10/12/2016
News Events
Scott O'Day Point of view ... Cover Story in "TED Magazine" September 2016
Scott O’Day, vice president of sales and marketing at Controller Service & Sales, headquartered in Avon, Mass., pointed out that his firm charges for some value-added services—including VFD start-up and service, technical support, component assembly, kitting, and training to a lesser degree.
“We’ve been doing it off and on for the past 10 years,” he said. “We specialize in industrial motor control and automation products, and some of the charges are line items and others are buried into the cost of the equipment..
We have a UL508 panel shop in Providence, R.I., where we take the components that we sell and engineer and package them into control systems. We charge for engineering, start-up, and labor and assembly—it’s often seamlessly built into the customer’s price.
“Our customers are definitely okay with that,” he continued. “If they are charged for other services, they know it up front. When we have engineers go out to evaluate and service equipment.
We charge for that on a per hour basis plus expenses. We also pick and choose our battles. If it’s a large account with a long-term relationship, we usually do it for no charge. We try to charge first and then be flexible. Retaining our customers is important.”
