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Episode 017.
How good is your customer service? Do you send REAL people to represent you at events and on podcasts?
Chris White has helped customers with their irrigation needs across the United States as a Sales Representative with DripWorks. Drip irrigation can be a tricky business, and with lots of young people who are first-time gardeners, as well seasoned professionals looking to save water, Chris travels to shows like the Mother Earth News Fair to teach and help people overcome the mystic behind their product. With the economics and ecology behind water conservation, making every drop count matters now more than ever.
How do you educate your customers? How easy do you make for brand new customers to test out and use your products?
Chris represents his company well, and his perspective of the irrigation business is quite interesting. Listen now!
Find out more about DripWorks: https://www.dripworks.com/
Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/
Full Transcript
Brain: We’ve got business owners and executives who listen to the show. Do you think that it would be worthwhile for them to plug into events like this, in the same way that DripWorks has been doing?
Chris: Yeah, they’re running 15,000 to 20,000 people to these shows, if people are paying to come to that show, which is important because they want to come and they want to learn, and they want to see what’s out there. And that’s one of the nice things about doing the show.
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Brian: Chris White has worked for DripWorks for five years, helping customers from all across the United States with their irrigation needs. He’s worked with Master Gardener groups, local school farms, colleges and community and commercial farms, educating them on the importance of conserving water by using drip irrigation.
DripWorks has been in business for almost 30 years and works hard to educate customers and communities on the importance of saving water through irrigation.
Chris White, welcome to the off the grid biz podcast.
Chris: Thanks for having me today, Brian.
Brian: Yeah, happy to have you here.
So besides what we heard about your bio, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do for your course.
Chris: Well, I work as the outside sales representative. You know, our main goal here at DripWorks is educating the public and our customers on the importance of knowing how to use our product either properly so last for years to come, but also educate him on important to saving water, conserving water and getting basic water where it needs to go.
And as to the plants or trees, or vegetation that they’re growing.
There’s a lot of people this time of year busy with kids and family and sports and instead of spend time weeding and hand watering. We want them to be able to enjoy their family time and know that they got you’re gonna have a good healthy gardener flower garden and not wastewater.
Brian: How did you end up here? How’d you end up working with DripWork?
What was your story up until here?
Chris: I’ve always worked in the public sector, and about eight years ago, I lost my job like let other people didn’t interrupt her accepting to be hired and I applied and so I basically started in our call center, which is staffed with about eight to nine train people and grep learn a lot about irrigation and worked with a lot of different people.
Then they asked me to go out and basically be the face of the company and get talked to people in groups about saving water and using irrigation the proper way.
Brian: From your perspective what makes DripWorks different from everybody else out there?
Chris: Well, for one you know, we’ve been in business 30 years. So we’re not a fly by night company.
The number one thing is customer service and education.
And they go basically hand in hand where if I get our website DripWorks.com and you go to resources, or even look at our catalog, we send out almost a half a million catalogs every year to our customers space.
The training tools to help the customer, the end user, to educate them on how to use a proper product properly.
If they don’t understand so we have a glossary terms. We have different calculators, gallery plans, Garden Planner, and our Owner Leon, you know, he writes a monthly blog and talks about irrigation and different gardening techniques throughout the year.
Also Bar None, and not very many companies out there actually have a call center we can actually talk to a live person here in the United States and you’re going to get that instant feedback and customer service.
So then with the education Customer Service so for the customer purchases product and during the installation if they got any questions they can call us or we have the live chat, where they can get that instant feedback.
Or they can go to the YouTube videos and watch videos on how to.
So it’s you know there’s a lot to it, it’s not a lot of people get intimidated by arrogation and we try to make it less intimidating. You know, there’s some work that goes into and there’s an investment here big allocated budget, but you know, usually two three years people can actually get the gardener their flower beds and all that set up.
And so their initial investment could be chunk of change, your return on your investment is going to pay off time you save the water you save and the money is saved by not having to replace your product on a year to year basis.
Brian: Got it. Out of everything that you guys provide, what would you say is your top selling product or the most popular product?
