Originally Posted by
DoghouseDiesel
Okay, you can take this for what its worth.....
I just spent an hour on the phone with Ross. To summarize, yes, he knows there are things that could have been done differently. Got it! Hear ya! It is what it is.
The other night I think I was on the phone with Robyn for close to 2 hours.
Now, like every story there are 3 versions...yours, mine and how it really is.
On one side, you have a distributor that we all enjoyed doing business with. On the other, you have a company trying to make a profit. And then you have us that are essentially caught in the middle.
Without getting into details from either side, yes there were mistakes, yes there were things that could have been handled differently, but in the end a decision was made. While unpopular, there are other issues, on both sides. There is no blind innocence here.
They are working on another distributor, but as of now, its not locked down and NO, its not anyone that most of us would consider a competitor, from what I understand.
Believe me, I explained to Ross that I felt like the last year of work just went down the tubes. Right at the beginning of race season and we lose our supply. Bad timing....absolutely.....got it. I know I lost out on 6 sales since this occured because I couldn't offer a product. I think I made it clear that I felt like a knife had just been stuck in my back.
Now, I see valid points from both sides, but in the end, this is someone elses business(s). Not you, him, her or anyone else is going to tell me how to run mine, so who the hell am I to tell them. Have they lost money and pissed folks off? Yes! Is this the end of the world? NO!
Here is the thing, and this I do agree with......everyone needs to back off and let things get back to normal. Every second that Ross, Paul, Cindy or Donna have to spend here defending the decision, its that much longer until the deal gets ironed out with another distributor.
Folks, I'm just as pissed off as anyone else, but after the initial anger passes, grown folks step back and get back to work. In the interim, those of us that do more than just sit at the computer and play tuner still have to play ambassador between the customer and the company.
You have a choice. We all have a choice. We can sit here and bitch and moan or we can simply accept that things change. Business models change. Policies change. Priorities and product lines change. What doesn't change is in the end, this is a small hurdle. If not being able to sell V2's or AutoCals kills your business, well, my advice is this......DIVERSIFY! Expand your product base, have a plan that doesn't put all your eggs in one basket.
I know this may piss a few folks off, but ya know what, it doesn't matter. You don't pay me and I don't pay you. As I have said to people that have come to the shop and bitched at me for something we didn't work on and we didn't cause the problem with. To this my answer is simple....."I can help you or I can tell you to go F¥€K yourself, but each time you yell at me, the rate goes up $10 an hour!"
This will work itself out. If you go back and look at your reseller agreement (assuming you have one), you'll see that you're still going to make money when the dust settles.