About 20 years ago I worked for an electrical parts supply house. We sold material to industrial companies around South East Michigan. Ford motor Company was our largest customer. They spent about $200,000 per month with us.
Business was good.
The company hired some new young management. These guys came in and we're going to make the place as efficient as possible, and cut off some dead weight.
Well, they made some changes. They laid off 4 people that they said were unneeded.
For some reason unknown to them, the Ford business went from $200k to zero.
So the new management called an emergency meeting to try to figure out the Ford problem.
They asked the group why the Ford business was down. Someone raised their hand and told them that the reason we haven't seen any purchase orders from Ford was because they laid off the guy who used to sell to Ford.
Here is the back story: Ken, an older gentleman who had the relationship with Ford, didn't know the computer system well at all. So he would bring Ford purchase orders into the building every day, and hand them off for someone else to input them into the system. So when you looked at computer reports, it looked like Ken was not productive at all. While in reality, Ken was THE most productive person there.
Ken was the first person these young bucks laid off.
Ken and I were friends, and neither one of us could figure out why they let him go.
The day of the layoff, Ken went home and made 1 phone call to a competitor. Turns out that you can get hired real quick if you do 2.5 million a year with Ford.
The new company gave him a company vehicle and commission, two things he didn't have at the old job. Overall Kens pay went up about $35k per year.
After the meeting to figure out why Ford was no longer buying, they immediately called Ken and admitted their mistake and begged him to return.
Ken said “nah”.