesperson's perspective, and I'll tell a funny story, cut it out if you want, but I'll tell a funny story to you. So one of the kiddos at the oil and gas company, he was in customer service and he was doing a beautiful job in customer

service, which is really inside sales, right? It's called customer service. We're really inside sales. But again, we don't sell professionally helping people buy, right? And or solving problems.

And so he came to me one day and he said, Oh, I really, really, really want to be outside sales. I want to go out with Mr. Victor and I want to sell. It's like, okay. And so I went to, I went to, he was our director of technical sales and I went to him and I said, Hey, you know, you want to,

you want to train up, you know, this young man to, you know, do what you do. He really is interested and we both liked him and thought he was, you know, he was a sharp kid and we were like, okay, let's, you know, promote because we had a career ladders and promote from within and so on.

And so I said, okay, show up in my office at Tuesday at 10 o'clock and I'll give you your first training lesson. And he came and he was all excited and he had his little pad and paper. And I said, okay, I said, I only have one rule that you have to follow.

And I mean, I'm being serious as a heart attack when I tell you this, he goes, what is it? And he leans in and he's ready to write down this like brilliant thing that I'm about to say. And I said, you're not allowed to sell anything. And if you do, I'm going to have to fire you.

I love that. And he said, what do you mean? Aren't you hired me as the sales guy and, you know, all this stuff. And I said, yeah, I said, let me back up before I answer you. You're going to answer me first.

I said, what did you do in customer service? He said, well, you know, people called and they were asking questions. Maybe they had a problem, something didn't get delivered or they had a problem in the lab and they needed a special thing and could we build it.

And so I was answering questions and I was finding out the answers to their problems and I was scheduling things and I was making it happen. I said, oh, okay. I said, you have fun doing that? Yeah, I learned a lot.

I said, okay. So basically you're going to go outside and do that. So instead of picking up the phone, you're going to go and visit the laboratory manager and you're going to do the same exact thing and you're going to listen. And then when they tell you stuff, just ask more questions

just like you did before and then offer solutions. But you're not selling anything. So that's the key. I think for sales folks is like, don't think I've got to sell. I've got to sell. I've got to sell.

I've got to sell. I've got to sell. I see that a lot with salespeople, maybe in a new situation or they word vomit, right? They've been trained on all this information and they want to get it all out there and they think that that's what's going

to result in the sale and they don't focus on the listening as much. So yeah. And so the funniest thing that happened for me, so I wasn't a chemist, right? Before I got to the chemical company.

And so I was blessed with the team that was going to teach me stuff because as coming and stepping into a CEO role after 29-year company was growing up, I wanted to represent the company well, but I want to know why do we do this? What's our differentiator? What makes us special?

This is all the things that a salesperson should understand, right? But I wanted to understand it too because everybody in the company represents the company. Everyone. From the person who empties the trash up until the CEO, every

single person, we represent the company and we have to know what makes us special. Not a buzzword, not something on a flyer, but something truly what is it that this company has that nobody else does? Is it the people? Is it the process?

Is it our customer service? Is it the way we look at things? Do we help you solve problems? What is it that we do? Why do I want to buy from you? Right?

Why do I want to buy from you? And why do I want to work with you? The feelings, right? The warm and fuzzies. Yeah. No like and trust, right?

Yeah. So that's important. And so I got taken around to all the labs. So it was really funny because the sales team used me to get in the door, right? So they would call, we have a new CEO.

We would love to give her a tour of your facilities. Well, they love that. Oh, somebody's going to pay attention. You know, a lot of times the funny thing is those titles outside mean a lot. The titles inside, we're all a team. We're all a team.

We're all important. Everybody has a job to do. And y'all are going to teach me way more than I'm going to teach you, right? And yet sometimes, you know, those, those little titles, you know, outside get you in the door. So, so a funny thing.

I had a company in my early twenties and I had a business card that had like regional sales manager on it. Yeah. And then when I was negotiating with like, this is I'll say at DMV. I was doing a deal with DMV and they're like, and then I was like, OK, let me sign.

They're like, well, we, this needs to go through the CEO. So I pulled out my other business card and I had that, you know, ready to go. And I was like, I actually am the CEO. And they're like, whoa, how long has your company been around? I was like, well, we've been around three years, but like, look at all the other stuff that we've done, blah, blah.

