Information Management
Do You Sell or Do You Buy
Products or Solutions? Philip J. Baratz
You sell services and solutions.
Most full-service fuel dealers take umbrage when
they hear someone say, Oil is oil. I just want to
pay a low price or I’ll just shop around for the
best cash on delivery (COD) price—the savings
is worth the effort. After all, it takes a lot more
to keep a house warm than simply the fuel that
goes into the tank.
• Who is going to make sure that there are
no run-outs in the winter?
• Who is going to make sure that the
heating equipment is installed and
maintained properly?
• Who is offering a variety of pricing options
(other than that the customer needs
to supply a credit card when they place
the order)?
The real question that most fuel dealers try to
convey to customers is, How expensive is it for
homeowners to “save” money?
We live in a world where price does matter—
actually it matters a lot. However, we are also in
a world where service and value matter, perhaps
(and hopefully) even more. If a customer can buy
oil cheaper from a COD dealer, but has a run-out
or needs some payment terms, how valuable is
the ability to save 30¢ or 40¢ per gallon? Is $60
saved on a delivery worth a possible runout or
a night in a warm hotel room because no one
maintained the heating equipment at home,
and it failed?
Fuel in a tank is necessary to keep a home
properly heated, but it is only a part of what is
needed to do so.
These examples are just so obvious to all of
us who understand the true value of full-service
offerings (budget plans, equipment service, price
caps, tank monitors), that we cannot understand
why anyone sees things differently than we do.
Simple. End of story…or is it?
Angus Energy
pbaratz@angusenergy.com
/company/angus-energy
/AngusEnergy
@AngusEnergy
Do you buy products or solutions?
If you own remote tank monitors, you have a product
that can be very powerful for you and your customers.
It should allow you to know when usage is not following
historical K-factors and baseload consumption
calculations. It should allow you to avoid runouts
and avoid making unnecessarily small and inefficient
deliveries. It should allow you to treat each
individual tank as a gear in a well-oiled (pardon
the pun) machine, and not some piece of data that
someone must look at every single day to make a
“deliver/don’t deliver” decision. Are your monitors
a product or a solution?
Yes, monitors need to be affordable to purchase,
install, maintain and to get the monthly service.
They also need to give you a return on investment
(ROI). Have you driven up your delivery sizes
relative to what you were doing in the past? Have
you increased your customer retention? Have you
implemented a method to use monitors to avoid
certain unnecessary deliveries in peak times of
the year—and to make some deliveries specifically
designed to avoid those same deliveries? Can you
even answer these questions?
We are mostly brand agnostic as to which monitors
you currently have on your customer tanks.
We want to help you make the most of the value
of those products (the monitors). Monitors will not
make you more efficient or more profitable. Monitors
are merely one of the tools that can lead to improved
efficiency and profitability.
If you need some advice as to what to do with the
monitoring information, regardless of monitor type
and regardless of back-office system (BOS), reach out
to one of our reps and we would be happy to help.
The COD customer is spending money under the
(incorrect?) impression that there is money being
saved. If you are buying monitors and not using
them to save money clearly and definably, are you
acting any differently? ICM
30 ICM/November/December 2022