SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/543149
34 SportsTurf | August 2015 www.sportsturfonline.com G reat effort has been spent addressing the dynam- ics between employer and employees in an effort to improve this relationship. The desired goal is to make for a better work environment between the "coach" and the "players." This important dynamic is no different in our business. The sports turf manager is a "middleman" having to answer to an administrator of some kind while also being required to provide direction to assistants, laborers, spray techs, irrigation specialists, etc. When the roles are well defined and implemented, the work gets done, most everyone is happy and morale is high. It's all good. There's another relationship in most every industry, certainly in ours, which oftentimes gets overlooked. This rela- tionship is the one between the sports turf manager and the distributor sales rep or other vendors. There have been articles, columns and books written on the basics of the typical customer/ vendor dynamics. It exists in daily life at your local fast food place, the dentist's office, department store or auto repair shop. If you grow grass for a living, you can't do it alone. Not only do you have co-workers, boards, committees and bosses, you also work with govern- ment agencies, public relations groups, patrons and, ah yes, suppliers. What sort of relationship do you have with your suppliers? What sort of relationship do your suppliers have with you? What does a good relation- ship with a supplier look like to you? What do you suppose a good relation- ship with a customer looks like to your supplier? Do you align yourself with vendors with similar values as yours? For 35 years I have worked for either a manufacturer or a turf distributor. I have never grown grass for a living. Having come clean on that, I will also tell you this: I have studied "the dance" between professional turf managers and their suppliers during these 3+ decades. It has given me an intimate understanding of the different types of relationships that exist between the two. Professional turf managers have their own needs, their own style of doing business and their own under- standing and priorities of what is RENEWING YOUR VOWS: understanding the customer/ vendor relationship FACILITY & OPERATIONS ■ BY JOE CHURCHILL Editor's note: Joe Churchill is branch manager/sports turf specialist, for independent turf product distributor Reinders, Inc., in Plymouth, MN. He makes his living consulting and selling turf care products, and is a member of the Sports Turf Managers Association's Editorial Committee.