How to Sell Reliability with George Williams and Joe Anderson
Joe Anderson and George Williams started Reliability X. Joe Anderson is the COO and George is the CEO. Reliability X is a consulting organization that offers the implementation of holistic reliability for manufacturing sites. They also offer coaching, mentoring and teaching in a variety of mechanisms. They have partnered with the University of Wisconsin. Both of them have a vast amount of experiencing totaling 55 years. Here, they share with us some of their nuggets.
In this episode:
- What is Reliability
- Why should we sell Reliability yet it is the right thing to do
- How do you sell to The Upper Management
- How do you sell to the Plant Floor
… and so much more!
What is Reliability?
Reliability is an input. It is all the things that we do, processes, procedures and people that give us the ability to achieve the organizational objectives. All these things should create the desired outputs.
Why should we sell Reliability yet it is the right thing to do?
We all know what we need to do but the question is, how do we do it? The ability to communicate effectively how you will go about doing something can be a problem. The ability to articulate a need is through the hows.
Who do you sell it to?
Reliability should be sold to the entire plant. It is just the way that it is sold that will be different. When dealing with the upper management, you will have to talk about risk. Understand the audience and handle them accordingly.
How do you sell to The Upper Management?
Understand the organization and its motivation. Do they want statistics, safety or quality? It all depends on the company goals. The main mistake is everyone tries to narrow it to the dollar. Reliability helps all departments. Reliability improves safety, quality and finances.
How do you sell to the Plant Floor?
It is more about less stress, less safety risk and working smarter for example if you have a machine that fails frequently and are told that the machine can run without causing you to run around, they will listen because you have shown them how you can get them to a state of less stress.
You have to be a good listener so that you can make their issues go away. It is only after this that you can train them and help them eliminate the stress causing factor.
What methods are used to sell?
The first thing is to visit the plant floor. Get the people to listen, to talk and understand what is happening. The disconnect today is in two parts. The people who are selling reliability are selling it for the sake of the asset instead of the business. This is wrong.
You also need to get people with the ability to provide resources and fix issues out of the plant floor. Someone should go to the top floor and explain how they can help. There is a huge gap but it is also easy to fix.
What makes the biggest difference in being successful in selling reliability?
Educating yourself. Understand the logic behind the business and holistic reliability. Also understand your audience. This is the only way you can demonstrate value in a manner that they find relevant. Learn as much as you can consistently.
Find your small core team that wants change. You will get quick wins and people will see that you are not just limited to talking. You will develop the credibility needed.
There is no a one size fits all approach. Play your strings according to your strengths and weaknesses.
How can Organizations sell Reliability Differently?
They should stop thinking of it as maintenance. Most organizations are looking at maintenance related events and trying to correct them. They are focused on reliability for the sake of the asset. Reliability nails all the aspects including downtime, speed time, the quality loss among other things. The unplanned downtime bucket is tied to maintenance and it is the only thing that organizations focus on yet there are different buckets. Not everything is a maintenance issue.
People should learn their business. It has nothing to do with the asset. See how the business objectives trickle down to everything and figure out your scope of work in them. This is not limited to what you do, it’s a whole network.
You should also learn your audience so that you can communicate to them effectively.
Eruditio Links:
George Williams and Joe Anderson Links:
- ReliabilityX.com
- ReliabilityX on Linkedin
- Joe Anderson – Linkedin
- George Williams – LinkedIn
- ask@reliabilityx.com
- Selling Maintenance as a Profit Center on Plant Services
- Books by Ron Moore
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