Finance Column: Show Business

CMTS always provided an excuse to interact with your top customers.

CMTS is the largest machine tool exhibition in Canada and is held every two years in the fall months in the Toronto area. There will be over 8,000 people attending with more than 700 sellers of machinery, equipment, and accessories.

The exhibitors at CMTS spend a lot of time and money on their booths. Back when I used to work this show as a distributor we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on our booth, and with such a large investment there was enormous pressure to sell products to justify the expense.

This is no different today. But this show also offers a unique opportunity to meet and engage with the principals of each manufacturer and negotiate a great deal or take advantage of a “CMTS Show Special”.

What I normally tell my clients, if they are thinking of making a show purchase, is to get a pre-approval in place prior to attending. This allows them to know what type of money they will have available and what a monthly payment will look like.

Having worked in this industry for over 20 years, what I always remember most about CMTS is the interaction with customers.

What CMTS always provided was an excuse to interact with your top customers. We always tried very hard to ensure our best customers came to the show so we could catch up during a time when there was no immediate pressure to close on a new purchase order.

I always anticipated visits with customers that I hadn’t seen in some time, particularly if they were coming from either Quebec or Western Canada, and we used CMTS as an opportunity to have some fun with them in the evenings.

The main benefit of being a Toronto-based distributor meant that I could plan a few unforgettable evenings. I have always felt sales, particularly in this industry, are relationship based. There is no question, you have to represent good equipment and offer it at competitive prices, but at the end of the day I knew if we ensured our customers received good equipment for a good price, along with the proper technical and application support, future orders would be forthcoming.

Rarely if ever did an order get placed at CMTS that we were either not expecting nor hadn’t planned to conclude at our booth, but that doesn’t mean unexpected business and new relationships don’t ever occur.

I remember sitting at our booth in 2007 and a father and son walked over to us for the first time. They ran, and continue to run, a precision machine shop in Quebec, and they required a 400mm pallet HMC, which coincidentally we had available.

They told us they had been to at least two of our competitors’ booths and wanted our best price, which we were only too happy to provide. The deal was concluded, or so I thought.

We were their last meeting of the day, and they had to head for the airport. But in order to get out the front door of the show, they had to walk past our competitor one last time, so I took it upon myself to walk them out and put them in a cab.

That plan had to be modified when I noticed out of the corner of my eye the salesman from our competitor was chasing behind. I could only imagine what their “revised” pricing was going to be at that point.

Then it occurred to me I also needed to go to the airport, because we had a “phantom” engineer coming in from Chicago who needed to be met. So I kindly asked our new customer if we could split the cab to the airport, and I ended up walking them right to check-in counter.

The next day we got the hard copy of the order and a deposit cheque. A new long-term and mutually beneficial relationship was established, and fortunately my grandfather (our owner) let me expense the cab rides to the airport and back.

Having now attended this show as both an equipment seller and a financier, I can say from experience, there will be some significant business done over the four days. Anyone attending will be doing so with a specific purpose in mind.

That said, doing business within the manufacturing industry is more of a marathon than a sprint. It takes a significant amount of time and effort to find (or sell) the right solution, but the greatest value of visiting CMTS may just be the opportunities to reconnect with existing customers (and suppliers) and forge new relationships. Till next month…

Ken Hurwitz is a senior account manager with Blue Chip Leasing Corp. in Toronto. With years of experience in the machine tool industry, Ken now helps manufacturers of all kinds with their capital needs. Contact Ken at (416) 614-5878 or ken@bluechipleasing.com.

About the Author
Equilease

Ken Hurwitz

Vice-President

41 Scarsdale Road Unit 5

Toronto, M3B2R2 Canada

416-499-2449

Ken Hurwitz is the Vice-President of Equilease Corp.