Page 55 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

We enjoy what we do
“And in the bathroom, I saw an ad above one of the urinals that read: Win a free Harley. With the purchase of a Cat skid steer, you can enter a drawing to win a free Harley Davidson. And below that was my name and my phone number! It was just Eric’s way of having fun with me be- cause my phone started ringing off the hook with people asking about that free Harley. Those urinal ads also had the North America Cat dealers laughing in hysterics. But it was because, once again, Peterson has more creativity than any other company out there.”
(L-R) John Krummen in 2002 as BCP/CCE sales manager in San Leandro; Eric Martin as BCP/CCE sales manager in 2000.
SATISFACTION BUILDS RELATIONSHIP: JUSTIN MOOTE, PETERSON FIELD SERVICE
Back in March 2017, Justin Moote (Albany field tech, 2013–19), got a call to check out a customer’s new RoGator sprayer. “He’d bought it from us the year before, but he didn’t winterize it, so it froze up when he went to use it. The valves were cracked, the manifold was broken, and there was a bunch of rubber stuck down in the pump. So I tore the pump apart, cleaned it out, and it worked for about three hours. Then it plugged up again. You can imagine the guy’s frustration. I went back and tore the pump apart again, found more rubber, and got it running again, and it’s been working ever since.
“A couple days later, the cus- tomer called me on my direct line about some issues he was having with the auto-guid- ance system on that same sprayer. So I went up there after work and rode around with him for a couple hours until we got that dialed-in right. To me, fun is seeing the
satisfaction on a customer’s face when you get his equipment running again. Because it means I’ve succeeded in my job.The way I look at it,if it’s not fun,it’s not worth doing.I wake up and go to work and I enjoy my job. I look forward to it every day.”
Back in the mid-1990s, Peterson sent many of its employees to a Cat-recommended training course called the Successful Life, put on by motivational coach Ed Foreman. His three-day program—dubbed Happy Camp by the employees—inspired people to reevaluate their thinking patterns, learn something new every day, and make the impossible happen by believing you can. One of Foreman’s favorite sayings was: Your altitude equals 10 percent aptitude plus 90 percent attitude. That’s Peterson’s Core Value of Fun in a nutshell.
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