Chris: Top products are our irrigation kits that we sell.
So we have everything from garden bed kids to drip tape kits to individual plant kits, and they come in different sizes.
If you have a small backyard, maybe you live in a condo, or even an apartment complex and you got a small back terrorists, you can buy a kit for that your Farmers Market level where you got half acre acre, or what have we actually have kids get those needs.
Kits make it easy for people that don’t have a whole lot of experience and maybe might be a little intimidated by your education.
Everything comes pre-boxed and it’s basically turnkey. And we’ve already done the math for people so they can just, you know, look at the diagrams and install it.
So a lot of our products, young and old can use.
Brian: That’s great. And beyond that if a person has more experienced you also have all the parts, all the replacement parts and anything that they’re needing beyond that right?
Chris: Yeah, and if a person see they want to expand or maybe the dog or their local bear or gopher chewed the hole to their line, they can always call and get replacement parts.
If they decided that they want to maybe go to a xeriscape type of garden pull up their lawn, we have all the conversion kits to go from sprinkler systems to to irrigation.
So we have the replacement parts.
Again somebody has any issues or any questions, they can always give us call at our in our call center.
Brian: And you’re slated to present at the Mother Earth News Fair, what are you going to be covering there?
Chris: Really appreciate the opportunity with mother earth news, to have the opportunity speak there.
That’s a great show. Great event. We do that one at Texas also.
And we have a booth presence here.
So we’ll be talking about basically irrigation and the basic setups importance of conserving water and how to talk into basically to the beginner intermediate person on how to design set up and pick the right product fit their needs. Just going to be given information to people so they can either be hopefully purchased through us or go to their local nursery or what have you.
Brian: What do you hope people are going to get from watching your presentation?
What do you think they’re gonna walk away with?
Chris: Hopefully, the number one thing is know where to go to get their information because as you know, when you’re doing these shows, you go to any kind of class, you can get a lot of information thrown at you quickly.
Number one goal is basically after the show you get home, you’re looking at your garden plan. Where do you go to get that information?
So you can go okay, I remember Chris saying, go to DripWorks.com.
Internet’s huge now. There’s tons of information or there local nurseries and master gardening groups to YouTube videos.
Yeah, the main thing is education. Make sure people understand that, you know, conserving water is important in California went to the drought.
And where I live, we are down to 150 gallons a day per household. Like when I was working on a ranch and as a kid growing up, the old cowboy told me that when he was a kid, his dad said our waters gonna be more valuable than gold. And darn if he wasn’t right about that.
Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast.
These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business.
Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets. We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.
When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.
If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.
These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited.
They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.
That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.
BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.
Brian: Have you done the Mother Earth News Fair before?
Chris: Yeah, we’ve done a Mother Earth News Fair here in Oregon. Probably the last, I want to say at least five years.
Brian: Oh, great.
Chris: Yeah. And we’ve done the one in Texas in Belton. They first did that show, probably four years ago. So we attended our first one four years ago and done it every year since and they’re great shows.
Our company, basically one time we first start with the only online arrogation company in the US.
Brian: Oh, wow!
Chris: Yeah. And we ship all United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean.
You know, we have a large customer base throughout the United States and especially in Texas and the southwestern states.
And actually, I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of our original customers in Texas.
Yeah, that’s an exciting show.
Albany shows, It’s always nice go out and me people and talk when they have a real interest in, you know what we’re doing on and about farming and sustainability.
And we got people that have been reading Grit magazine or had been apart or following Mother Earth News since the 60s and now they’re bringing their grandkids to the event.
Now it’s a great show.
It’s nice again, you’ll get to see people every year to all the old timers and get talking to them.
And you can always learn a lot from your customers.
Just because we’re saying you know, just saying one way how to do it. There’s always other ways to do things, especially if you like the tanker, talking to the old timers can be you know, you can learn a lot.
Brian: Absolutely.
From a business perspective. What do you guys get out of this?
What’s the best thing you get from doing shows like this?
Chris: The number one thing for us is making a face to face contact with our current customers.
