Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
A podcast for the employees of Hahn Ready Mix
Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
81. Everyone is a Salesperson
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Andrea and Griffin talk about the sales philosophy at Hahn Ready Mix and how every single one of us impacts the customer's experience with Hahn.
Also: 9/11 remembrance and Beauty Pageants.
Welcome to Loaded, the Han Radio Mix Podcast with Andrea Meyer, Griffin Hahn, and producer Lex.
SPEAKER_00How's it going today?
SPEAKER_01It's it's great. It's Friday afternoon. It is Friday afternoon.
SPEAKER_00We are coherent podcasters.
SPEAKER_01We will be.
SPEAKER_00In our minds.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, we haven't talked on air since the big pageant, Miss America pageant. I listened to your podcast. Did you win?
SPEAKER_01Uh we did not. We actually were not competing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you were oh no.
SPEAKER_01No, we were enthusiastic supporters of the Miss Iowa program. So we were representing uh Miss Iowa, and she actually qualified into the top 11, which gets to compete at the finals. Um, so that was very, very exciting. We had a ton of fun.
SPEAKER_00I um told my wife, and I told you this story already, but I'm gonna tell it for everybody. That my wife's like, Well, how did uh Andrea like the Miss America? And I said, Well, I went in and asked how our weekend was, and normally she just goes, Yeah, it's good. And instead she talked for 20 minutes without I'm like, that's normally what I do. And so she must have really liked it.
SPEAKER_01I did. I had a great time. I'm happy that my kid is not like antsy to do pageants. I mean, she likes the idea of doing it someday, but she doesn't want to like sign up next week or anything. So it that was what I was afraid of, and we didn't we didn't get that far. But you're gonna we had a great time.
SPEAKER_00It's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01I actually asked both of my kids if they were telling their friends that we went, and they both said no. They're like, no one even knows what Miss America is.
SPEAKER_00That I can believe, but you're still gonna end up doing this. I'm very confident.
SPEAKER_01We'll see. What I miss here. What was how was Labor Day here?
SPEAKER_00Well, similar in you know, reputation and you know, gravitas and and all that. Uh uh, I got to the round of 64 in the Toluca Labor Day bocce ball tournament. Um, so that was a big deal. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, same. Very much the same.
SPEAKER_00Largest bocce ball tournament in the state of Illinois.
SPEAKER_01So is this better than your previous year's performance?
SPEAKER_00No, it's about the same as always.
SPEAKER_01So you it's always the same.
SPEAKER_00There's a hundred years, no, we got to there's 190 teams we got to the six round of 64, but that's where we always have you been better than the round of 64? I think one time we got to the round of 32. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So not to keep trying then.
SPEAKER_00Not great. But yeah, that was my liberty.
SPEAKER_01How about Lex? Oh, you're not gonna talk today since I'm back? You were you were awful talkative last week on the podcast.
SPEAKER_00That's because I had something to say.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I also have I so I showed some people some pictures from Miss America. And when I showed Lex, he said, Why are you wearing a green dress?
SPEAKER_00Like in a very interested No, I said, are you wearing green?
SPEAKER_01He was offended by my dress choice. That's that's how I took it.
SPEAKER_00Take it out you want to.
SPEAKER_01So when he does talk, it's not usually friendly.
SPEAKER_00It's honest. Oh, geez.
SPEAKER_01That's great. Should we talk uh should we talk concrete today?
SPEAKER_00Well, first, I think um we should talk a little bit. It is today, as we're recording this, is 25 years since 911.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00For those of us that are old enough to remember Lex not being one of them, it obviously was kind of a life-changing moment. And um it certainly changed the world in a lot of different ways. And so yeah, it's just, you know, we're thinking about that day and first responders and the people that were impacted and the servicemen and women and everything, you know, that were involved with the repercussions of that day and everything. Um, but I I don't know. I thought you always get the conversation with 9-11, like, do you remember where you were? Right.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh so I I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I was in I was in college at the time. Um, and my roommate was in the Air Force ROTC program. So she like had to immediately go um, like to kind of a training or like a gathering of some kind where they were preparing everyone. We were also, I was at Valparaiso University, which is a Lutheran school, but pretty close to Notre Dame, which I think is always on like a targeted list of you know, places they're worried about. So we were in a pretty severe lockdown right away. Um, but it also, you know, as tragic as it was, I have some pretty fond memories of like being with people at that time, like a lot of good friends being around and having close people to be with at that time. I I think back on that part of it in a positive way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. I was in um seventh grade gym class. And when we went in to the locker room before gym class, like they had the radio playing music or whatever. And then when we went gym class was over and we went back in to change, uh, the gym teacher changed the frequency or whatever to news channel. And so that's when we all heard about it. And then we just watched TV in every class.
