A Single Roll of Ribbon Can Make All the Difference
by Drew Holmes
As an educational representative for Boomer Music Company in the Thompson School District in Loveland, CO, I visit over a dozen schools every Tuesday. Some of what I do is documented in my View From the Road video series. After I drop Timothy off at school in the morning, I start the van and arrive at my first appointment ten minutes later. Scheduled properly, I see every teacher during a break or planning period so that there is no interruption to their class time.
While on my rounds this week, a teacher paid me some of the nicest compliments I have received since I have been on the road. He commended me for being consistent and conscientious not only in my dealings with customers but also in how I manage my staff. It was gratifying to hear such nice feedback and I tried to humbly accept it.
This got me thinking. Why do I approach this job in a way that could earn such praise? The answer was obvious: my dad.
My father started working at a florist when he was twelve years old. As the family stories go, he was dismissed from school whenever someone died so he could deliver the flower arrangements. Working there gave him an outlet for his natural artistic creativity and eventually led to owning his own flower shop.
Dad sold the shop when I was in preschool and started working as a road representative for a ribbon manufacturer. He sold product to small, usually family-owned florists and craft stores, covering a territory from Hartford, Connecticut, to Fort Kent, Maine. In other words, all New England. Dad drove 40,000+ miles every year, so he would listen to talk radio for company. That would later become Garrison Keillor tapes and finally Harry Potter audiobooks by the time he retired. Most of his career was during the days before email and cell phones, so he would mail appointment postcards to customers in each area to schedule times to visit.
Sometimes in the summer I would go with him on his route. On one of these trips, he asked me to look in his dog-eared road atlas for an address to shop he had never visited. “It’s on Maple Avenue” he said. “That’s probably an older street, so check near the town center.” Scanning the page, I found the street we were looking for, right where he said it would be.
Once he told me about how other sales representatives in his company would set minimums and refuse to fill customer orders that were too small to meet them. What he told me next has always stuck with me.
“I will sell one single roll of ribbon if it helps my customer,” he said.
Dad eventually left that company to work for another ribbon manufacturer and his customers went with him. They knew him and trusted his knowledge and experience. Years of helping them do what they do better had forged such strong relationships they could not imagine having anyone else as a partner in their business.
I reflect on how I approach business at my store and see his fingerprints on everything I do. Each week I email every one of my teachers to remind them of what I have on my shelf to deliver to them or, if I do not have anything, that I will be stopping by at my usual time to visit. This is the modern equivalent of dad’s postcards. I no longer use a paper map, but I do have a GPS on my phone that can locate my next appointment. I listen to the radio and audio books, but these days I also have my podcasts. I frequently stop at schools on my way home to drop off a box of reeds or set of strings needed before my next Tuesday visit. My one roll of ribbon.
I can sum up what I learned from my dad with “Doing the right thing is always the right thing.” If I can help the teachers in my community succeed in helping kids to love music, then I’m doing my job. Now that I have two small boys of my own, I hope I can teach them these just like dad taught me. Sometimes it means making an extra stop on your way home. Or it could be just a single roll of ribbon.