Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with a gentleman that, though now retired, spent a long and illustrious career in marketing and advertising. Some of his best known clients were Wendy’s restaurant, Budweiser and Coca-Cola. Since part of my job is marketing (in which I have no formal training) I took advantage of this opportunity to learn all I could. As he was going through some fundamentals with me, I was having trouble applying the theory to our printed circuit board business.

We discussed why people would buy from Transline over a competitor. I spit out the expected answers of price, service, expertise, etc.  I could tell, from his expression, that I was not only missing the bulls- eye, but the entire target. How embarrassing! He then asked me what kind of problems we solve for our customers. With animation and passion, I explained what I have said many times here on this blog: People keep inadvertently using board houses that don’t specialize in RF/MW and it costs them a tremendous amount of time, money and grief. He smiled, and I knew I had stumbled onto something. He said, “That is what you do for customers…you make it right The First Time!”

It was so stupidly simple, how had I missed it all this time?!  It is alarming to think about the waste of time, energy, money, resources, and stress that can all be avoided by doing one simple thing:  getting it right the first time!

I saw this illustrated recently when my husband’s 2004, used, BMW had an irritating problem. It has one of those electronic keys that you insert into a slot and simply push a button to start the car. Randomly, the car began to not start up—but only intermittently. It was frustrating to get in the car and not know if it was going to start or not. One day, the entire car shut down while my husband was driving it, which crippled all the electronic systems. Luckily, he was in a parking structure. He took the car to his mechanic/friend’s shop.  I felt this was a mistake because this shop doesn’t often work on high-end imports. I suggested to my husband that we just pay the big bucks and go to a BMW dealer who would thoroughly understand the electrical system and fix it quickly.

As I feared, the car sat for over two weeks at his buddy’s shop while the electrical guy tinkered and tried to resolve the problem. Meanwhile we played musical cars at our house that now has 2 teen drivers and 4 wildly conflicting schedules. What a hassle! We were getting ready to take it to our local BMW dealer, and take the financial hit, that we knew was going to be ugly. Instead, I did some searching online for an independent BMW repair shop in our area. I was ecstatic when I came across a small shop whose owner was trained by BMW, in Germany, on electrical systems! My husband took the car over the same day. The owner asked him where his second key was. My husband explained that he bought the vehicle used and that it only came with one key. The owner said he wouldn’t touch the car until we bought a new key, explaining that there was a good chance that the key was the problem and that buying a new key would be far less costly than doing a full electrical analysis on the car. Sure enough, when we got the key a few short days later, the car ran like a charm—saving us time and a boatload of money.

The lesson for me here is, that if we would have just gone to the specialist in the first place, we would have saved time, money and lots of inconvenience—because he was an expert and he did it right the first time!

Since my meeting with the marketing-guru, I’ve gained a fresh appreciation for the enormous value Transline brings to the RF and Microwave market by being experts, and doing things right the first time. We are like that German-trained mechanic. We bring insight, expertise, time savings, resource savings, and stress saving services every day, by knowing our products and doing things right the first time—but not charging exorbitant prices to do it!

This was an insightful lesson that I wanted to pass along. Not just to promote Transline, but to invite you to think more deeply, yet simply, about what value you bring to the table—as an individual or company. The clearer and simpler we can make our message, the easier it will be for others to grasp what value we have in respect to resolving their problems. Face it; simplicity and clarity in our complex industry, and world, are desperately needed!

I would love to hear your feedback on this subject. Please comment here, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at [email protected].

Best wishes! Judy