Reading through the various comments today, I found myself smiling. I,
like many on this list, am in high tech sales and marketing. This is
the kind of problem we dream of:
Many customers demanding product and not enough to go around. Wow,
what a dilemma!
As mentioned this will be discussed at length with the steering
committee. I would encourage those members to ask their marketing,
sales, manufacturing, and customer service VPs what they would do in
this situation.
One answer will be clear - they will not turn away customers.
The Sales VP will tell you to split the territory and hire more reps.
(North Bay/South Bay region?). The marketing VP will tell you to raise
prices since demand is strong (three runs for $25). Manufacturing will
say they are swamped and can't build anymore - "Jim, I'm giving it all
she's got!" (Start earlier, change processes) and the customer
service VP will say they have a plan, but no funding to implement it
(pre-registration, rookie orientation, parallel on-site reg tables,
etc.)
There are hundreds of thousands of people moving to the Bay Area each
year. Many have discretionary funds to buy cars and race them. This
is all good news. This is also a Bay Area phenomenon that the good
people in Colorado and other places will not be dealing with. That
means we have a chance to lead. As a sales director, it's against my
nature to turn away customers. There have been many good suggestions
today that can help, all having some cost associated with them, none
are a silver bullet fix. Think long and hard. You don't want to go
through this every season.
patrick
98 Neon ACR
98 Viper GTSR #33
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