For more than 25 years, Erik Bloot has been on the road with wear products. First pur sang Laverman, now management within Geha Laverman. A seasoned professional with a heart for his customers.
A trait evident in all other field sales people. 'We don't employ salespeople, Erik states.
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Extinct wear part 'We have an average of a thousand tonnes of cast wear parts in stock, and can therefore supply our customers with the parts they need very quickly. Recently, it happened that we could not supply flanges for a crusher, of which, incidentally, only one is running in the Netherlands, from stock. We contacted all our partners throughout Europe. Nowhere to be found! We dug deep into our sales history. Eventually, a customer who had sold such a sporadic crusher back in 2009 turned out to still have a few, albeit dusty, hit lists. We found them the next day |
Now after two years, Geha Laverman's merger means more than a lucky shot. 'If you have a sales force, you would like to have a production force. If you have a production apparatus then the reverse is true. Our combo is certainly not successful by chance, it is a confirmation of our vision before we started it'.
'Our mission is actually simple: Our aim is to bring down the cost price for our customers. How do you do that? By choosing the most efficient solutions for the end user. These are often not the cheapest solutions. While price is part of this, it does not play a leading role, in our experience. Take for instance our partner Magotteaux, supplier of our battens, they are certainly not cheapest! There are numerous copies and we curiously follow the progress made by other foundries in the field of mouldings. After all, people are not sitting still there either. But they do not come close to the high constant quality that Magotteaux delivers.
'Installing ceramic inserts, as Magotteaux does, is not a simple technology. Add to that the fact that our French partner is constantly innovating and does have to remain market leader. If - as has been demonstrated several times in practice - you take two equal crushers and equip one with Magotteaux and the other with copies, it turns out that Magotteaux always - and in all respects - performs better'.
'Our German partner Pralltec, a highly respected
builder of crushers and hammer mills, among other things, with which
we have been in the field of overhaul, maintenance
and new construction work intensively together, Magotteaux uses impact rails and, of course, Hardox Wearparts. Not without reason: "Best you can get"'.
'When we talk about after-market at crushers, the relationship between Geha Laverman and Pralltec is ideal and still growing. The "cradle-to-cradle" idea of overhauling crushers instead of investing in new construction. Just recently, we showed (Read "The story of the broken breaker" in this newsletter' ed.) that an overhaul we can offer in cooperation with Pralltec is particularly efficient. Overhaul, even of virtually worn crushers, often proves to be more than worth the effort. The reconditioned crusher is indistinguishable from new, but costs half as much as a new one!'
'Perhaps the collaboration with Pralltec is also one of the reasons we do not employ salespeople. We are consultants and we know what's going on. If you come to a customer with sound, no-nonsense advice, that often prompts the customer to take the plunge with Geha Laverman, and that is often for the long term. There have also been customers who made other choices based on prices, which is of course regrettable. In a number of cases, we were able to tie the customer back to us after some time, purely on quality and service'.