SPEAKER_01Did they did school stop? Did you go home?
SPEAKER_00No, but uh every classroom they just wheeled a TV. You know, it was back in the days they had the big TVs on the carts, and uh they wheeled the TV in at every class, and and then when the bell rang, you went to the next class and watched TV there, and uh so it was it was kind of a surreal experience, especially looking back on it.
SPEAKER_01But our class was canceled for a couple days at least, but they had uh, you know, services and events that we all went to.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've I've really been impressed with some of the activities that I've seen happening, you know, locally and on TV or whatever today. I know they did a lot of different places did like uh stair climbs or some commemorative stairclaims.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think Zach was doing one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that stuff is really cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I don't know that I could do it. He sounded like he was doing 110 floors a full pack or something like that. And that oh that's a that's a workout. But okay, let's let's talk concrete, shall we?
SPEAKER_01That's what we do on this podcast usually. We try to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I thought today we would it's a topic we've certainly covered before, um, but it's I think it's a good thing to bring back up often is um talk a little bit about our sales philosophy, and really just our whole business philosophy, how we do the things we do. Um you know, it would be a lot easier for our salespeople, for Brian and Sam and everybody else that um deals with the sales function, if our philosophy was we're just gonna cut the price to get the work, right? That would make their job really easy. They'd get all the work we wanted. Um, and that is a way to do it. And it's not the way that we do it. Um, so we make life a lot harder on Brian and that team because what we're trying to sell is the value that we can bring as an organization to our customers. So even though we're often not the cheapest option that they could buy concrete from, our hope, our goal, our intention is that they end up doing better financially, our customers do, working with us than somebody else, even if they're paying more money, because we've done a better job with quality materials or service or all that. Um, so that is really everything we're doing here, right? And and so it's it's good to talk about how we all play a part in that. That's not something that Brian and Sam and John and Zach and Sean can do by themselves, right? That is a team effort. If we are going to sell in that way, that we're gonna bring value, is every single cog in the wheel that is this organization has to be um working towards that end or it it doesn't work, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it is hard even for our people to describe it. And I think it's sometimes hard for our customers to describe it until maybe they're not working with us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then suddenly they feel the difference, right? Why it's different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, and so I think we can we can talk a little bit about what um how how things look when they're going right. Right. So um first thing we want is a positive, helpful, and productive interactions with customers at every level, right? So when they ask for a quote or they're getting an account set up, when they're calling into dispatch, every interaction with dispatch is so important, right? That we uh get the information right, we're helpful, we help get the customers what they want, what they need, you know, and we're honest about what our capabilities are, right? And then a huge one is on site, right? So our best salespeople are our drivers in quality control, and anybody else that is on a site with the customer, helping them be successful in that day. So following instructions and doing the things right, wearing our PPE, um checking our loads before we leave, all those things play into having the customer have a positive uh experience when they work with us, right? If if all the loads come slumped at the correct slump, then they can save time because they're gonna load the trucks faster, not waiting to add water, et cetera. Right. Um, and then you know, on the back end to billing, it's got to be smooth and and we always try to uh invoice the next day so that um customers aren't waiting on that and and all of those aspects, which touches basically everyone in the company is involved with one of those things, right? Even if you're uh a mechanic that's not going to a job site, you're working on the equipment that does go to a job site. So if something isn't done right that causes a breakdown, you know, that impacts our customers. Um, same way with like maintenance that get working on the plant that makes the concrete. So, you know, we just need to be diligent about doing things right through that whole process.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think a couple of things that I had in mind when I was thinking through this was reliability, which plays into all of those things that you went through, but also predictability. Like I think it's so comforting for people when they call into dispatch and they get to talk to Sheila or Carrie or Lisa and they know that's who they're gonna talk to every time and they know how that conversation is going to go. Same thing when you have a good, reliable, predictable driver that shows up and you know that they're gonna be able to get exactly where you need them to go. Like those each phase of what we're doing, being reliable and being predictable and going the way that we want it to go, yeah, builds up that relationship over time.