To state the obvious, 2020 sucked for a lot of businesses. For Kim Bassett, 2020 was a year of trials and tribulations. Before the pandemic, Kim, co-owner of Fontis Nevada, experienced record growth and business profits. After March 2020, they lost 98% of their revenue. Through an arduous process of pivoting and renegotiating with clients, suppliers, and herself, Kim managed to bring the business back to just 25% of what it had been in 2019. Kim captures this inspiring story of rebuilding in her upcoming book, Pivot Point. Listen in with Christine McKay as Kim shares the things she learned along this journey.
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Renegotiating the Path to Recovery with Kim Bassett
I’m excited about every guest because I like learning from all of my guests. It’s such an incredible experience for me. I am excited to have Kimberly Bassett, who is the CEO and the Founder of Fontis. Fontis is a brand merchandising company. We’re going to have her tell you more about it. Kim, first and foremost, is the mother of six. She has been married to her amazing husband for many years. She is a serial entrepreneur, a corporate leader, a trainer, a speaker and an author. She is an Owner of Fontis and that is a woman-owned marketing communication company that specializes in print and promotional products. This is one of the reasons why we wanted to talk. Kim’s business went from this massive high growth trajectory where they were hiring, getting ready to hire people in late 2019, by March of 2020, they had lost 98% of their revenue but Kim and her team have clawed back.
At the end of December 2020 are only 25% below where they were in 2019, which is an incredible success story in the year of the awful COVID pandemic. She has had her team focused on growing and rebuilding business, retaining customers, doing all sorts of things and especially renegotiating both with her customers as well as with their suppliers. She’s also started two online programs. One is called Koffee with Kim and the other one is Fontis Insider. Her first book is called The Pointe of Mastery Series The Pivot. Kim, thank you for being here. I’m happy to have you here. I love our conversations every time we talk. Welcome.
Thank you, Christine. I could not be more honored and more thrilled to be part of this. I have been watching you. We met a couple of years ago and we’re both trying to figure out what else more do we want to do. It’s an honor. I’m excited that we’ve connected this way.
Me too. It was the 15th of December 2019 that we met. We met at an event. Everybody at that event, probably about 500, 600 people there, was all focused on possibilities and dreams for an amazing future. “Get clarity on 2020. 2020 is going to be the best year ever.” That was a fool trick. I know and I know you do too, some people for whom 2020 has been extraordinary. They’ve enjoyed amazing, fantastic success. Hats off to them for being able to leverage their position in the market and to do all of those things but let’s be real, that is not the case for most companies, small businesses especially women-owned businesses are going under left and right, women are leaving the workforce in droves and it’s too much to ask. Be the perfect wife, be the perfect mother, be the perfect boss and employer and now be the perfect teacher because many moms are homeschooling at home too. Women especially in the United States, this is not necessarily as applicable outside the United States but within the US, we are seeing this mass exodus of women saying, “I can’t. Something has to give.”
Unfortunately for many of them, it’s turning out to be their careers. I’m excited to have you here as a registered woman-owned business, which is an amazing thing. Congratulations because that’s a process to go through that. It takes some work to get that designation. Congratulations on going from losing 98% of your revenue in March of 2020 to reestablishing a huge chunk of that revenue and rebuilding that so that you’re only 25% below where you were in 2019. That’s an incredible feat. I want to explore and dig deeper into how you did that because that had to require renegotiating with your customers, suppliers and employees, as well as with yourself. Tell us first about the journey that got you to where you’re at because you’ve got a lot going on.
It started as a little girl and my dad was an entrepreneur. He was a high school teacher. He was an electronics teacher. We had the first computers that came into existence. No high school had computers in there but even before that, he was an entrepreneur. Half of our garage was an electronic shop. I was this little girl, probably 6, 7, 8 years old and I would go out there because I wanted to be with my dad because he was my hero and mentor. I gave him TV tubes as he was repairing people’s tubes. I know I’m dating myself.
