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Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/91805
Cover Story By Denise L. Rondini, Executive Editor drondini@randallreilly.com At Six Robblees, Careful Choices Pay Off A shared vision and thoughtful evaluation of options have served well. A ſt er seeing some of his cus- tomers close up in 2009, Andy Robblee, president of Six Rob- blees' Inc., says his business is starting to have some growing pains. "We have to add services, add people and add inventory as the market has started to come back, " he says. Communicating The Vision Robblee has a clear vision of not only how he wants to deal with these current grow- ing pains but for the business overall. His challenge is to communicate that vision to the other 170 people who work at Six Robblees. "I [have to] communicate the direction I see the company needing to go in. I have to make the employees passionate about it so they can communicate back up stream and see that we want to go in this direction but we need to make a couple of changes. If we do this, I see opportunities for us." Th e communication process can be encumbered by the geographic distance between the company's locations. "We have branches in Billings, Seattle, Oakland and Fairbanks," Robblee says. "So geo- graphically the distance is huge, and the problem is you can't cover that distance in a short period of time. " Hiring & Training Robblee believes that people are his most important asset. Andy Robblee "Oſt en we hire people who are good, quality people with tons of ability but who might not know the particulars of our business," he says. Robblee says it can take many years to develop all the aspects of how to be a good counterperson, salesper- son or manager. Plus there has to be an understand- ing of customers, vendor relationships, employee-to-employee relationships and teamwork. "So training in all aspects is necessary, " Robblee says. "We all need refresher courses; we continually have to provide education and not get too confi dent that we got this last year and we are good for a while. " Robblee says he is fortunate to have a good team to help with training. "We have a very strong management team at the branches and in Seattle. Th ere are many people working on diff erent aspects of training, which is great because it gives us a constant reminder that we can't expect employees to know everything. We have to coach them, teach them, encourage them and be supportive of them," he says. Weighing IT Solutions Technology is important in every business and Six Robblees is no exception. "We live right in the heart of Microsoſt country, " 26 TRUCK PARTS & SERVICE | November 2012 Robblee says, "and we stick out like a sore thumb. " He is quick to add that he sees value in technology but does not feel the need to be on the bleeding edge as some other area businesses do. "We may be the bleeding follower. We weigh our IT options and see what the value is. What is the technology going to bring? What is there to gain and the reason for doing it?" Currently Robblee is working on get- ting computers to his outside sales force. "I see value in a salesperson being at an account where a question comes up about the availability of an item and how much it costs. Rather than making a phone call, he can just type on his tablet or laptop and be able to give an answer. " Moving forward, Robblee says he plans to invest in projects where he can see gains and effi ciency improvements, but it is going to be technologies that already have been tested a little bit. "We are going to make sure the tech- nology fi ts who we are and then stick with it, " he says. Six Robblees currently is using EDI to some extent. "We just transferred over to a new computer system and we are trying to get some of that back up to speed, " he says. Th e company also has started conversa-