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. There's trust there, right? And that's the whole thing. That's why it's so important to be honest about what we're doing, you know, transparent. We if we're gonna be late, we call and say, we're gonna be late. Um, because then they know what they're dealing with. And, you know, it's it's important. There are times where we have to have hard conversations or we have to maybe tell a customer, like, hey, listen, um, you know, I we we heard that this was said on the job site, but this is the reality. And if we're always honest, you know, then then our opinion of how things went or our perception actually holds weight with our customers. If if you know, we're denying that we ever have do anything wrong or aren't helpful or aren't transparent, then you know, they're just gonna say, well, they don't believe you, right? And you can't develop a relationship. I think you know getting the details right is such a big deal. This is actually something dad says all the time. Um, but I like to get pinpointed a little bit more, right? So we have an information flow that comes in, right? So the customer is giving information to dispatch or to sales, um, and then from dispatch is going to the plants, to the drivers, to quality control, those different departments may be talking with each other. But it's so easy to miss a piece here, you know, like, oh, they wanted fiber and we didn't get it on the ticket, or it was on the ticket, but we the driver didn't notice it. Or um, you know, we're gonna address coming in from a certain direction. Yeah, or directions, uh, all those things. So there's there's that information flow is is passing through multiple different groups and multiple different people. And it's so easy for that to someone to drop the ball along the way. And that is why we have to be so diligent about making sure we're reading our ticket, making sure that we're reviewing the orders we're putting in. You know, we record our messages. I know dispatch all the time, um, we record our phone calls. Dispatch will be like, ah, I can't remember, did they say 10 minutes or 15 minute spacings? They'll go back and listen to an order they did to make sure that they got that right and that's put in the correct way. That's the kind of diligence um that we have to have to be successful because we have to get the details right. We can have all the best intentions in the world, we can have the best effort in the world. And if we get the small things wrong, you know, they can change everything for us on a concrete pour and make all of that effort a waste. So um getting details and and the information flow being good is so important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think we even push on that at the manager level and at the three o'clock meeting where it's easy to just look at the board and assume that everything is correct. But our best moments are when we question those details and fix something or get it right. Or even if it is right and we double check it and we confirm it's right, then we're all on the same page with those details. It makes such a huge difference.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah, it's it's never, it's never overkill to ask for a second opinion or to double check something or to, you know, yeah, it's the same thing with the driver. You know, if if the slump doesn't look right, you got to question it and you gotta take the time that's worth doing because we want to be accurate. Uh we don't want to show up with a wet load that gets rejected because that throws a whole customer's whole day off. Never mind the lost revenue, you know, from uh losing the material. Uh so I I just think it is easy. You know, we're we're pretty busy right now when it's not raining, and it's easy to get lost in the hustle, right? And we and we are hustling, and that is good that we're hustling, but those little details can really start to add up, you know, especially if they we make little mistakes and they happen on the same customer, you know, that it seems to happen that way that you know a single customer will be impacted by three consecutive mistakes, and you know, that that can change a relationship. And so we just have to always be diligent, always be thinking about uh are my I's dotted and my T's crossed at every stage.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Or when you're tempted to take a shortcut or not do it one more time, you know, this is what's what's the more premium way for me to approach this and and head that way?
SPEAKER_00I like that that that line of thinking. Yeah. We we want to be a a premium, high quality provider. And so that is how all of our actions and interactions have to be kind of through that filter, right? That's a good point. The other parts, other than customer interactions and getting details right, is you know, we're we're always selling on having um the highest quality materials, right? So that goes into a little bit that quality control software that we just picked up that we talked about last week. But that's on Lex and on me and and everybody else, um, uh the plant managers, the making sure that we are using the right ingredient materials, that our mixed designs are correct, and uh we're always working on on that front. Um, but it is is kind of a a constant battle, right? Because those materials change and the the jobs we're working on change. And so um that is something that maybe a lot of people don't see happening. You know, our drivers aren't necessarily seeing that portion of the business on a day-to-day level, but um it it's always in progress, always happening because that is what we're selling to our customers is we we are the premium quality supplier in the market, right? But beyond that, I think there's so many variables in this industry, so many uh things that can go wrong. Um, that we just have to own it when we do make mistakes. And I think that that is um something I think uh the industry as a whole is not very good at doing. Um, and and I think we are pretty good at saying, like, listen, we we mess this up. So what do we got to do to make it right?
SPEAKER_01And I actually love those like jokes that you see online where they there's like the contractor calling in and dispatch is lying to them about where their truck is. That must happen so often because I see so many of those jokes.
SPEAKER_00But we hear those types of things, it doesn't make any sense to me why you would do it. But now, uh I get I guess I shouldn't say that. Like I remember being in dispatch when I was much younger, and it was it was it was always tempting, and it would be easy to say your truck's around the corner, it's on the way. And it's like, well, they're about to load it. That's pretty close. But eventually they start to be like, okay, you say it's on the way, and they're thinking, okay, that's 15 minutes or so from the plan, I'll see it in 15 minutes, and it's 25 minutes every time. Then they're like, they're just lying to me, right? So we have no benefit from misconstruing what is actually happening. We just need to be honest, transparent, and I think we do a good job at that. Um, but it's just it's always a an easy out that's always there, right? That that option is always there, and we just have to be um consistent and and you know, what not listening to the devil on our shoulders saying that there is a shortcut.
SPEAKER_01Do you have anything to add, Lex?