I remember rabbit ears and aluminum foil on rabbit ears. My dad climbing on the seat on the roof to adjust the antenna. I know for all the people who are under the age of 40, you have no memory of it.
I met my husband because of electronics because I was working at RadioShack and he came in to buy parts to hook those rabbit ears and aluminum foil stuff. He wanted to do that to his stereo. That’s how we met. He came back and asked me out.
You’ve been married for many years, so that was a good negotiation.
He was the negotiator. He’s a great salesman. He still is to this day as his career. He started out in a good way. I started out and my dad kept creating more businesses. I was constantly working from a young age all the way until eighteen in all these different businesses that he created. He was a serial entrepreneur, my brother and now myself. I’ve always been in either sales, marketing or customer support my whole career. I did have a stint not always in entrepreneurship. I was in Corporate America for quite a while and got to speak and talk and help some of those companies grow. It’s been a journey.
Who you are has a lot to do with your business. Click To TweetWhat led you into Fontis? How did you decide to start that as a company?
My brother and I started a business, my husband and I have good friends who were in the print and promotion. They bought and sold businesses in this industry for years. They said, “Why don’t you take a look at doing this? There’s an opportunity for you.” We’ve known them for ten years and we saw what they were doing but we didn’t even know what we were doing other than being business owners. We jumped in. We have learned tremendously from this. We got to take a lot of our background. I used to be part of trade shows back in the day with COMDEX and computer shows. I had my feet. My husband has been in the tech industry for several years. We were able to come in and see it from our customer’s point of view. That was probably one of our advantages that way.
That’s where it started. We had a bigger piece of the business, a lot of it was in California. We didn’t want to do the California thing anymore. There are a lot of laws and things and whatnot we had to deal with like, “No. Let’s stay in Vegas.” We have one up in the Northwest. We have about 2,500 customers nationwide. Vegas is a unique place because everybody comes to Vegas and they think, “It’s Vegas.” There’s such a beautiful business community here. I have fell in love with it. Being that woman-owned business, I got to be involved in many networking things. I hit the ground running. I’m the show up queen, they call me, and I show up to everything. That’s why you met me at that event. One of the things that I’ve learned from this is the personal development piece I’ve been involved with for several years. That’s a powerful piece of being a business owner because who you are has a lot to do with your business. That’s what I’ve experienced.
When I was on the Jillian Michaels show, something that I talked about was that first and foremost, I’m a lifetime student of Christine McKay. I study myself all the time. How do I show up in this space versus this space? Did this person say something that caused me to react in a certain way? What was it that triggered that reaction? Did I like that reaction? Did I not like that reaction? How do I change that reaction? It’s constantly being in that evaluation state of who I am drives how I show up in all the aspects of my business and starting to see patterns. I’ll pop out and say something to my husband and say, “I realized I have this pattern of behaving in this way in this situation, I need to stop that or I like that pattern. I want to do more of it.” You do a lot of personal development. Being a student of you is how you get better at being you.
That is one of the most beautiful ways to articulate that because it segues into what I was going to talk about next and how I changed my business.
I read your mind.
You did. You were intuitive. It’s the awareness. If you have an awareness of what’s going on inside, you have an awareness of what’s going on around you. Often, we focus on what’s going on outside of us and we forget the inside but because I had been doing that, that was one of the keys as to why I was able to see what was happening. I was seeing what was going on with my customers. I was seeing what was going on in the world. As a result of that, I was like, “These are things I have to be able to pivot and change.” I started doing the negotiation. I started reaching out to which of my vendors were still going to be able to do what I needed them to do. I knew what I had to do. What about my relationships? One of the key things besides that is my relationships. Your relationships at home affect your work. Your relationship at work affects your home. You’re talking about that student of yourself and how that interaction happens and you watch it in your family member, you watch it in friends.