And so, yes, the bottom line is titles absolutely matter, perception, positioning. And this is where we'll, you know, sprinkle in a little marketing for everybody in the sales and marketing show. Marketing helps you help sales position themselves better so that you can sell more.

Yes. And customer service is important. And the thing is every single, that's why I said everybody's important. Every single group within the company, you're not siloed. Okay. You guys are, everybody is a team and is reliant.

And the thing also that I truly believe is that inside of the organization, people are, we are each other's clients and providers, right? You know. And so if you think about it like that, you don't want to get to a point where everybody's a silo and oh, you're this, you're that, you're this other thing. And because there's a workflow mat that goes through every organization, right?

Yes, sales is dependent upon marketing, but marketing and sales are also dependent upon can operations actually cash the check that you've written? You know, as if a sales team goes out and says, oh, I can do this. We can deliver it in five days and whatever, they come back and tell the operations people that the other people are going to have you lost your mind sometimes, right?

And so it's really important that everybody understands, you know, what everybody else can do. And we're going to go right back to what makes us special. You know, are we able to deliver those things? How can we deliver those things? What happens with supply chain and distribution issues?

You know, all of these things like all piggyback and dovetail on each other. One of the things that you made me think of when you said that was I've dealt, been in organizations that have, everybody was so siloed that the people that were delivering the goods didn't have a connection with the client. And, you know, it's just a bunch of buttons that they're pushing or levers they're pulling and they don't understand that if you mess up.

Okay. You could affect people's livelihood. You could affect a variety of different things. And also a lot of people that are not in sales. Okay. But are critical in selling things and delivering things aren't, aren't paid

on if this, if it goes well or not, they get paid regardless. Right. They're, they're on some, yeah. And so that's to be a salesperson or a professional consultant that helps understand every aspect of it. These are all really important pieces to make sure that you get those

follow on sales and to build those relationships. Because after you land the sale, it's about keeping it. And, and I think there's a lot of the follow through that people focus so much on sale, sale, sale, sale. And you got to, you got to look at that attrition rate on, on the back end. Are we delivering?

And we had this thing where I said, uh, so guys, you guys have been around 29 years. Okay. I promise you, I looked at, I looked at everybody in the CRM, right? Big companies, all the oil and gas, all the natural gas, all of the chemical companies globally.

Right. And I looked at this list of all, you know, every place in America and this and you know, South America, everywhere. And I sat him down and I said, y'all do realize that you never have to actually leave the office ever again. I said, but you need to do a deeper dive into these organizations that already

buy from you, meaning they already have no like and trust. Right. And so the interesting thing, Matt, was we were the only specialty chemical manufacturer that made the gas standards and the liquid standards. What I found out was if somebody was buying liquid standards from us, they weren't buying gas standards.

If they were buying gas standards, they weren't buying liquid. Why? Because there was no other competitor that we had that made both. So it didn't occur to the customer who was calling for the, you know, I need this, I need that and the other, but it also didn't occur to the customer service team that they could do a deeper dive into that account to support the

sales team outside, right? To say, Hey, by the way, you know, and so we instituted this ask better questions. So when, when, you know, Sammy calls up and says, Hey, I need to buy this, that and the other. Oh, yeah, that's met.

You're running these methods. What other methods are you running in your lab, Sammy? Oh, yeah, we make that. Would you like me to give you a quote on that? How often do you run that method? You know, and so I just ask them, just ask more questions.

It's so funny. The two things I think about are, well, a big company has worked with everyone. Right. You need to work on the business development of, I called it catacombing my way through an organization because you get different pockets of buyers throughout that organization.

It might not just be marketing or, or procurement or whatever it would be that you got to, you got to work your way through it. Yeah. And you got to find out like what is really going on. So when I got to go have my tours of the labs, my, my job was to, and overall, well, you guys have an orange one of those.

It was an instrument, right? Oh, there's, you got the blue one and the orange one. I didn't know what I was talking about. Isn't that great? You know, and they would tell me everything. And I just, you know, look to learn and then just really kind of my job at the

end was to say, what's really keeping you up at night? Thank you so much for the tour. My gosh, you know, this looks great. You guys are really, really busy. I can see you got a lot coming through the door and everything. But what's keeping you up at night?

I like that. I want to pivot the conversation really quickly from the role of CEO and interacting with the sales leaders, because what I heard you say is like, y'all need to zoom out and look at this data a little bit differently and look at this analytics and y'all need to dig into your CRM a little bit more. And so I would love to get more of your perspective.

