It’s interesting how things work out. I have been thinking about the subject of my next message to our Dealers these past few days. I wanted to tell you all how great business has been and congratulate you on how well so many of you are doing in this business.
Then, I got a call from my good friend, Jack Arotta, and I have an all new message not quite as upbeat.
Jack was the first person to use my experimental synthetic motor oil back when I was flying jet fighters and starting an oil company was only a dream for me.
He put my experimental oil in his brand new 1966 Ford. ( I eventually told him he had better drain it until I did more testing.) In later years, I kidded him about putting untested oil in his new car. He said he had to do it. After all, I was his commander.
Anyway, Jack is totally sold on AMSOIL products. He owned a business in Duluth, Minnesota, where he operated a number of vehicles, including delivery vans. He would literally run those vehicles until the bodies fell off the frames, but the engines and drive trains were still going strong on AMSOIL lubricants.
Jack called me from the west coast of Florida, where he was visiting his sister and her husband, Ray. Ray had just purchased a 19-foot runabout with a 350 Chevrolet engine. Jack told him he should switch the boat over to AMSOIL lubricants. Jack has owned and operated a number of boats on Lake Superior over the years and they were all lubricated with AMSOIL products.
Jack set out to find an AMSOIL Dealer. He looked under lubricants in the yellow pages, but there were none listed. He called a number of marine supply stores, but to no avail. He finally stopped at a marine supply store near Ray’s home and asked why they didn’t stock AMSOIL Lubricants. The owner said he had received a number of requests for AMSOIL but he had never been approached about marketing the products.
Now this is where I knew my message was going to change. I’m sure most of you are just like me. There’s nothing you dislike more than to hear that a potential customer can’t find you or your products. It’s hard for me to believe that there is a single phone book in this country that doesn’t have an AMSOIL Dealer listed, but I guess there are.
If your business has been growing and you haven’t advertised in the one place that most people look when they want to find a product, just imagine how much better you could be doing if you did advertise in the yellow pages. And if your business is not doing as well as you would like and you haven’t advertised in the yellow pages yet, for goodness sakes, do it now!
Also consider how many businesses are out there right now who know about your products, have had requests for your products, yet have never been given the opportunity to become a retail outlet for your products. These are business people who would welcome a visit from an AMSOIL Dealer to explain how they could profit from selling AMSOIL products, as so many other retail businesses have been doing in recent years. They may have seen our magazine ads, or our logo on racing machines on TV, or had customers requesting AMSOIL products, but they have never once been approached about selling them. To my way of thinking, there is something wrong with that picture.
Yes, these are good times for AMSOIL and AMSOIL Dealers, and my original message was to celebrate this fact. But considering Jack’s story, business is obviously not as good as it could be. I remember many years ago, the common complaint from people who were interested in using AMSOIL products was they couldn’t find a Dealer. There is really no excuse to hear that complaint today, and it is very disappointing when I do.
My friend Jack finally broke down and bought some Mobil 1. He was very apologetic, but he figured at least it was a synthetic oil. He said he put in some 5W-30 and asked what I thought of that. I had a hard time being too critical, but I certainly wasn’t enthusiastic. I said, “It’s better than nothing, I guess.”
As the economy slows down, consumers have become even more demanding. They want maximum value for their money. That is good news for AMSOIL Dealers, because our products are not luxury products.
They are solid investments that help keep high priced vehicles and equipment operating properly and lasting longer. They deliver full value and then some.
But we can’t expect people to beat a path to our door. We need to make it as easy as possible for them to buy from us. That means yellow pages advertising. That means signing up Retail Accounts. If you are not doing either of these, it’s certainly time to begin!
President and CEO, AMSOIL INC.