That was one of the keys. I’m a logical person. I like puzzles. “If this happens then when is this going to happen? What does this do?” I started those things happening January, February 2020. March 2020 happened, we were done. Even our vendors, we only had a handful of vendors that were even in business. We even had a chocolate company turn into a sanitizer company. They pivoted. It was beautiful because they were thinking ahead like I was. What do we get to do? We pivoted to the PPE space and being strategic on who I had relationships with and who I started working on those relationships even more so. I was able to pick up a phone call and say, “Where can I support you?” They’re like, “Can you do this and this?” I said, “Yes.” They said, “How soon?”
Tell me a bit about how you initiated those conversations with some of those vendors. We all know it’s the elephant in the room. Especially in Vegas, it was a holdout location in terms of people being resistant to, “Is this pandemic real? Is it fake? Is it fake news?” How did you start to position that conversation? What preparation did you do in advance of those conversations?
I was probably one of those people that thought this was going to be short-lived. We had the biggest event ever capping end of May. I was trying to buy time to get to May because it was going to be a big thing. We’re talking 500, 700 event type of thing. When it kept getting closer and closer and they’re saying it’s not going to happen. I was like, “Okay.” Before that, talking to our vendors, there were a lot of negotiations that went on. Some of the stuff they were getting from China. I learned more about customs and how to get things in than ever before.
Let’s talk a bit about that. I organized an event. I’m a member of the City Club here in Los Angeles. We had an event in August 2020 with the Port Authority of Los Angeles, a guy who’s the CEO of a shipping company and a number of people. It was related on the supply chain. We talked a lot about the issues that we’re facing small businesses because of the supply chain. One, you had the tariffs, then you had stuff sitting in. Tariffs impacted every small business in this country in a negative way. You had that, that had put pressure on. Then with COVID, stuff was sitting in Los Angeles Harbor on ships for weeks.
It was not coming in then it comes into the Harbor. Guess who gets it? Not small business. It got diverted to big companies with big orders, who had contingencies and contracts, who had more leverage and more power in their negotiation with that supplier, so then small businesses that are less with their handout going, “I ordered product. Where the heck is it?” This is affecting filming industries, the lumber industry, your industry in terms of promotional goods, all across manufacturing. This is a huge problem. I want to talk about that. What did you learn about customs? What are some of the things in that learning that you were able to leverage in your conversations with your suppliers to get through that?
The one gift that we had is that because we are a small business, we run independently. We do roll up to a $2 billion company. We have the buying power of them. They help with some of that negotiation but I’m still calling my local person and saying, “I need this.” They’re saying, “You don’t have enough product.” I have a network of people luckily that I can go out and say, “Let’s get together, get our orders together so that we can accomplish this.” Sometimes I was calling up our vendor and saying, “You jacked the price up. What was happening in our industry? Prices were going up overnight within 24 hours.” You would get a quote from a vendor and within 24 hours, the price was higher. I was having to retrain our customers to say, “We’ve got to make decisions.” They’re used to holding on and making decisions slowly or a few days. That changed. Not many people know or have that knowledge that you do unless you’re in that space.
Negotiation is education. Click To TweetI worked in supply chain a lot and I’ve spent a lot of time in the corporate supply chain as a consultant teaching supply chain and strategic sourcing people how to buy and negotiate. That webinar that we did through the City Club was one of the most eye-opening pieces of information that I had gotten throughout this entire pandemic about what was going on in the supply chain. It is ugly.
If there was one thing not said correctly on a label, it was shipped back to China. You have these companies in China doing all of this alcohol stuff. I had a big order for a customer. We’re talking probably a $60,000 to $70,000 order and they got it off the assembly line. They got it into the dock but because they won’t take it unless there’s a certain amount that comes with it, the next thing that came through, their place caught on fire. A lot of that was happening in China because they were having to produce fast for the world because of the alcohol content, all of a sudden, you couldn’t have a normal antibacterial. You had to have alcohol at 70% or more for it to be valid for a business to reopen or to clean. What was going on behind the scenes? People have no idea.