Tom, thanks for their continued support in the business and and having the opportunity to make new customers and make new friends definitely had kind of business level. Yeah, there’s a cost to doing, sending people these kind of shows but before we get get out there and not just walk the walk, to talk to talk and have that face to face interaction.
Where you can talk to you about important saving water, doing things the right way and also to everybody’s busy these days.
So if they can put an irrigation system in, and they don’t have to spend as much time waiting, they’re not spent a whole lot because water is not free.
Whether you live off the grid, you live in a municipality, you’re paying for water one way or another.
Either your pumps takes electricity, there’s cost to that to maintain a gravity fed system.
Then obviously, you know, if you’re coming off of a municipality, you’re paying a substantial amount of money, you got a combination of things, you’re saving water saving time, and products are going to last for years to come.
So you’re not having to go and replace stuff every year so you can build on what you got and maintain it.
And so people can spend that quality time with their families or their daily lives.
Brian: Excellent.
So who are you most hoping to reach who’s the ideal person that you’re hoping to connect with either via your speech or in-person?
Chris: Our core customers, also I like to connect with just about anybody younger, the youth is important to their future.
I think also people who may not they may be thinking about irrigation, and they used to hand watering or using flood irrigation or other types of irrigation and to talk to them and educate them on how drip irrigation work for them and work for all of us.
Because if we all work to save water than that’s best for us in the future.
Brian: Absolutely.
We’ve got business owners and executives who listen to the show. Do you think that it would be worthwhile for them to plug into events like this and the same way that DripWorks has been doing?
Chris: Yeah, you see it when you attend these shows.
I mean, are there running a lot 15,000 to 20,000 people to these shows in a couple days and you people are paying to come to that show, which is important because they want to come and they want to learn and they want to see what’s out there.
And that’s one of the nice things about doing the shows.
People come talk to us or they have either small interest. They’ve heard about reports, they’ve heard about irrigation.
They’ve went to their local, you know, store and saw, but they maybe might have been intimidated by and so you have that opportunity to talk to them face to face for one and provide them some information so they can go home and do some research to make the best decision for them.
So whether you’re selling irrigation or tractors, are you talking about poultry. You know, they have their cattle or mills there, they got all kinds of stuff.
So when it comes back down to homesteading sustainability, and, you know, reaching out to those people that have that interest, this is a great show to attend.
And they have a far reach, you know.
Brian: Absolutely. Absolutely.
So you’ve been doing these fairs for five years or so.
Do you know how that relationship originally started?
Did you guys reach out to Mother Earth News Fairs? Did they reach out to you?
Chris: Well, we’ve had a relationship prior to my being with DripWorks, with Mother Earth News, I think through advertising to the catalog.
It basically evolved to attending the shows and wanting to, you know, expand our reach and get that visibility.
So far it’s been a great partnership and you know getting the opportunity to speak, to me is huge, I enjoy talking to people and being out there and I’ve had opportunities to speak at that Baker Creek Heirloom Show in Sonoma County, California.
Which, I’ve been doing that last two, three years. And I’ve actually gone to Alaska speak in front of groups up there during the conference and Fairbanks by about four or five years ago.
Then to be able to speak at this event that has national exposure is pretty cool. And especially events where people are wanting to come and listen to you.
You know, they’re not told they have to go and listen to you they are totally happy to listen to you or not just part of one thing execute is to come.
Brain: You’ve traveled quite a bit to do these events and you have any logistical tips for other people doing similar things in their speaking or doing vending at some of these other shows at a distance?
The important thing is communicating with the event that you’re working. And then planning.
Because there’s a lot of logistics and shipping product and whether it’s plane tickets to go and lodging, because a lot of cost to do these shows.
So you got to make sure that try to be efficient and cost effective as you can, but also get the best bang for your buck.
By working with, you know, guys like Robert, who I’ve been working with, or Judy Massey, in the past, she retired, was a great lady. Working closely with them and picking their brain kind of, because they’ve been doing this stuff a long time.
So, you know, just gather as much information you can so you can make the best decisions and plan your trip well.
Brian: That’s great.