If there's sales leaders listening, which I know that there are and sales people to understand what the executive team, what the CEO is looking at and how that perspective is so valuable to what they're doing. Because they're maybe like almost just a salesperson, a cog in the wheel, but someone that discovers, oh, everybody's buying both of these. Okay.

And if they're getting commissioned, right? And they go, oh, if I just sell both of them, let me change my messaging. Let me get with marketing. Let me, let's push this as an initiative. They could blow out their sales numbers big time. 100%.

They could. And the interesting thing is though, what I really want to pivot away from, we got to sell. We got to have a number and we have a target and everybody's going to be clutching their pearls at this that I'm saying, right? Because we do have targets and goals and I realize that.

And yet that gets you commission breath, right? And so, and I've been on the sales team as well. I mean, you know, I, I didn't just wake up one day and be a CEO, right? So I've had a lot of different roles in support and doing and so on. And as a CEO, listen, you're the best, you're the best seller out there. If you know why your company is great.

That's what I believe. I think the CEO is the evangelist, right? Yeah. And yet, and yet, if I could offer anybody advice from, from a sales perspective and a sales training perspective, what issues and problems do you solve for the people that you're serving, right?

If you can look at it that way, you're, you're, you're serving people. You are solving things that maybe they didn't even realize were a problem or an issue or you're looking ahead at things. I mean, when the sales group goes out, I mean, they really have a finger on the pulse of what's going on in industry because they're talking to everybody and they're essential people who aren't necessarily always respected for the

knowledge they have and the things that they do. And that's a shame because they really should be because they're really important integral pieces of the company. And yet, sometimes we don't give them the tools that they need to be as successful as they could be. And so I think it behooves leadership and, and CEOs and people making

decisions, number one, to give them that, but also to give them the opportunity to ask those questions, take a little bit of the pressure off. And as a group, as a group, where are we trying to be first quarter, end of first quarter, second quarter, third quarter? Does everybody know that? So does everybody understand this is the target the company is trying to hit?

Right? Not just a target for one person or one sales team or one little group within the organization, but we as a collective, what are we all trying to do together? Because you said something really important earlier. You know, some, some of those folks are just overhead and, and they're not on

the same timeframe crunch as what the sales group has committed to. We don't want to make our sales group look bad. We don't want them to commit to something and we don't deliver. And yet there is a disconnect. So how can we organizationally not have that disconnect so that we're all talking about, we're going to get to the end of the year and this is the goal.

And you know what? Why don't we bonus the whole company if we get there? I love that. Right? So that it incentivizes everyone. First of all, knowledge is power.

So everybody knows like, okay, we're sitting on this bus. This is my seat. This is what I'm responsible for. We're all facing the same direction and the bus is moving. That's important. Right?

And when I come to work, what am I doing to make sure that work, whatever we're committed to, whatever we've said, whatever we've sold, we can deliver that. And we can deliver it on safely and we can deliver high quality and we can deliver consistency. And then the customer service group is a lot of times the people who are talking to the folks who have some issues and problems or an additional question or whatever, you know, they all need to be friends.

You know, everybody needs to be, you know, maybe having little meetings with each other and just, you know, how's it going? What are you hearing? I go into customer service a lot. Again, inside sales. Okay.

I'd go into customer service a lot and say, give me the lowdown on what people have been telling you this week. What kind of phone calls have you gotten? Who's worried about what? The best outside sales people always did that, right? And they always built those relationships internally because they needed to get done

what they need to get done and they wanted their stuff to get prioritized, maybe. And I think that's a great way to, well, get that cohesiveness and break down those silos. So it's not like, well, they always tell, they, oh, they, who's they? And we all work for the same company. Who's they? They always tell us this, that no, no, we're, we're the same company.

It's okay. We're going to be we. It's good. You know, and so I'm like, okay, let's, let's, let's figure out where the pain points are. And really the sales group needs to be talking to operations too. Right.

Yeah. So Lisa, it's getting to be about that time, typically at the end of the podcast. I didn't prep you for this, but we typically do a LinkedIn tip or fail of the week. Okay. So if there's anything, or if there's something that we didn't cover today that you think super valuable, that's like a tip that sales people can take away from it, maybe change

your title, right? Yeah. Change your title. Change your title. Yeah. What's a tip or a fail, a LinkedIn tip or fail of the week, or something that we haven't

discussed that you think's like a real secret that they need to think about? I like the fails because I think you learn the most from those. Yeah. I think that was over promising and under delivering, right? What is that? And that's, that's not a canned answer that, you know, what does that look like?

