How Do You Evaluate Doing Things the Same Way.
A while back, I stumbled upon a job shop that looked like a typical shop born in the 1970's. They even expressed to me they are interested in doing the things the same way as they always did. After talking with them, I found out that their biggest customer had several Weiler lathes and they loved them. I showed them a brochure on Weiler but didn't get much attention. Fast forward several months later and I walked in again and noticed that Weiler brochure was on top of his "in basket". I quickly thought to myself something clicked. After several years of the customer saying he wanted a machine big enough to do 100% of his work, I realized we were not going anywhere. I casually asked the question what if they looked at a machine that can handle 90-95% of his work in his shop, by doing this the initial price tag dropped by about 20-25%. BINGO! They bought an E70 instead of their dream of an E90.
Not long after installation, I got a phone call from this customer. He askes about the shop rate my customers charge on their Weiler. I told him I purposely don't want to know this number for fear of accidentally passing on secrets. He acknowledged this, thanked me and was about to hang up when I asked him why. He said they just ran a job for the first time on his new Weiler in about 3 hours, a job they have a lot of experience running over the years. 9.5 hours has been their best time to run this job on his old manual lathe. When I told him to charge 3 times his rate of manual lathes he quickly objected. I reasoned he will get his part at the same price, faster turn around and better quality. I asked him if his customer ever asked for a discount, he burst out laughing and said regularly. I advised him to squirm and make a face and then agree to discount about 2%. I reminded him that his customer is not paying for the machine. I then asked him if he wants to be a machine tool salesman - he just did a justification ROI.
Within two years, they had 3 Weilers, the last was the "Dream E90" which he originally wanted.