Well, Chris, I really appreciate you carving out the time to speak with us today. What kind of listener do would be interested in finding out more about DripWorks?
Chris: Yeah, you go to our website DripWorks.com.
You can google us, we have a huge web presence.
You can also call our 800 number at 1-800-522-3747. If you want to talk to one of our customer service representatives, basically from Monday through Friday 8am to 4pm Pacific Standard Time.
And YouTube, there’s hundreds of videos that we do that we have out there on how to
And they ever come to California see the redwood trees or see where Seabiscuit was at, or see Pacific Ocean, they can always stop by our our shop here in Willits.
Brian: All right, awesome.
Chris White with DripWorks. Thanks for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Chris: Thank you, Brian, really appreciate this.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Chris is really a nice guy and it was great meeting him.
I like having a sales representative perspective on things. It’s the first time we’ve had that on this podcast.
So a few things I wanted to point out about the things that he brought up.
I like how he said that the company has a focus on customer service and customer education.
Those are two things that I think get left behind so often when it comes to most companies as they’re growing.
On the customer service end, they have their call center.
And I have to ask you, do you have a call center?
Do you have anyone available to be able to answer customers questions?
I know in the days of automation, it’s really easy to just put everything online and just say, Hey, leave us a message online, and we’ll get back to you.
Whenever you have that live person. It allows you to stand out in the marketplace for sure.
That’s a huge piece of customer service, especially if they are trained up on being good with people dealing with people’s problems quickly getting them to the solution as quickly as possible on the customer education and they have live trainings like what he’s going to be doing at the Mother Earth News Fair.
And they also have online materials like he mentioned on YouTube, a lot of how to materials as well as their website.
This is necessary in their market because drip irrigation could be a little intimidating to someone who’s never used it before.
And if they’re just trying it out, it’d be real easy to get scared away from it.
But if you make it easier and easier to learn more than people are going to be more likely to purchase from you when the time comes.
The fact that they’re able to have kits available introduction kits for people who have never done it before, that’s very useful to bring new people into the marketplace.
I like how he has a clear concept of who he’s looking to meet and who he’s looking to impact most at these events.
Talked about focusing on the youth on young people, that goes a lot with the education aspect of everything, then trying to educate more people on how to use drip irrigation, why they use it, and also him wanting to reach out more to people already use other types of irrigation and encouraging them to try out drip irrigation.
If you know who you’re trying to talk to.
It’s a lot easier to be able to frame your language, frame the perspective you’re coming at, you’re always going to find people who are not in that perfectly ideal realm.
But if there is somebody that’s your target market, if they are there, if they are listening to you, they’re going to connect, and you’ll have the ability to bring on a lifelong customer.
If you look at what they’re doing at the fair itself, oftentimes, you will find people that will have a vendor set up an affair, they’ll set up a booth like he’s talking about, but they don’t go that extra step of having someone out there, putting on a presentation.
That’s important.
Put those two things together, that makes a big difference.
And if you’re wondering how to get the attention of the people putting on a certain event, look into advertising look into having to some type of business relationship with them ahead of time, like he mentioned, they were already advertising in Mother Earth News.
It was an automatic fit that they’d be be able to become a vendor and therefore be able to become a presenter or a speaker.
Lot of these events are looking for speakers, they’re looking for people to present, are you taking advantage of that opportunity, it’s one more chance to drive people back to your booth, it’s one more chance to make that initial sale and have an ongoing customer relationship.
Also the point that he made, that people who come to the shows are paying for it, especially when you’re dealing with an event, where there’s a cost to get into the event, the people that are going there are going to be much more serious than people who are just showing up and browsing.
These people care about these issues.
And they’re more likely to be the crowd that’s going to be interested in your product.
More importantly, they’re more likely to be willing to purchase your product because they’ve already shown the desire to put money out to get what they’re wanting out of the subject matter.
There’s a lot that Chris brought up here on my really interested to see his presentation and see the booth that DripWorks have set up definitely go check out DripWorks.com to find out more.
They have a lot of information there when it comes to drip irrigation if you’re curious at all I’d go and check them out.
Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.
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