At Eldridge, we love industrial ventilation problem solving. A problem solving approach to meeting a customer’s needs is part of our company culture and for those that have been with Eldridge for a long time, you could say that it is in their DNA. The fact that we been granted seven patents is a true testament to how innovative we can be in solving ventilation problems.
To make sure that the future generations of Eldridge technical salespeople can engrain the problem solving approach into their DNA, we have put to paper some of the key elements to our ventilation problem solving approach. In this week’s blog, I’m going to share a couple of those key elements.
Why, How and What
The Eldridge problem solving approach requires answers to these three questions:
- Why does the customer have a ventilation problem;
- How should a ventilation system be designed to solve the problem; and
- What equipment should be used so that we can guarantee the performance of the solution.
Our problem solving approach is to start with the why. Some company’s will start with the what and tell their customers about the wonderful products in their catalog. We have seen the after effects of this what first approach when a customer calls us to fix what they have been sold by someone else.
When we start with why, it requires our technical salespeople to focus on the customer first. That means learning to listen to why the customer is saying there is a problem. After listening to the customer’s description of why, then our technical salespeople will ask questions to gain a better understanding of the problem. It is just like the situation when a patient goes to the doctor for a health problem. The doctor listens to what the patient says about their symptoms and then the doctor asks questions to get at the underlying condition that is causing the symptoms. When we start with why, we can get to a solution for the underlying condition and not just for the symptoms.
Here is a simple example to demonstrate our approach to answering the question why. One of our technical salespeople listens to a customer complain about their belt drive fans. The customer describes the symptoms as noisy belts and slow turning fans. Rather than simply concluding that the problem is lose belts, our technical salesperson asks a few more questions including how often do they check the belt tension? When the customer responds that the belt tension has never been checked and that they don’t have the maintenance people to do it, now we have found the true underlying condition that is causing the problem.
How Doesn’t Always Happen Immediately
Other than for a very simple problem like the previous example, our technical salespeople don’t leave a customer meeting knowing how to solve their ventilation problem. Most ventilation system design applications require applying the science of air, water, and sound with formulas and calculations to determine the appropriate flow, pressure, humidity, and sound levels. However, there are always a few ventilation problems where the solution isn’t immediately solvable through science. In these instances, the solutions were derived through a collaboration process. Our technical salespeople work as a team, not as a bunch of lone wolves. When they have a problem that they can’t solve by themselves, they bring it to the team and ask for help in creating a solution. This is where the different thought processes and experiences of the team members generate innovative and “outside the box” ideas to solve the problem. Our most innovative patented product, the Eldridge Enjet, was born of this type of outside the box thinking. We have learned that to be the best at ventilation problem solving, we need to work as a team where everyone’s thoughts and ideas are valued.
Conclusion
In this, our 75th year in business, we know that the problem solving culture of our company was not developed over night. We owe it to the hard work of those that came before us that challenged conventional thinking on solving ventilation problems with innovative ideas. So, for the future customers that will need our ventilation problem solving skills to create successful environments for their facilities, the current Eldridge team is committed to passing on our problem solving approach to the next generation of technical salespeople.