I was having customers yelling and screaming at me and I would listen. I would have to educate and say, “I understand your stress. I’m a small business owner too. I get that. This is what’s happening.” One of the things about me and my customers know, I am authentic and up front. One of the things that is another top three besides relationship and all these things is follow through. I have testimonials from customers that said that because they keep coming back to me because of the follow through. They always knew what was happening with their order. Every morning we would wake up and have a spreadsheet we would go through.
I attribute a lot of those practices to why we were able to come back. Unfortunately, we’ve lost some customers that have gone out of business. It’s heart-wrenching but the ones that stayed with us and worked closely especially with the brand recognition, I have business consultants coming to me. I’m writing a tiny book for them because they’re smaller companies that don’t realize, they said, “We’re not going to trade shows anymore. We’re not doing this anymore. We don’t need promotional products.” You need it more than ever. You need to be top of mind. One of the biggest things you can do is a face mask.
Put your logo on it.
It is a billboard.
I hadn’t thought about that. For those clients who say, “We’re not doing trade shows, we’re not doing this.” How do you convince them? How do you negotiate with them and move them from that negative positioning to acknowledging that your face is the billboard now?
This could be my lack of knowledge but in my experience, negotiation is education.
My philosophy is negotiation is nothing more than a conversation about a relationship. We got a relationship or we’re developing a relationship, we have an existing one or we’ve decided we want to separate and not have a long-term ongoing relationship. How does that separation happen in a way that works for both of us? How do we continue to do business together? How do we start doing business together? I’m a data-driven negotiator, which I would suspect you are too. Education is part of it. It’s also about understanding motives, discovering what the motives are that are driving certain behaviors of our counterparts. It’s a combination of those things.
The why. My customers only say, “Why? Help me understand why?” That is part of the negotiation and the education because for them, it’s a step they’re used to that pen or that little squishy ball that they throw to their kids. I shared this story and example all the time. When we did Fontis, we had these beautiful Fontis bottles and they’re laser engraved and they last, they keep things cold. Several years ago, we had these made. It’s the person for the McCarran Airport. He’s over the McCarran Airport. I saw him and I asked him, he goes, “Kim, I still have that bottle.” I said, “What do you do with it?” He goes, “I take it to yoga every day.” I had another customer whose son took their bottle that I gave them and he wouldn’t give it back. He’s in his twenties and he’s all over town with it.
What I try to explain to my customers, I’m like, “Look at your phone and your computer. What is something that you have that you hold that is a value and that has a logo or something that’s on it?” It’s that psychology. I said, “Why would you spend $100 on a bunch of little, tiny things that are going to get tossed or thrown away? How about you give them something that has intrinsic value?” Those are the kinds of things that I try to help them understand. I said, “I would rather sit down with you, see who your targets are, make a little gift box. You want to keep your customers. You’re not going to get to see them face to face. You can’t go in there and do that. Why not have something that’s on their desk? Why not have something that they wear over their mouth, you brand for them or keep you top of mind or ask about you?”
I always like to do forget-me-not seeds. I’m a huge fan of nicely handwritten notes. I like to buy nice papyrus cards especially when I’m networking and I meet people. I often like to send them a card and then include the prospects especially and then send them a package of forget-me-not seeds. I get emails all the time.
What are forget-me-not seeds?
They’re seeds like garden seeds, flower seeds. What people do is I’ll get emails back from people saying, “I planted these with my grandchild this weekend.” They have a picture of them in the planting process or, “These are my favorite flowers.” It’s different. I have my logo on them so that when they’re planting them, they remember. I grew up in an agricultural community in Montana. It’s part of who I am. I find that when people are doing promotional things like doing something that’s also memorable, that is reflective of who you are, just because everyone gets fidget spinners, it doesn’t mean you should be giving somebody a fidget spinner.
People think less money though. That’s the thing where they go to.
