How a $400 Million Opportunity was Lost
Before I became a marketing consultant I was an electrical engineer…actually still am.
In the mid 80’s I was asked to help automate Apple’s manufacturing plant in Carrollton, Texas. I was part of a team of 12 engineers and a number of sub-contractors that created the most automated factory in the U.S. at that time. The factory could produce 1,500 computers per day with only six people. Almost all of the work was handled by robots, conveyors, computer controlled pallet storage and computer controlled forklifts.
Apple quietly shut the factory down before it went online. We designed the factory to build 1,500 computers a day and Apple was only selling 600 per week of the model were to originally produce at this factory. For accounting reasons this automated factory was shut down.
During the one year project I became friends with a number of the sub-contractors. After the factory was shut down, I received a call from a group of the sub-contractors who had an appointment with General Dynamics to pitch them on automating some of their factories. They wanted me to handle the data networking for the factories and join them in their first sales call.
A week later, four of us piled into a car and drove from Dallas to Fort Worth for the presentation. All of us were geeks and did very little sales preparation although one guy did have a PowerPoint presentation. I suggested we ask questions to find out what they wanted.
The four hour meeting went horribly wrong. The main speaker for our group talked about what we did, how we did it and went on and on for three and a half hours. You could see the General Dynamics’ folks wearing down and then one of them announced they had to go. We pleaded with him to stay for 30 more minute and we finally let them talk and asked what they wanted us to do for them.
They explained there was a new government program that would provide up to $8 million in funding per manufacturing plant in automation if the plant would pass on a portion of the savings onto the government. Their problem was they didn’t know how to put together Request for Proposals (RFPs) for the factory automation projects. They had 48 factories between themselves and their sub-contractors that qualified for the program. That’s nearly $400 million in possible factory automation projects.
To my horror our spokesman started saying we would be happy to bid on the automation portion but weren’t interested in the consulting part. The ride home was a heated debate where I demanded, pleaded, and begged them to take on the consulting portion. I knew that the chances were quite high of whoever prepared the RFP to land the implementation. They wanted nothing to do with it. They were in the factory automation business, not in the consulting business.
To my horror, they called them the next day and turned down the RFP consulting job.
I could not believe they turned down the RFP development consulting project because they wanted to factory automation and not consulting.
They never did land the automation of a single one of the 48 factories.
This was a classic example of missing out on Acres of Diamonds.
What I’ve found is that often, Acres of Diamonds, don’t show up just like you would like to at first. You often have to do something else first.
What golden opportunities have you passed up because it didn’t look exactly like you wanted?
What opportunities are staring you right in the face but don’t look exactly like what you want?
Just like my friend who turned a hobby into a publishing empire, it didn’t look like Acres of Diamonds for the first two years when he published his free newsletter at his expense. See Hobby Turned to Business.
Had we taken the RFP consulting contract, we probably would have earned $150,000 in consulting fees and would almost certainly have landed one or more of the 48 automation projects at $8 million each.
I’m not suggesting you abandon your dream, I’m suggesting that you may have a step or two that needs to be handled before your dream opportunity can be realized.
One of Murphy’s laws is: “before you do something you have to do something else first.” That isn’t always that bad and the end results can be spectacular.
What are your Acres of Diamonds?
About the Author
Dan Swanson is an Internet marketing consultant, who systematically increases qualified traffic and improves conversions of visitors to customers for client’s websites. For more information on his Internet marketing consulting services visit http://www.iq2.com.
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