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| Doug Mays Doug Mays Company Denver Colorado my former boss - RIP
| The Great Salesman - Tribute to Doug Mays
Written by Phil Staudt
January 13, 2010
Things don't always end up the way that we hoped they would.
This morning I was doing some searches online, and I decided to check if there was anything on google regarding my boss from 25 years ago. It had been quite some time since I looked online for anything about him, and I have not been in contact with him since 1991. Unfortunately, my search led me to an obituary notice. Sadly, Doug Mays passed a way a few weeks ago.
I wish that things would have worked out differently for me during the past decade, because I always wanted to go to Denver and track down Doug Mays and talk to him about old times. But things are the way they are now, and the past does not come back.
According to the Denver Post article, Doug Mays passed away on December 23, 2009. I found a guest book for him online, and here is what I wrote:
"One of the best men I ever met in my life. I worked for Doug at the Doug Mays Company for a few years in the early 80's. He had the reputation of being fair and decent and hard-working by everybody in the industry. Doug Mays taught me valuable lessons that I have always cherished.
"My heart-felt prayers and sympathies go out to Ruth and Carol and his wonderful family on the loss of this wonderful man in your lives. God bless you all."
In May of 1982, I was 21 and looking for a sales job in Denver. I had decided I wanted a sales job, because I had a friend in Portland who was a sub-rep for a manufacturer's rep firm in California selling HVAC supplies to wholesalers. It seemed to me that it was a good job to have. I had been working as a restaurant manager in Tualatin, Oregon, and was engaged to be married to a gal from Denver, Colorado. I had quit my job in Oregon and moved to Denver to find a sales job. I went to the library and made a list of the wholesale companies and manufacturer's rep firms in Denver, and started talking to people and handing out my resume. One plumbing manufacturer's rep I talked to ran into Doug Mays shortly after I met him, and Doug mentioned he was looking to hire a sales person.
Doug Mays called me on a Thursday and asked me to come into his office for an interview on Friday morning. I liked him right away. He was always jovial and polite and considerate. I met his daughter, Carol Mays, and his wife, Ruth. He told me that he would train me to sell the products he represented, as long as I was willing to work in the warehouse and on the phone to start with. He told me I could start on Monday morning. He shook my hand and told me he was on his way to Pueblo to make some sales calls to wholesalers. I asked him if he wanted company. I spent that day with Doug and we went to Pueblo and back.
Doug told me that he came into the office every day at 7:15 AM, but that I did not have to be there until 8 AM. On Monday, I was sitting in my car at 7:00 AM waiting for him. I was there every morning waiting for him after that, until he finally gave me a key to let myself in. Every morning I got there before Doug, and I usually had a list of questions for him. That is how I learned things about the business.
Doug Mays taught me about sump pumps, flow regulators, plumbing tools, solder, and all kinds of supplies that were sold by wholesalers to plumbing and HVAC contractors in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. But more importantly, Doug Mays taught me the psychology of selling. Doug Mays told me that people do not buy products, people buy things because of people. If they do not like you, it does not matter how good the product is that you are selling; they won't buy it from you. There is no such thing as a product that sells itself. Occasionally, people will even buy something that they do not want or need, just because they like the person or company selling it.
Doug Mays taught me that to be a good sales person, in an industry where people know each other and talk to each other, a sales person has to be honest and dependable and willing to admit when a mistake has been made. Doug Mays considered customer complaints as opportunities to show people that he was willing to provide service after the sale, and to go beyond what was expected in solving any problems.
There was a sign on a wall in one of the purchasing agents' offices, that said, "Diplomacy is telling somebody to go to hell, and making it sound like a compliment." And Doug Mays was a master at that. A plumbing contractor would take a sump pump back to the distributors because it did not work, and the distributor would replace it with a new one. Then the plumbing contractor would come back with that pump, and declare that Zoeller Pumps were no good. That is when the distributor would call Doug Mays. Then Doug would tell me to go along with him so that I could learn. Every single time I went with him on a job, there was something that the contractor was doing wrong, and the product was fine. Sure, it was important to show the contractor how to fix the problem, but the most important thing was to tell the plumbing contractor they had screwed up without offending them. And that was something that Doug Mays was great at doing.
When I began making sales calls to plumbing wholesalers for the Doug Mays Company, 95% of the places that I went to told me how much they respected Doug and liked doing business with Doug. I learned that it is good to have a good reputation built over time of being a genuinely decent person. I learned that there will always be unreasonable jerks who just want to trample over people, and there is nothing you can do to please them. Doug Mays wanted me to let all the distributors know that his company was available to help them if they needed it. Over time, purchasing agents and owners make changes in the product lines they carry, and the important thing is to make sure they know that you are ready to help them when they need it. But Doug also said to not forget to ask for an order.
Carol Mays, Doug's daughter, was his "right hand man" at the Doug Mays Company. She is not very manly, in fact she is quite feminine and attractive, but when she was on the phone she knew her stuff. In the early 80's, almost every order was called in over the phone. All of us answered the phone, and wrote down orders. Then we had to call in the order to the factory. That seems like a lot of lost time and productivity, and it was, and I am so glad that communication has evolved into much better systems today. But, on the other hand, I am glad that I had the chance to be a sales person and learn how to communicate with people and handle customer complaints without being able to hide behind technological barriers. And Carol Mays was the person that all the regular customers wanted to speak with, because she was just as people conscious and respectful and courteous as her dad, but she was way more efficient and organized than the rest of us (thank goodness!).
Ruth Mays, Doug's wife, was the book-keeper for the Doug Mays Company. She was a stickler for details. She was also very sociable and fun to be around. They were a good couple and complimented each other well.
For two years, I was the first and only sales-person that the Doug Mays Company had that was not family. Then they got bigger and needed to add more people to their organization. I could not see myself being an outside sales person as a career, and after 2 1/2 years I moved on and pursued entrepreneurial ventures and other sales and management jobs. But I have always remembered the lessons I learned from Doug Mays.
Marketing today seems to be all about knowing the newest techie wave fad gadget platform network whatever. Individuals in charge of public relations and customer service and marketing, all too often seem more concerned about being up to date on using the Internet and iphones and software to get the job done, than being concerned about the people they are dealing with. In all of that, it seems that the role and importance of the human element has been greatly diminished. Everything is all about the bottom line, and every action and procedure needs to show up on the bottom line at the end of each quarter. But even though technology has dramatically changed since the early 80's, people have not changed that much in regard to how they like to be treated. If the young up-and-coming marketing professionals of today, could step into a time machine, and ride around with Doug Mays when he was making sales calls, they would have a perspective and paradigm that would make them better marketing professionals, technology or not.
Zig Ziglar said that a society that calls a philosopher a professional, regardless of his philosophy, and calls a plumber a non-professional, regardless of his plumbing, will have neither philosophy nor plumbing that holds water. When it comes to being a small business owner, and a manufacturer representative, a pillar in his community, a boss, and a sales person, Doug Mays was a true professional.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/denverpost/obituary.aspx?n=loren-d-mays-doug&pid=137912720
http://www.legacy.com/gb2/default.aspx?bookid=7688129372560&cid=full |
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