If Ohlson is ahead of the curve, that's because his industry demands it of him. His customers are mainly frontline manufacturers in basic industries (paper, steel), the kind of customers for whom the buzz phrases of the new economy -- foreign competition, just-in-time inventory requirements, downsizing, reengineering, cost cutting -- tend to be not abstractions but real, everyday issues. To observe how Ohlson operates in that kind of environment is to glimpse the future of selling.
Ohlson leaves the interstate at Cullman, Ala., and picks up Highway 157, heading northwest now in the full light of morning. He drives past spotty stands of pine, brown fields flecked with ripe cotton, and great green swarms of kudzu, swerving right to avoid tractor trailers carting mobile homes to Birmingham, left to zoom past poky John Deeres. Over the next two days he'll call on three of his biggest accounts: Franklin Manufacturing, in Russellville; Reynolds Metals, in Muscle Shoals (where he'll spend the night); and Champion, in Courtland.
Here we go.
* * *
Thursday, A.M.
"Hi, Tracy."
The receptionist looks up from her desk. "Jeff?" she says, just making sure, already reaching for the phone.
Ohlson is wearing dark slacks, a light-colored sport coat, and a tie; the look is prosperous but not flashy. ("Overdressing can be intimidating. They will get you dirty. Or they won't let you see anything so you won't get dirty.") He beams his smile at her -- "Yeah," he says -- then shuts it off, conserving energy. He's a little bit like Oliver North that way, skilled at shifting quickly from an aw-shucks grin to a dead-serious pious look, whatever's required.
While Tracy pages Jeff, Ohlson kills time in the sun-filled lobby. He's a couple of minutes late because he made an unscheduled pit stop at the Food Mart on the way into town. Late is not good, he knows that, but it beats showing up on time and right away asking for the bathroom.
Franklin Manufacturing is a family-owned company that makes machine tools and production-line equipment for the steel-fabrication industry. It wasn't even on the list of leads Ohlson started with back in '88. He just happened to be driving by one day on his way to somewhere else, noticed the building, and stopped. (Ohlson doesn't make many cold calls anymore. What with all the prep work that's required before he hits the road, all the hours he spends talking to customers and trying to anticipate their needs, then writing proposals, and then following up, it's everything he can do just to stay on top of existing accounts. "The hard part about it now is not the people and the contacts," he says, "it's getting it done.") By luck that first day he got through to the purchasing agent. "Danny," Ohlson had asked him, after the chitchat, "is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yeah," said Danny, "You could open up my f______ account."
Franklin, come to find out, was a lapsed Activation customer, long since banished to COD status. When Ohlson dug a little deeper, he decided that Franklin was not necessarily to blame. Partly, he assumed, it was the nature of the company's business: manufacturing capital equipment requires large initial outlays, which can sometimes wreak havoc with cash flow. Besides, no one from Activation had called on Franklin for years; that may have made it easy for Franklin in the past to shuffle Activation's bills to the bottom of the pile. Really, though, Ohlson had no idea why Franklin and Activation had grown apart, and he didn't really care. All that mattered at the time was that Franklin was thriving and buying lots of what Ohlson had to sell -- from somebody else.
So Ohlson pressed Franklin's case with Activation's credit department and won new terms that satisfied both parties. Then he started in by selling the company valves, fittings, tubing -- mainly small stuff his competitors weren't likely to notice. Only lately has he begun taking bigger orders for pumps and cylinders. In 1994, thanks to Ohlson, Activation did close to $100,000 worth of business with Franklin, paid in full and on time, and Ohlson sees the potential to double that in the years ahead. "We're getting there," he says. "They're slowly coming to us."
The door opens. Jeff Harbin -- Franklin's hydraulics expert -- nods at Ohlson, turns without waiting, and takes off down a dark, paneled hallway, never doubting for a moment that Ohlson will follow. Partly it's a play in an age-old power game -- buyers lead, sellers follow -- but to leave it at that would be to mask a truth, which is that Harbin genuinely likes Ohlson. More to the point, he respects him. When Harbin doesn't respect a salesperson, he doesn't hide it. Once, when a competitor sold Franklin a defective valve with a pinhole in it, Harbin made that poor salesman get down on his hands and knees to take a closer look, and then turned on the machine and sprayed his face with hydraulic fluid.