That’s an interesting component. Many years I spent in procurement and working with strategic sourcing people, they get frustrated by me when they’re on the other side of the table from me. I’m working on the sales side. In procurement people are like, “Get the lowest price.” I hear people, “Beat them up on price.” When they’re talking to me, it’s like, “I don’t want to talk about price. We need to iron out the contract first.” They’re like, “What the heck? What’s the price?” I’m like, “I don’t know what other costs are going to be in the contract.” To your point, people go to this low-cost thing. What’s a low-cost thing that I can do?
When you think about your customers, your suppliers and your business, what are some of the things that you have to think about in a negotiation to make sure that you’re achieving the margin that you deserve to make? We can research. We can go on the big Google and figure out the average range of margins on an industry. Every Wall Street Journal analyst will tell you what they are and nobody should be making below their margins. When people start diving to price and saying low price matters, how do you elevate that discussion to make it about value and make sure that you’re maintaining margin and preserving your margin and protecting yourself on the cost side?
It’s a delicate dance. I love that you said it eloquently because that is the dance. That is the negotiation. They’ll say, “I want this.” I’ll ask, “Why is that important to you? What do you want to do with that? What is the intention? Why do you want to give that?” I have a customer I worked with and she says, “I want a mask.” I’m picky on my masks. We’ve all tried lots of different masks. She says, “I want to give them something else.” I said, “What is your budget?” I always ask what the budget is.
Thank you. Every small business owner, ask for what the budget is. Ask for what the process is. What’s the process for getting approvals? How long is it going to take? Do they have the money? You can waste much time having that conversation. People who do sales negotiation tell you this but often people don’t do that. I’m in support of my sales compatriots. Please ask what people’s budget are.
I’ve wasted a lot of time. There’s sometimes I’ll get down to the end of this and they’re like, “No, that’s not the way I’m going to go.” I’ve learned the questions to ask and budget is a big one. If I bring them something amazing and wonderful and they’re like, “I can’t afford that.” If I didn’t ask, that’s crazy.
How much time then would you have wasted and there’s cost. The thing is that you have a customer acquisition cost. One of the things that I’m big on in negotiation is understanding your costs down to the gnat’s ass level detail. What is everything that goes into it? If you don’t know what your numbers are and you don’t know what your costs are then how do you recover that? How do you grow your business? How do you make your business sustainable? You don’t, which is the only reason why Kim could go from losing 98% of her revenue in March 2020 to recovering the vast majority of that by the end of 2020.
We know where our breaking even is. To be able to pay the bills, pay us, pay our employees, pay the light bill, we know what our bottom is. If there’s a volume then we can negotiate that a bit but if it’s a 50-piece item versus 10,000 pieces, big difference.
Just keep giving. It will always return to you. Click To TweetIt’s because you’re defraying costs over a larger number of units, so your cost per unit goes down and your ability to charge can adjust how you charge because you have a lower cost per unit.
We’ve had to work with that. It hasn’t been what it has been in the past. We want to keep them as a customer too and help them to grow in this time too. We have kept our margins at our breaking point quite a bit. Once in a while, we’ve been able to go above, but we’ve been doing that. As a result of that, we’re bringing on more customers. We give them the handholding and the nurturing. I do a lot of consulting without necessarily getting paid for a consulting fee because I bring more value. You can go to a lot of places online and a lot of places to get a tchotchke or a promo piece or this or that but how nice is it? I have one of my sweet customers out of California and she calls me up, she’s like, “I would have to give you the business. I can call you. I have many things I have to deal with. I can call you and no one is going to get taken care of.”
I have one of my previous guests, his name is Scott O’Neil and he’s the CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which owns the New Jersey Devils and the Philadelphia 76ers. They did an analysis around their suppliers and found that the majority of their business was going to the same suppliers over and over again. They’re in Philadelphia, they partnered with the black community in Philadelphia to analyze what the heck was going on. They have launched this new program called Buy Black, which recognizes that minority women-owned businesses that are small can’t adhere to some of the things that a bigger supplier can do. They can’t deliver in the same speed without seriously impacting margin. They can’t produce at the same cost per unit because they don’t have the volume and the steady flow of resources. There are these different things that have come into play. Understanding that you’re underneath this large organization but with respect to your clients, how has that concept come to play for you in terms of how you are competitive against large players who are producing?
