We are sorry to hear that Ray Minter of Battery Sales passed away March 28, 2020, of a heart attack. Very few of you at Continental Battery had the pleasure of meeting Ray Minter, but Luke Miller and I spent 3 positive weeks with the man as we trained the Battery Sales & Service location in Austell, GA on Netsuite. I will have to say I have trained a lot of individuals on Netsuite and the iPad, but Luke and I were absolutely blown away by Ray’s positive attitude and desire to learn.
When Luke and I first met the entire Austell team (Steve, Ray, and Alex) we both thought that Ray would struggle the most with learning the iPad and Netsuite. While our initial assumptions were true, what Luke and I didn’t expect was how positive Ray was about learning our systems. Ray was positive about darn near everything we taught him. It didn’t matter if it was teaching him to hit print in the Point of Sale before he hit Finalize or how to create a Sales Order in the iPad Ray stuck with it and kept smiling and laughing no matter how many times he made a mistake. To quote Ray, "Scott I'm sorry that I am slow to learn this, but it's important to me to get this right because it's what the company needs me to do and I want to do what the company needs for us to be successful.” At the time I just told Ray that it was no big deal, we were there to teach him and not to worry about making mistakes. Looking back on that I have come to appreciate Ray’s attitude about the whole thing. Ray was a 68 year old man who had just gone through open-heart surgery in April and it was just the beginning of August. The company that he had worked the last 6 yrs for had just gotten bought by us and he knew nothing about Continental Battery, but there he stood trying his best to learn this new computer system because he wanted to do what was best for the company.
I think Ray can teach all of us something in that simple statement of his, “it’s important to me to get this right because it’s what is best for the company”. We can all help those around us be better with that same sentiment. A positive attitude is an infectious thing. Luke and I both were infected by Ray’s positive attitude every day we had the pleasure of being around him and I will never forget those three weeks.
Ray Minter was born in Eatonton, GA in 1951. Ray had three children Jamie, Curtis, and Lindsay. He also had four grandkids that I know he enjoyed very much only because he told me about them with a huge smile on his face. Ray was also a racer, he absolutely loved drag racing and building fast cars. Ray also had two amazing friends and co-workers in Steve Paige and Alex Cordova. Ray will be missed by everyone who knew him.
