This afternoon I had a slight emergency at home with a leaking tap that was very bad that could not wait and had to call the handy man out. I have not seen the handy man for a good 6 weeks and we had time to catch up whilst he was making the required repairs.
It turns out he has been working at a clients home who happens to own a cement factory and this factory is one of the bigger ones in Johannesburg. This caught my interest immediately as I have heard cement factories for pallet wrap are gold mines if you can get in. These are accounts you would chase with the hope one day you can land the accounts business. The sheer volume of pallet wrap they use is not like other manufacturers and why packaging suppliers try and land this business. I have never tried before as you need the contacts and without that introduction you have no chance. I would estimate they have someone knocking on their door at least twice per week trying to get their business and without knowing someone on the inside you are just another face that they will turn away.
The problem is the handy man is no salesman so I have had to do a step by step guide on what questions to ask. He would obviously benefit financially if we can land the deal as this would then be his account to look after. I would guess this one account would comfortably make more money for himself than his self employed handy man business. He would need to protect the account and why e would get such a big cut from every order. These accounts are always under threat and the reason why it is important to make such a big saving for them that they view you differently from all the other suppliers.
The plan is he will get all the information on Monday when he visits his client and then I will accompany him later in the week with samples in hand and do the closing of the deal. I don't foresee any problems as every business today is looking for savings and that is what I specialize in. Having their price they currently pay would help not only myself, but themselves as I then would know what margins I am playing with. I would guess packaging would be a top 5 expense for the cement company and this will be a big number.
When I was actively involved in packaging prior to the Covid lockdowns you would find these accounts that would be life changing known as "holy grail" accounts and almost felt dirty and immoral how much money could be made. I guess this is why it is such a cut throat and corrupt industry due to the vast amounts of cash available. You can literally retire on one big client, but the risk is you could also lose that client at any time.