It can be tough. We’ve lost a few of our customers because we have customers that are bigger than we are in another state and surprisingly come in and bid on things. The one piece that I’m going to start doing this 2020 is start contacting those buyers and saying, “You know these people are from out-of-state. Why aren’t you helping your in-state?” The organization that I belong to with this, the women enterprise, we need to have a bit more of a presence probably. That’s something that I would like to probably change now that I have a bit more breathing room from 2020. The awareness is important. Sometimes they go for the lowest price.
Which is their incentive to do that.
They are. Whether you’re a university or government, a lot of times it’s their incentive to do that. I get that but it’s changing. Having those conversations, those negotiations of changing that mindset, I love that story that you said, that’s an amazing thing that they care about that.
He’s amazing. I don’t think Scott realizes how many times he and his organization get mentioned throughout my show. He’s a leader who leads from a heart-centered place.
That’s where I lead from as well.
I know that. That’s part of why I shared Scott’s story because it resonates with you and what you do in your business and who you are as a business owner as well.
The Fontis Insider, that platform is where I’m also going to be giving back. You don’t know what you don’t know. I have customers who buy promo from me but they have all kinds of forms and envelopes and everything else that they do. They don’t even know we do that. Even though we tell them, it doesn’t register because it’s not visual. Some people do all forms and they don’t use any of our processes for promotional products or for apparel or scrubs or all these other things that we can help with. My Fontis Insider platform, I’m bringing my vendors on. You get to see firsthand my vendors, who I go to, my go-to people and they’re going to show you what’s coming out new.
What are some specials that are coming out? You can save money on this or that and be able to see firsthand, go up, pull it up, 20, 25 minutes, talk to one of our vendors. I’m going to be interviewing my customers. Anyone that wants to be a customer or a customer or an industry leader like yourself. Coming in and helping our customers, helping people know how to negotiate. Having those skills, bringing them value as a business owner online to be able to keep giving and giving. I call it a gift shift. It’s that shift from being able to give, that reciprocity, that Law of Reciprocity, I give to you and you want to give and return.
I’m glad that you raised that because that’s something that needs to be talked about more with respect to negotiation especially if you’re entering into a new contract or you have an existing relationship that you want to continue. The concept of reciprocity is paramount to having a successful relationship. It is the reason why I also have the saying, “You cannot win a relationship because a relationship is about reciprocity.” Reciprocity is not equality in a relationship but it is reciprocal. There is reciprocal benefit and gain. Especially if you’re in a relationship like you did when things went to hell after March 2020 and the United States came to a screeching halt. Sometimes reciprocity is this is a relationship that’s been working for me for 5, 10, 15, 20 years and it’s not working for me anymore.
Reciprocity is being able to have the relationship where you can go to your counterpart and say, “This relationship that’s been working for me for a long time isn’t working. We need to change the relationship.” Whereas reciprocity is saying, “How do we change it?” Giving each other that permission, that latitude, that respect to do that, to ask for that and to give and to receive that. That’s a big thing. Clearly, for you to be able to recover so much of your revenue that you had lost at the end of March 2020, that reciprocity exists within your supply chain and your customer base. That reciprocity is what keeps you around.
It’s the relationship, it’s being able to renegotiate that. When we were in that whole other realm, they come back and they go, “Kim, you told me it was this price.” I’m like, “Yes, but I had to learn quick. It happened twice to me. I had to find out quick.” I stopped going to one of my vendors because they kept doing that to me. Now, they’re calling me and saying, “You haven’t been working with us. You haven’t been buying from us.” There’s a reason. I’m not going to come back to my customer and say, “You have to eat it now.” Some of them had said, “Let’s share it.” I said, “I can go someplace else and look.” They’re like, “No, we’ll share in this.” There’s that relationship where they know they can push back on me and I can push back on them.
