Every company has a loading dock
By Brian Eason
During the interview process for my first branch manager job, a regional leader walked me through the location around lunchtime.
The counter pickup area was packed. Customers were waiting along the warehouse dock while trucks backed in and out. It was late spring in North Carolina, and the building seemed to be holding every bit of the day’s heat.
The regional leader was dressed the way regional managers dressed then: white button-up shirt, long sleeves, and a tie.
As we entered the warehouse, he stopped and asked a customer standing near the dock whether someone had helped him. The customer said yes, but he was still waiting for someone to pull his copper pipe.
The regional leader asked for the invoice, reviewed the sizes and quantities, removed his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and put on a pair of gloves.
“Watch,” he told me. “This is how we serve customers. Quickly, politely, and with a sense of urgency.”
Then he went to work.
For the next half hour, he pulled copper pipe, helped customers load material onto their truck racks, passed out cold water and popsicles, and thanked people for their business. He kept talking to me as he worked, explaining why the moment mattered.
There were several strong competitors in that market. We could always lower a price, but that was not how he wanted the branch to separate itself. The experience customers had when they arrived at our dock was something we could control.
He cared about whether people were acknowledged quickly, whether their material was ready, and whether we treated their time as if it mattered.
He moved fast without making customers feel rushed. He joked with them, asked about their children, and remembered details from earlier conversations. The dock was backed up and the warehouse was miserable, but he still made the interaction feel personal.
At one point, a customer mentioned an item he wished the branch carried. The regional leader asked a few questions, wrote down the information, and told the customer we would look into stocking it.
That comment would never have shown up on a service report. The customer was not angry enough to complain. He simply told us something that would make doing business with the branch easier.
The regional leader heard it because he was standing there.
That moment has stayed with me for almost 30 years.
Reports show the result. The dock shows how it happened.
Distance Changes What Leaders Can See
I eventually accepted the job.
The branch had been struggling. The previous manager had been let go after poor performance, employee concerns, and a growing number of customer complaints. Service had become one of the location’s most visible problems.
We worked on the handoffs customers could actually feel. One simple change was staging more orders before customers arrived rather than waiting until the customer was standing at the counter for the warehouse to begin pulling material.
As those expectations became part of the daily operation, the location went from being viewed as a problem to becoming one of the most improved branches in the region.
The regional leader pulling copper that afternoon did not cause the turnaround. What mattered was that he showed me the standard at the exact place where our customer experience was breaking down.
Distribution leaders today have access to far more information than we did then. We can see sales by customer and product, delivery performance, backorders, inventory levels, margins, labor, and service metrics without leaving an office.
That information matters. It also becomes easier, as an organization grows, to experience the business primarily through what those reports say.
More locations create more layers. More layers create more distance between senior leaders and the individual moments that eventually become a metric.
A sales report may show an account buying less without showing the accumulation of missed communication or small service failures that caused the customer to start testing another supplier.
An inventory report accurately shows what is on the shelf. It cannot capture the product a good customer wishes you stocked if nobody hears him mention it.
The numbers may be correct while the leader’s understanding of what produced them is in-complete.
That is the risk of distance.
The business can begin to look more orderly from above than it feels to the customers and employees experiencing it.
Stay Close Without Taking Over
Staying close to the work does not mean senior leaders should insert themselves into every frontline problem.
That creates its own problems. Local managers get bypassed, employees become less willing to make decisions, and issues that should be solved close to the customer begin traveling unnecessarily up the organization.
The regional leader who interviewed me stepped in because customers were waiting and the operation was backed up. While helping, he heard directly from customers and showed a future branch manager what the company’s service standard looked like under pressure.
Then the local team still had to run the branch.
I have carried that distinction with me as my own responsibilities have grown.
A leader can learn a great deal simply by being present long enough to notice the things that never become formal escalations.
A driver may explain why a delivery window that looks reasonable on paper rarely works on a certain route. A warehouse employee may show you an extra step people have been taking for months because two systems do not line up. An inside salesperson may mention a question customers keep asking because a policy that looks clear from the office is confusing in practice.
Those are not always complaints. Often they are workarounds.
That makes them especially easy for senior leaders to miss.
Some of the most useful information in a distribution business comes from customers who are not angry enough to complain and employees who have become good enough at working around a problem that the problem no longer looks urgent.
A dashboard is unlikely to tell you either one.
Know Where The Promise Becomes Visible
Every distribution company makes promises.
The material will be there. The order will be right. The truck will arrive when we said it would. Someone will answer when there is a problem.
Eventually those promises become physical.
A contractor is standing at the counter. A driver is looking at a route that cannot be completed in the time allowed. A warehouse employee is searching for material the system says should be there. A customer is waiting on a jobsite while a crew has nothing to install.
That is the loading dock. It may be a different place depending on the business, location, or problem, but senior leaders should know where the company’s promise becomes visible to the customer. Data should help point them there, and occasionally they need to go see it for themselves.
Years later, I remember very little about the rest of that interview. What I remember is the dock, the heat, and the moment he took off his tie and stepped into the work.
Every company has a loading dock.
Strong leaders know where theirs is.
Brian Eason is group vice president at Alside, and the author of "Foundations of a Giant: A Branch Boss’s Blueprint for Wholesale Distribution," published in Fortune.
INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY MAGAZINE
The September/October issue of Industrial Supply magazine features an in-depth cover story about Rotator Products. Plus, we're featuring articles by contributing writers Dr. Bharani Nagarathnam and Frank Hurtte, as well as interviews with numerous product and distribution industry experts.
