Sold on selling

RPM Inc. in western Michigan earns the Progressive Distributor Sales Training Excellence Award.

by Richard Vurva

When Bruce Baker acquired RPM Inc. in April 2000, what he learned about the company came as no big surprise. Its sales force was long on experience and product knowledge but, like most distributor sellers, had little exposure to professional sales training. As a result, salespeople focused on selling products and tended to spend most of their time within a narrow customer group.

It didn’t take long for Baker, who has a long history of managing industrial distribution companies and recently served as president of the Industrial Distribution Association, to put his imprint on the Grand Rapids, Mich., company. First, he invited key managers and a leading salesman to join him in a series of off-site planning meetings to develop a market analysis for the company. The group met over a four-month period to assess RPM’s strengths, weaknesses and market opportunities. After completing the analysis, the team shared its findings with the sales force to give them a better understanding of the products and services they could promote within specific customer segments.

Baker’s next step was to schedule a series of training sessions for the company’s five outside salespeople, led by well-known distributor sales coach Dave Kahle of the DaCo Corporation.

Despite the abysmal economy, the sales team is approaching customers with renewed vigor and purpose. Today, instead of looking at themselves as just another belt and power transmission components supplier, RPM’s salespeople approach customers in a new way.

“We describe ourselves as a material conveying support company,” Baker says. “Whether it be a roller conveyor or a belt conveyor, whatever you’re doing, we can provide anything you need to keep that material moving within an operation.”

The company’s efforts earned it Progressive Distributor magazine’s 2002 Distributor Sales Training Excellence Award.

The bad old days
In the past, Baker says, salespeople were more into selling things. They’d go to customers and say, “I can get you a motor, a bearing, etc.” 

“Now, we’re trying to sell the company as a full-service material handling conveyor support company,” he says. 

For example, one of the core competencies revealed by the market analysis was RPM’s field service capabilities. Although RPM offered a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week belt repair service, it was rarely touted by salespeople. Today, it’s a key talking point.

“When a customer has a conveyor with a damaged belt in need of repair, we can send a crew to make the repair any time of day or night,” Baker says.

Instead of selling components, salespeople now talk in terms of solutions. For example, one customer, a toothbrush manufacturer, needed to move toothbrushes uphill from one point in the production process to another. RPM sent in a salesman with an OEM supplier to design a new conveyor system.

“Before, if that customer didn’t need a belt or a motor or a piece of chain or a bearing, it wouldn’t have been on our radar screen,” Baker says.

In some cases, RPM’s problem-solving emphasis helped it break into accounts where salesmen were previously unsuccessful. For example, Dave Schilling, an outside salesman, recently visited a local manufacturing plant with a stamping operation in which foam was being cut on a conveyor belt. Over time, the constant stamping tended to damage the belt.

The customer would pay $2,800 for a belt that would last just four weeks. Schilling went in with a vendor and proposed a new belt that would cost $6,000. The belt is guaranteed to last 12 weeks and will likely last up to 6 months. They got the business.

“It was the classic scenario,” Baker says. “He went in, identified a problem, fixed it and gave them a solution.” The next step is to gather enough documentation to show the total cost savings over the life of the belt.

Learning the ropes
Schilling is one of the newest outside salespeople at RPM. He had been an inside salesman since 1986, so he had a wealth of product knowledge. Since switching to outside sales last year, Schilling has already learned that positioning himself as a solutions provider requires a mindset different from a product peddler.

“First, you ask their objectives,” Schilling says. “What are you carrying on the conveyor? Where are you carrying it from and where are you carrying it to? How fast do you want it to go? Is it on an incline? Is it horizontal? Do you need variable speed control? Do you need adjustable height? From those questions, you start to determine if you need a stainless steel conveyor with a food-grade belt and a washdown motor and washdown reducer and stuff like that.”

In other words, part of a salesperson’s job is to locate bottlenecks and problems and offer solutions.

Schilling credits Kahle’s training sessions for helping him to get up to speed quickly.

“He gave me a road map of how the sales process works, how to make appointments, organize your files and your customers and how to make a sales call,” Schilling says.

One of the tips he learned from Kahle was to prepare an opening benefit statement, and put it down in writing if necessary, that gives a customer or prospect a reason to return your call.

“Once you get in front of a customer, make sure you have something of significance to say,” Schilling says. “Know what specific product or problem-solving technique you’re going to talk about. People do not want to have their time wasted by you saying, ‘How are you? Here’s a calendar or a line card.’ They want to know you’re coming in to either solve a problem or introduce something new.”

Getting organized
Helping distributor salespeople become more focused in their approach to customers is a key part of Kahle’s training. 

“Selling for distributors is a unique selling situation,” Kahle says. “One of the unique aspects of distributor sales is that they may have 5,000 to 50,000 SKUs and all that represents in terms of prices, reps, etc. That’s a major organizational issue that most salespeople do not confront.”

One of the things he teaches salespeople is to rate customers and prospects on the basis of their potential, and then adjust the time they spend with each account accordingly.

“You want to work more frequently with the high potential accounts. That sounds so simple and so basic, but very few people do it,” he says.

Before a typical training session, salespeople listen to an audio tape by Kahle that introduces a basic sales concept, such as time management. When he meets with the class in person, he’ll talk about the concept further and then give them a specific assignment, such as to spend 50 percent of their time on A accounts and 50 percent on all other account types over the next 30 days. When the group meets again, he’ll ask them to share their results. Did they spend more time with high-potential accounts? Did it make a difference in their effectiveness?

“The purpose of training is to change behavior,” Kahle says. “If you’re going to do behavior change, you’re better off with a series of shorter meetings than a big chunk all at once. Ideally, you want to arrange content so that you focus on one set of behaviors or concepts, give people very practical and specific ideas, then give them an assignment to practice. If you do that, very methodically, you’re going to get behavior change.”

Selling is a frame of mind
Bringing in Kahle for sales training isn’t the only way RPM salespeople sharpen their selling skills. Salespeople attend annual spring workshops sponsored by the Industrial Distribution Association (see “Take your performance up a notch” below). They also participate in annual training seminars sponsored by the National Industrial Belting Association, and Baker recently acquired the interactive product training program developed by the Power Transmission Distributors Association.

At monthly sales meetings, salespeople share success stories. They try to focus conversation on what helped them earn success in an account, rather than just what products they’re moving.

Baker also annually buys books on selling to pass out to salespeople during the holidays. He figures that even seasoned salespeople can benefit by being exposed to new ideas.

“Selling is a skill, not an art,” he says. “It can be taught and there are certain things you can do to make it more effective.”

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2002 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2002.

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