Connecting with customers

McGill Hose & Coupling opts for a simple philosophy in a complex world

By -- Industrial Distribution, 5/1/2000

Add a fifth "P'' to the traditional four "P's'' of the marketing credo: perception.

How a customer perceives the services and goods a company has to offer is just as key to success as that company's product, its placement, promotion and price. Western Massachusetts businessman Harry C. McGill knows this. As president of McGill Hose & Coupling, Inc., he wants the 38-year-old company to be perceived as more than just a place where customers can buy equipment for the safe handling of fluids.

This year, McGill aims to boost the company's market share by making sure customers know how McGill Hose & Coupling products and services can help them thrive.

The answer to fiscal success, for McGill and its customers, lies in two words: customer service. While those two words get much lip service in the retail and wholesale distribution sectors, that's not the case at the East Longmeadow facility.

Have they thought of trying a certain hose, or using a slightly wider coupling for better support? Questions such as these can mean efficiency and savings for a customer.

Trying to categorize the Bay State company's customer base is not a simple task. That's because this base is very diversified, McGill explains, and it would be inappropriate for customers' needs to be lumped into one category.

The mission at McGill Hose & Coupling is to provide products and services for the safe exchange of fluids. Whether that fluid is water, oil or a chemical product, the 30,000 square-foot plant is equipped with the people and industrial tools to design and assemble all items promoting efficient and wise handling of fluids.

That mission won't change. But the ways in which it will be communicated to existing and potential customers will. From newsletters to a Web site under construction, Harry McGill wants the hose and coupling company founded by his father to be seen with, and by, new eyes.

McGill Hose & Coupling's earliest bread-and-butter products were its metal and Teflonrhoses. Today, metal and Teflon hoses remain a portion of the company's product mix. Other major product lines include hydraulic hose and fittings, industrial tube fittings and valves, hose accessories and plastic hose. Services available include custom welding, hydrostatic hose testing, tube bending and flaring, and shipping procedures to get needed inventory to a customer as quickly as possible.

McGill wants to make sure current and prospective customers realize this.

"How we're perceived by our competition differs greatly from competitor to competitor and probably account to account,'' he says, adding that he is "more concerned with customer perception.''

That is where the company's future growth will be secured. By making customers "more aware of who we are and what we do.''

Building trust is a part of what McGill Hose & Coupling does, the kind of trust that develops as a business relationship evolves over time. When a member of the company's sales force or any one of the firm's 19 other employees suggests to a customer a new method or product to handle a need, that's where the creativity comes in.

"It's still a relationship-type business. That's the enjoyable part in it,'' McGill says. "Yes, we're here to earn a living and so on, but the satisfaction is in knowing someone remembers what you did and they come back again.''

For 38 years, the company's customer base has grown based on this premise. McGill's father, also named Harry, founded McGill Hose & Coupling in 1962. The firm always has been located in East Longmeadow, but in that time it moved its location. In the 90s, the current building tripled in size-to 30,000 square feet. That expansion gave the company room to operate more efficiently.

The younger McGill bought the company from his father about 10 years ago. A marketing major in college, McGill started out in the family-owned business the way many entrepreneurs do: he worked after school at the business, helping his mother and father with order fulfillment and assorted business tasks.

Spreading your wings

The relationship between McGill Hose & Coupling and its U.S. customers remains symbiotic. Just as any business relies on its repeat sales, or steady purchasing customers, so does a service-oriented company need to spread its wings.

McGill prefers not to divulge his company's annual sales figures, but is comfortable saying that "our business has grown every year,'' using the word "modest'' to categorize such growth.

The company will take on a more aggressive stance for future growth. To earn greater market share with customers buying metal, Teflon and industrial hose-to name only a few of its product lines-McGill is considering branching into complementary product lines and, perhaps, other locations to do business.

Technology may change, and new equipment in any industry may mean tools and items are produced faster, better and more economically. But what will never change is the person at McGill Hose & Coupling who is able to answer questions about a product and its possibilities and to companion sell, or suggest items that would be a natural fit to a specific product.

"We try to train our people to see where the real value of our product is,'' says McGill.

That value includes encouraging the product purchaser to end preconceived notions of how a product can be used. By persuading a customer to try a new item that will meet a need, both salesperson and customer expand their business knowledge. It's a delicate fit in making the match work, McGill says, but the goal remains to provide customers with the best product for the best application.

The variety of products McGill Hose & Coupling stocks is a reflection of the times of today's culture and of New England-based hose and coupling companies. Using a geographic model, McGill describes other American hose and coupling companies as focusing on the primary needs of the region. For example, in the Midwest, hose and coupling companies may concentrate on the agricultural industry. In the South and southwest, such as Texas, a hose and coupling company may stock products needed by oil refineries.

"Know thy product, know thy prospects," states an advertising credo. McGill knows it's true. He also knows that the variety of products stocked by New England hose and coupling companies, including his own, require a dedicated sales force.

"Our sales force has to be pretty sharp to deal with this variety and recognize different challenges and needs,'' he says. "They don't have 10 huge customers. They have 100 small to midsize companies. That's also where the fun is. You're dealing with such a large variety of needs and wants.''

Besides being more challenging to his company's sales force, that growing customer list means more sales opportunities.

"It enables us to participate in more industries,'' he says, "when others may not be in that same arena.''

A customer Web site is under development, a marketing tool McGill says is a bit overdue. Yet when that Web site is launched, and another three W'd moniker is welcomed into cyberspace, more business-to-business markets will be tapped.

The technological times may be changing, but it is the people behind that new technology that will bring continued, and more, success to McGill Hose & Coupling, Inc.

This story was reprinted from Industrial Distribution's April 2000 NAHAD convention guide.

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