You were talking about how prices kept going up. I get these emails from this guy who will not even know that I’m promoting him probably but his organization is called ProPurchaser. He tells this great story and I cannot remember his name, he tells the story about barbecues and manufacturing barbecues. An old-fashioned barbecue, not the gas kind but the old-fashioned briquette kind, it’s made of steel. That’s the number one component in it. He sent me out an email about the price of steel. When we get into these relationships, one of the things I want to caution some of our readers especially if you’re in manufacturing, if you are in manufacturing and I don’t care if you’re technology manufacturing, medical devices manufacturing, textiles, if you are dealing manufacturing, your number one thing is to know everything there is to know about your supplier’s costs.
In your case, Kim, you had suppliers coming to you and saying, “Prices are going up.” Where were prices when you initially entered into the relationship? Are prices higher now than they were when you initially entered into that relationship and entered into that contract? Are they doing a hockey stick? What a lot of people in manufacturing do is they don’t pay close enough attention to future’s pricing and what’s going on in the market? How can they hedge pricing increases? Evaluating that delta, what were prices of that commodity item at 0.0 when I entered into this contract? Are they higher? Are they lower and they’re trying to take advantage of a momentary increase that isn’t reflective of my relationship with them? If you are in manufacturing, know your supplier’s costs. Hedge them, figuring that out, negotiate with that so that you have knowledge about that.
I do love that’s one of his big messages, know your supplier’s costs because everyone focuses on revenue. In small businesses, I get these all the time, “I’m doing great. I’ve got $1 million in revenue. I’ve got $50 million in revenue.” I’m like, “I care less how your revenue is.” What’s your margin? What are you putting in the bank? What are you preserving for growth? If you are negotiating for revenue, you are missing the point. You need to negotiate for profit, not for revenue. From a wisdom perspective from this gentleman from ProPurchaser, how have you seen that play out in your negotiation?
What we had happen is it was knee jerk. Everybody was in a panic. Everybody had to have it yesterday. That’s why I had done some work ahead of time to know who to go to, what I was going to go after and who I was going to help, which my customers were going to be the most impacted. A lot of it was my government agencies. What I did to figure out who was going to be able to stay in business, who was in that space, what the pricing was but I did talk to one of the owners once. He said, “Kim, I’m barely keeping up above my head above water. The shipping has gotten out of control.” It wasn’t necessarily the product cost. It was the shipping because they couldn’t get the boats here fast enough. The boats would get here. Everything you said, all the bottlenecks. They weren’t wanting things to come from China. People didn’t want things to come from China. People were moving their manufacturing to other locations.
That’s a time-consuming process. That’s a three-year process. It’s so everybody knows, you don’t one day wake up and say, “I’m moving my manufacturing plant from China to Malaysia.” That takes effort.
People were panicking.
They were panicking. You get quality issues. An author that I read, he’s in sales so he talks about sales-related negotiation, which as my readers know, sales is a part of negotiation but it’s not all of the negotiation. From a sales perspective, he talks about emotion costs you money at the negotiation table. Whether you are making knee-jerk reactions like Kim is describing, that costs you money that you probably didn’t need to spend. What were your alternatives if people had stopped, breathe, taken a moment and said, “How does this play out? Let’s play this out logically, practically. What does this look like?” You would have been able to plan differently like what you did and anticipating this could be a problem. COVID should not have taken many people by surprise. It was in the news starting in November of 2019. We saw increasing issues. The WHO issued the warnings then we saw this escalation. Did we have personal experience with it? Of course not but a good risk analysis would tell you that the proverbial shit was going to hit the fan. It was going to hit the fan and what you did is you saw the writing on the wall and started to plan in advance so that you could position yourself.
