By Steve Jordan
What ECI has noticed in the past year is that suddenly it is dealing with "A" accounts.
From its startup in 1995, Electronic Connections Inc. (ECI) has based its business on distributing military, industrial and aerospace connectors. The company has always felt that this represented a special niche because it was an area largely ignored by other small distributors. Somehow, most of them had the idea that the big distributors had that market all wrapped up.
In looking at this market, ECI decided that the big distributors could not be servicing their existing customer base, let alone new customers. The distributor felt that if it serviced these customers in the right way and got their attention, it would be able to take some of that business away from the bigger players simply because it could provide personal attention and flexibility.
ECI elected to go with military, industrial and aerospace connectors because they had limited distribution. It is a limited market, unlike the semiconductor market with its huge volume. There is certainly far less competition for this type of distributor than for a broad-line distributor.
It was also easier to concentrate on the types of products that ECI was selling. It could educate its salespeople about the product — almost like having a design engineering team on-site. The result is that all the salespeople know how to cross-reference products. They can offer a number of options to the design engineer or to a buyer who is having trouble with a product shortage or long lead time — all without making a phone call. Each salesperson is really a product manager so he or she does not have talk to a product manager for specific information. The salespeople can even help the customer with an upgrade or customization of the connector while they are on the phone. If the distributor were handling 100 product lines, there would be too many things on the salesperson's mind about what to sell the customer.
No Voice Mail
One aspect of the kind of service ECI provides is that the company has no voice mail or automated telephone system. When someone calls, a live person answers the phone. Being in the business of service, the distributor feels it cannot provide service with a canned outgoing message and a system that records a message for some disembodied salesperson that is sitting at his or her desk ignoring the phone. Although it may seem like an idea from another time, the theory is that the company must maintain this kind of approach, even if it means hiring more people and making less profit.
Voice mail certainly has its place in business. It is appropriate for a salesperson that is traveling on the road. But to have voice mail at a salesperson's desk when he or she is supposed to be answering the phone to help the customer just does not make sense. Half of the time, the potential customer never gets a call back, and this damages the customer/distributor relationship.
Unexpected Business
One result of this no-voice mail policy has been an increase in business in an area that ECI did not anticipate. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and manufacturers looking for connectors and other parts have been increasingly pushed aside by the large distributors. What has happened is that many distributors have moved their low "B" and high "C" accounts into what they call telemarketing or teleconferencing groups. These are customers that are not big enough for the large distributors to be able to service properly, so they move them down.
ECI does not classify accounts at all, which is one of the reasons it is growing. All accounts are treated the same way; they all receive the same service level. The theory is that a "D" account could someday become a "B" account, and so on.
What ECI has noticed in the past year is that suddenly it is dealing with "A" accounts. These customers have been saying, "We're not getting the service that we need. We have problems dealing with these big distributors; they're not responding. We can't get a person on the phone to help us with a question." So, ECI's business has grown even more because suddenly the "A" accounts are coming to the distributor and saying, "We need help."
It was a niche that ECI was not looking for, but now the distributor is suddenly in the big game — dealing with very large OEMs. It really has not changed the game plan though, and that is why the company has tripled the number of people on staff. The business philosophy that got ECI to this point has to stay the same: provide personalized service at all times, and do it all without resorting to voice mail.
ECI has expanded into doing kitting now, including large quantities for those new "A" accounts. It will be expanding into other connector areas as well. Its concentration on connectors has pushed it into other markets, particularly into telecommunications. This has been an emerging market for the last few years, and the company anticipates that a lot of its growth over the next 5 years will be on this side of the industry.
The company culture at ECI is that no order or request is too small to handle. If it cannot get a response to a customer within a reasonable amount of time — on the same day or within 24 hours — it will always call the customer and say it will have it within a day. The customer is always kept in the loop. Other distributors might not do this because of the time element involved. This reflects on the core business philosophy of personal service, no matter what. That is what keeps the customers coming back.
STEVE JORDAN is president, Electronic Connections Inc., Gedi Corporate Park, 490 Hwy 33 West, Englishtown, NJ 07726; (800) 295-0900; Fax: (732) 446-4944; E-mail: sales@ecinj.com; Web site: www.ecinj.com.