So at one point, I think there was a, you know, it's a funny story. So I got there and we had a rush, a rush, rush and a rush, rush, rush, okay? And I said, okay, I'm sorry, you're going to have to educate me. What's the difference? Cause you're already changing the manufacturing schedule when you put a rush in, okay? And you've already upset the apple cart and all the people that ordered properly are now

getting pushed and, you know, it's just a big thing. And so one of the big fails that we had that we were able to fix was that this rush, rush, rush and rush, rush, rush idea where, you know, we'd have a customer call and can I get it tomorrow and so on. And it was a fail because it altered our ability to deliver for the, for the majority in such a way that it was making our customers, the majority of our customers upset because now

nobody was getting their stuff on time. And so that was a, that was a big eye opener to what are we doing? And the caveat to that was when I said, I had to, you know, sometimes the leader has to be like, we're not doing this anymore. And so I said, no more rush unless they want to pay for it. So what does that mean?

We're educating the customer to order in a timely manner and holding them accountable. And so I said to the team, I said, listen, it's going to be a change, change management for all the customers. So what I want you to do is I want you to ask them, Hey, Matt, is this really a rush? Cause typically you could have this within X days, whatever the blend, is this really a rush? And if so, you know, we've instituted a policy that we have to charge you X dollars

because I'm either putting you inside them, the current manufacturing schedule and altering it, or I'm paying overtime for people to stay behind because you have to have two at least two people in the building, paying for people to stay behind and get it done for you. And so we really need to be charging you for that. So is this really a rush or are you okay with delivery on X date nine times out of 10, Matt, they were good to wait for whatever the normal, the normal date was. And when they weren't, we worked with them,

but we educated our customers on, you know, let's get these orders in, let's get, you know, and then that piggybacked on the opportunity that we had to literally create this very easy neat little tool for the laboratory managers to use. And it was an Excel spreadsheet that we said, okay, we're going to have you write down all of the instruments that you have in your laboratory, all the methods you run and the frequency with which you run them. We're going to look at what you've ordered in the past. We're going to populate that

spreadsheet and then we're going to look at any of the gaps that you have and we're going to feed it back to you. And we're going to say, here is your inventory that you should have. Here is the frequency in which you should order these things. And you can keep the spreadsheet and use it over and over again. Okay, add in finitum. And we'll put you in a program. This was the new thing that we, and we learned all this from the fail. And we'll put you in a program where we'll literally have you in the schedule for, for ordering these particular

standards you use all the time. And we'll just produce them and deliver them to you every quarter. And then if you run out or you need to adjust it, then you have your spreadsheet. It's this little tool. And so what we need to do is we need to find ways to solve these issues and problems. Cause why are you calling me asking me for a rush? Cause you don't know what you have and you don't know what you need because you're so busy doing other things. And so if we can, as salespeople, as customer service people,

who are service oriented, we could figure out those little things that can make a difference. That turned around that whole, I just screwed up manufacturing for every single one of my clients. And that's what we did, but it was layers of a fix. You know, it just wasn't one thing. It was a group of things that we were able to do. And then everyone was delighted. I mean, asking those questions is why are they asking for the rush in the first place and solving those problems is like going to the root of the issue.

Yeah, it was really fun. And then, you know, it was like the sales team was really happy because they were getting calls all the time. Well, if you guys can solve that, can you solve this other stuff? And so their phones were ringing. So the outcome was everybody in the team made everybody else look really good. And the sales, the sales team got more phone calls coming in to them. Awesome. Lisa, this has been really insightful. If people want to find out more about what you do or hear about you, where do you publish content

or talk about it? Or how do they find out more? What's going on with you? They can stalk me on LinkedIn, Matt. I've got several different companies. I've been blessed when I left the chemical company at the end of 21. I went out and just said, who needs help? And this born out of that are five different companies I'm supporting my own consulting firm and then an energy company, a Maxari and a few others. And so the best place to find me is on LinkedIn and my phone number and my email are there and happy to

help in any way that I can. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Everyone remember, make a difference, not a sale. Thanks for listening to OGGN, the world's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this show, leave us a review and then go to oggn.com to learn about all our other shows. And don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. This show has been a production of the oil and gas global network.