As the only logical choice, that’s what my intention was. Fontis was the logical choice to go to and we hit that for a good three-month stride. It is what kept our doors open. Have we had slowdowns and some slumps? Absolutely, but we have someone internally who’s making phone calls every day to our customers. That it in itself was also why we were able to retain our customers and help them along the way as well. They were like, “I’m grateful to hear from you, Sandy. Thank you. I’m grateful to be able to hear your voice and have someone to talk to.” People got lonely.
It is interesting a lot of business moved from a three-dimensional space to a two-dimensional space, which is a different communication and interaction. It takes a different amount of time. I’m hats off to you and your team for working to pull things out and rebuild after that disastrous March 2020 and be on a continual growth trajectory coming out of 2020 and into 2021 because you paid attention. You didn’t read tea leaves. You read the writing on the wall. There were no tea leaves involved. It was writing on the wall and you prepared and you planned. Because you prepared and you planned, you put yourself in a position where you could renegotiate logically, taking into consideration what was going on with tariffs, shipping, things sitting in harbors, leverage your relationships and maintain those relationships with your customers.
For the readers, I hope that you’ve been able to get a great picture of the things that Kim did to set her company up for ongoing success through this whole pandemic. Renegotiation was key, through her supply chain, with her customers. We didn’t even talk about your employees but we had in a previous call, we talked about how you had to renegotiate with your employees as well. I appreciate that. I appreciate you being on with us here. How can people find you? You had something you wanted to share with the readers.
Negotiate for profit, not revenue. Click To TweetI have a book coming out. If you’ll reach out to me at [email protected], I have what is called The Pivot Point. It’s a short book. The books that I write are short, they’re 40, 50 pages. Something you can read when you’re on the toilet. It’s a book that describes a lot of what we talked about here. It’s going to be the first book of a series. The second one’s going to be more of a personal, taking those shifts personally. My third book is going to be people like all of us who have done that pivot. What have they done? What are the tools? What did they use to do that? That’s what I have coming out this 2021 besides the two talk shows.
Please check out GoFontis.com and follow Kim. Are you on LinkedIn?
I’m on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. Christine, thank you. You provide such value for your readers. I know how much I have gained out of our relationship and the stories that you’ve shared with me. It was such an honor to be here.
Thank you. I appreciated it. I’ve wanted to have you on the show. I love what you do. It’s always interesting to see women in a different space that you wouldn’t necessarily normally see in. I always get excited when I can talk to another woman about supply chain stuff.
I love that you have so much knowledge about it. We have much in common with that. It’s fun.
I also have a book coming out. You can go to VennNegotiation.com and look on our Press page to find our order form so you can preorder our upcoming book, Why Not Ask? A Conversation About Getting More, where we have wide-ranging conversation about negotiation, negotiation philosophy, knowing what you want, knowing how to ask, risk related to contract. We cover everything from prenups and divorce to how to buy a car, the software licensing. It is a conversation about negotiation. Why Not Ask? A Conversation About Getting More, check it out. To our readers, thank you for spending your time, which is the most valuable gift that you can give to us. Thank you for sharing your time with us. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Have a great day.
Important Links:
- Fontis
- Koffee with Kim
- Fontis Insider – Facebook
- ProPurchaser
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn – Kim Bassett
- Facebook – Kimberly Stephens Bassett
- YouTube – Koffee with Kim LIVE
- Why Not Ask? A Conversation About Getting More
About Kim Bassett
Kim Bassett is the mother of 6, wife of 34 years, serial entrepreneur, corporate leader, trainer, speaker, and author.
She owns Fontis a women-owned marketing communication company that specializes in print and promotional products. Her team’s focus is helping you grow your business, retain your customers, and get your business new qualified buyers.
She also recently started 2 online shows. Koffee with Kim and Fontis Insider.
The first book of her Pointe of Mastery series The Pivot Point comes out, the end of January.