The Goal

250

ask her. "And how soon could they ship the first week's quantity to us?"

"I don't know, but doing it that way, we might not be able to get a volume discount," says Stacey.

"Why not?" I ask. "We'd be committing to the same thou- sand units-it's just that we'd be staggering the shipments."

"Well, then there's the added shipping cost," she says.

"Stacey, we're talking a million dollars in business here," I tell her.

"Okay, but they'll take at least three days to a week to get here by truck," she says.

"So why can't we have them shipped air freight?" I ask. "They're not very big parts."

"Well..." says Stacey.

"Look into it, but I doubt if the air freight bill is going to eat up the profit on a million-dollar sale," I tell her. "And if we can't get these parts, we can't get the sale."

"All right. I'll see what they can do," she says.

At the end of the day, the details are still being sweated out, but we know enough for me to place a call to Jons.

"I've got a deal on those Model 12's for you to relay to Burn- side," I say.

"Really?" says Jons excitedly. "You want to take the busi- ness?"

"Under certain conditions," I tell him. "First of all, there is no way we can deliver the full thousand units in two weeks. But we can ship 250 per week to them for four weeks."

"Well, okay, they might go for that," says Jons, "but when can you start shipping?"

"Two weeks from the day they give us the order," I say.

"Are you sure about this?" asks Johnny.

"The units will ship when we say they will," I tell him.

"You're that confident?"

"Yes."

"Okay, okay. I'll call them and see if they're interested. But, Al, I just hope what you're telling me is real, because I don't want to go through all the hassles we had before with these people."

A couple of hours later, my phone rings at home.

"Al? We got it! We got the order!" shouts Jons into my right ear.

And in my left ear, I hear a million bucks rung up on the cash register.

"You know what?" Jons is saying. "They even like the smaller shipments better than getting all thousand units at once!"

I tell him, "Okay, great, I'll get the ball rolling right away. You can tell them that two weeks from today, we'll ship the first 250."