Smart Leaders
Educated risks
Smart Business Cleveland | July 2008
Page 2 of 2
Ted Stahl
CEO, Stahls’ Transfer Express
Refuse a complacent mindset.Growth and complacency is an
oxymoron. Complacency,
bureaucracy, lack of risk-taking,
they’re all sort of the opposite of
growth. You have to help people
understand that, even though
we’re growing and we’ve got
some very substantial growth,
the market potential is growing
at an even greater rate.
Be aware of that and aggressively go after it by increasing
your customer base, increasing the types of customers
we’re selling to in different
market segments, taking
advantage of the international market and the way the dollar
is at the moment.
I’ll go back to three words:
bureaucracy, complacency and
risk-avoidance. You have to try
to ensure those don’t set in. It’s
communication. If they constantly hear about opportunities
out there from you, then it
becomes sort of ingrained in the
company, and they see the
opportunities.
Today, you hear a lot about
these troubled times, and I
know a lot of people in business, and in certain segments
that’s very true, but I know a lot
of other people who have been
aggressive and who have used
their ingenuity to make things
happen, and that comes from
refusing to be complacent and
sharing that with others.
Give employees appropriate perspective. There is an old story
about a gentleman who went to
a quarry, and he walked up to a
mason pounding a stone and
asked what he was doing.
The mason said, ‘I’m pounding
this stone here, trying to square
it.’ He went to another mason
and asked what he was doing,
and he said, ‘I’m trying to square
this stone that goes right next to
the cornerstone of this 3,000-foot cathedral.’
So there are two totally different motivations there. So the
more that employees understand
the products, understand how
they’re used and understand the
customer, the more they can put
that little bit of extra into the
way they’re packaging it.
I require that all managers go
to trade shows, talk to the customers. They’re what’s it’s all
about. Employees have to be
totally comfortable with the
products that we have. Nothing
infuriates someone more than
when you go into a store and
you ask somebody a question
and they don’t know.
So we make sure that one of
the tenets of our success is
always being the most knowledgeable about our products,
how they’re applied, what
they’re used on and doing that
from a customer’s viewpoint so
that we can really understand
what they want. That comes
from trade shows, face-to-face
contact and working from the
customer’s perspective.
If the only knowledge I have is
what was explained to me ...
then I won’t get it.
HOW TO REACH: Stahls’ Transfer Express, (800) 622-2280 or www.transferexpress.com