SPEAKER_00Nothing. I got nothing. Well, I just to wrap that whole kind of conversation up, you know, we we are we are selling um an experience to our customers. We're selling a product, we're selling that working with us requires a higher standard, that they should expect a higher standard of us, and we expect a higher standard of ourselves. Um, and that's why, you know, they should pay more money than they do with somebody else, because the experience they're going to get, the materials they're going to get from us, uh, we we believe are better than what they can from anybody else. Um, but that always, always relies on us backing that up. We have to prove that. And that doesn't mean we're going to be perfect. Um, and that's why owning the mistakes is part of it. But we have to always be looking on how do we improve the way we do things and how do we get better and how do we make sure that we don't forget the details, we don't forget what the expectations that we've set for ourselves and our customers have for us because it always just has to be front of mind. So that's why it'll be a topic we talk about over and over again pretty regularly on here, right?
SPEAKER_01I like it. It's it's one of my favorite topics. Yeah. I actually have a new segment that I'm going to propose for us. Um it's basically you have a very thorough training program that you like to put everyone through.
SPEAKER_00Which we haven't done in a while. We need to do that.
SPEAKER_01So we should do it, but I'm gonna rain next week, maybe funny time. I don't know that you'll get people to do your training program like more than one time.
SPEAKER_00That's not true. There are some drivers that have done it multiple times, and I think like Angela sat in it like three times.
SPEAKER_01There's a few very special that will sit through. She's the one that we need to she needs remedial hub.
SPEAKER_00She needs remedial hub. Yeah. Oh, she's listening to it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, but I thought we could use the podcast to like just slowly trickle in some of that concrete 101 type knowledge and just a short segment. Give you a platform every week to just teach us something small in a digestible, reasonable way for normal people that are not concrete nerds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I like it.
SPEAKER_01We'll start this week and go from here. I think we'll let you choose some topics and then maybe some weeks I'll surprise you.
SPEAKER_00So okay. So I when you propose this to me ahead of time, you kind of said of like, let's define a term. Yeah. Or instead of a topic. So I prepared, well, I didn't prepare, I I randomly selected uh a term.
SPEAKER_01Okay. There are so many terms in concrete that make no sense to anyone outside of it.
SPEAKER_00Right. So that was kind of the thought is that um start with something obscure these terms. Yeah. And what's funny is I started writing out a list, and it was just like this. I could spend four hours writing a list. So I just I was like, well, I'll just have Claude give me 500 terms. And I'd already written like 10 things down before I decided to do that. And four of the things I'd written down weren't in the 500 terms Claude gave me. It is such a big uh so we could do multiple uh as we get into this. But uh, I picked something very simple that maybe everybody would know, but maybe not, is uh the term screed. So um screed is not a term that I'd I think I'd ever heard of before this uh got in this industry. But that's basically when the contractor is striking off and flattening the concrete. So um screeding uh the traditional way is with a like a two by four, pulling a two by four and and and flattening the concrete out, making a a flat surface anyway.
SPEAKER_01So screed is a verb and a noun, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00It is.
SPEAKER_01And something you do and something you can hold in your hand.
SPEAKER_00Correct. Yep. And so there's a lot of different kinds of screeds have become much more complicated and complex and allow us to make high-tech.
SPEAKER_01We like to run over the high-tech ones, I know.
SPEAKER_00Well, the really high-tech ones are taller than our trucks, so we can't um but you know, so that you kind of work from the bottom is uh a wood screed, like a two by four or a magnesium screed. And then they have truss screeds, which is uh kind of a vibrating screed. It kind of looks like the like an upside-down version of a truss that's on a rooftop or something like that. And um, it's got these weights that are kind of offset and spin, and so they make the whole thing vibrate, and then um you can hook up cables further up the pore, and basically it pulls the screed forward and flattens the concrete. So those are um not super common anymore, but they used to be really common. The vibration on those is really heavy and can lead to surface problems in concrete. We work a lot with laser screeds, which are how we do with lots, most big floors and parking lots. Um, and that is where they have a laser to find the level and they can make a three-dimensional screed so they can get, you know, the proper fall in a parking lot to have water flow where they want it to go and et cetera. Um, and but that saves a ton of labor by screening it off. But then, you know, if you get into it, a paving machine or a bidwell on a bridge is a form of screening, kind of just a way to put the concrete in the form that it needs to be done. So screeting is getting concrete to the level of the code.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a good that's a good start. Actually, while you were saying that, I was thinking in my head we need to have some kind of contest and like get people to use the word of the week with us and have some kind of prize. Yeah. I'm really gonna draw this out. This is a great idea.
SPEAKER_00Okay. All right. I love it. I love it.
SPEAKER_01All right. Thanks everyone for listening to Loaded the Honrigs Podcast. We'll talk to you again next week.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much.
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