The Richwood Report

One of the basic necessities of sales and engineering calculations is the conversion of units of measure. For years I have used a little dos-based program called Units that lets you convert just about anything to just about anything, both simple and compound units. It was pretty good in its day but now it is something of an antique. The web brings us better things. Check out Allmeasures.com, a page for converting engineering units of almost any variable. The main page gives conversion factors in a table for, say, gallons to cubic meters or knots to meters/second. That is only the beginning. Choose a category(pressure, speed, mass, or whatever you want) and click on the CONVERTER button and you will be taken to a spreadsheet where you may enter a value in any cell and have all the other cells show the right value for other units. For example, in the DISTANCE category I entered 1 in the foot box and the equivalents of 1 foot appeared in all the other boxes--3 hands(height of horses), 12 inches, 0.3048 meter. This site can save you time.

You see it first on the Richwood Report! Richwood Field Services is going national as CeramX Products Inc. with their line of ceramic lined chutes, pipes and elbows. The change is effective September 1, 2004. The manufacturing facility contact information is still the same:

P. O. Box 1369, Oak Hill, WV 25901
Toll Free: 877-465-6155
Office: 304-465-6155
Fax: 304-465-1290

Website URL and email address to follow soon.

Richwood's compliments to Lads Equipment Sales for their excellent website. They have a convenient menu list on the page which will take you to their line card and link page, both with listings for Richwood products.

Rock Products magazine wrote up the Frontrunner in their current newsletter. Just click on the New Belt Precleaner link. The rest of the newsletter has good material on rock-related shows and resources. If you are interested, there are links for subscribing to the newsletter at the bottom of the page.

I learned about Dave Kahle reading The Scale Press, a newspaper for the weighing equipment industry. Scales are a tough business. There are a lot of players on the field and competition is tough. The Scale Press buys his articles to help readers develop their skills in selling and business practice. Dave Kahle's web site has an abundance of free and helpful articles to help us maintain the edge we need. For a sample, try "Biggest Time-wasters for Salespeople". Sometimes the very qualities that helped us become successful in the first place can keep us from being the best. Dave Says,

A big portion of our sense of worth and our personal identity is dependent on being busy. At some level in our self image of our selves, being busy means that we really are important. One of the worst things that can happen to us is to have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and nothing going on. So, we latch onto every task that comes our way, regardless of the importance. ...And didn't you just allow something that was a little urgent but trivial prevent you from making some sales calls? And wouldn't those potential sales calls be a whole lot better use of your time?

That article will get you started. There are a number of others worth your time too.

Safety is everybody's job. We want to get the job done without accidents. The Conveyor Equipment Manufacturers Association (CEMA) has an excellent selection of safety stickers available. As part of our commitment to safety, Richwood furnishes these safety warning stickers with our conveyor accessories, including belt cleaners, saddles and idlers. We encourage our customers and others who use and furnish conveyor equipment to consider using the CEMA stickers. They can be purchased with the order form on the website or on CEMA's e commerce site. They also have downloadable files for printing posters of your own. They are available as .tiff and .png files for different types of conveyors(bulk, package, screw, baggage and bucket) and can be sized and printed as you wish. The files are furnished by CEMA as a service to the industry.

Richwood compliments to Minerals Engineering International, "An International Journal devoted to innovation and developments in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy". Their webpage, MEi Online features a beautiful photograph of Falmouth Harbor and includes a link to Richwood in their page of links to sources for material handling equipment. Their main page is here and you might also be interested in the link to this article on the use of the Jameson Cell in effluent treatment in New Zealand.

Probably the most common sales objection is the objection to price. Every salesman has to find a way to get past the customer who thinks the product costs too much. There is a common quotation from John Ruskin that goes:

There is hardly anything in the world that someone can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper—and people who consider price alone are this man’s lawful prey.

That's pretty good and should get you started talking to the customer about the benefits of quality. The whole passage is better though. It talks about how the real mistake in a purchase is spending money on an unsuitable product that must be eventually replaced. I read it recently at the front of a catalog of high quality products. It goes:

It’s unwise to pay too much. But it’s worse to pay too little.
When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all.
When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
The common law of business balances prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder it is well to add something for the risk you run.
And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.
There is hardly anything in the world that someone can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper—and people who consider price alone are this man’s lawful prey.

Two good sales quotes that go together:

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
-- Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends And Influence People)

and

First you make friends; then you make money.

--Unknown

Please note that air systems are shipping now without the check valve and fitting for plant air supply. This change simplifies the air system and reduces the number of possibilities for leaks. We found that only about 5% of users were connecting to plant air and the benefits of simplicity won out. Note also that if the plant air setup is required, you need only to say so when the order is placed. The proper tank will be furnished at no additional charge.

For your customers in the stone, sand and gravel business, point them to Richwood's full page ad in the magazine, Stone, Sand and Gravel Review for July/August, 2004. The Frontrunner is featured and it is a natural for this market. If you want to check out the organization, the website for the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association is here.