Progressive Distributor - The big sales slip up

The big sales slip-up

Stop stepping over lost sales. Selling sorbent products can be a profit center for salespeople who know how to spot opportunities.

by Richard Vurva

Remember the last time you walked in a machine shop or manufacturing plant and stepped over an oil spot on the floor? You just walked past a sale.

Distributor salespeople literally may be stepping over sales every day and not know it. Although they’re not glamorous or high-tech, sorbent products are used in virtually every manufacturing facility, representing a terrific repeat sales opportunity.

According to product manufacturers, the first step in training salespeople the art of selling sorbent products is to teach them how to look for product applications.

“One of the initial things we do is train salespeople to start looking down,” says Bob Purdy of sorbent manufacturer SpillTech Industries, which merged with LeapFrog Technologies in January. It sounds simple, but until floors are clear of oil drips, cutting fluid spills and boot prints made from lubricants and liquids tracked around the plant, there will be a need for a variety of sorbent products.

The salespeople that are most successful are willing to walk around plants and look for leaks, drips and spills, says Mark Johnson of Sorbent Products Co. (SPC).

“This kind of sale isn’t done over a desk in the buyer’s office,” he says. “You’ve got to look at how they’re using the products, look for evidence of past spills, stains on the floor and drains in areas that need to be protected.”

Recommending the correct sorbent depends on the kinds of fluids that leak and spill around a given machine. Is it an oil leak? Are solvents, acids or chemicals involved? Different sorbents handle different types of liquid.

Here is a look at commonly used sorbents:

Clays: These chemically inert products absorb most liquids safely, are inexpensive and can be discarded in both sanitary and hazardous waste landfills. However, they are much heavier than other products, are labor-intensive, only hold their weight or less in liquid and leave a gritty, dusty residue that can affect machine filters, gears, transmissions and other moving parts.

Clay conversion
Despite the growth in polypropylene and other synthetic-based pads, socks and rolls, some users staunchly stick with clay for sopping up spills. The way to convert a customer from clay to a packaged product is to get the user to look at total cost.

A product that is twice as expensive but absorbs four times more than the cheaper product is a better overall deal. For example, it might take seven pounds of corncob to absorb one gallon of paint. To do the same job, it takes five pounds of newsprint, three pounds of peat and just two pounds of a plastic-based product.

SpillTech’s Purdy says to ask clay users two questions:
How much do you use? Who cleans up the clay?

If the machine operator scoops up the dirty clay and throws it away, the company is paying operator’s wages for a maintenance task. Even if the job falls to maintenance people, their time could be used more productively. It takes less time and it’s easier to pick up a soaked sock or pad than it does to shovel up used clay.

Purdy’s final piece of advice is to keep things simple.

“The last thing you want to do when you’re trying to convert someone from clay is introduce six or 10 products,” he says. “They are accustomed to using one product and all they had to do was dump it on the floor.”

Other organics: These products include ground corncobs, rice hulls, peat and recycled newspaper. They are more expensive than clays but are still relatively inexpensive. They are light and hold about four times their weight in liquid. They are biodegradable and can be incinerated.

Organics create dust, but not as much as clay. They come in pillows and socks (polyester or polypropylene skins filled with the organic compound).

You can’t use an organic sorbent on aggressive or hazardous chemicals because doing so could cause a chemical reaction, such as spontaneous combustion, depending on how the chemicals react with the organic material in the sorbent.

Polypropylenes: These plastic-based, chemically inert products are divided into several sorbent groups. Oil-only polypropylenes pick up oil; chemical polys absorb acids; universal polys pick up any type of liquid, from oil to acid, to water-based coolants and chemicals.

Polypropylenes are more expensive than clays or organics, but are durable, lightweight and absorb around 20 times their weight in liquid. They’re produced as pads, rolls, socks and pillows.

Polys can be disposed of in sanitary or hazardous landfills, depending on the liquid content. They can be incinerated and, in some cases, reused. Some manufacturers color-code polypropylene socks, pads and rolls to help users identify what is being absorbed so hazardous materials can be handled safely.

Keep it simple
The marketplace trend is toward simplification. Customers want to use one product that will give them the broadest base of applications.

“We went into a GM plant that was using 12 to 15 different products from about five different suppliers,” Purdy says. “Over the course of three years, we helped them consolidate to one distributor and three products, saving them time and money.”

How can you tell if a customer might be using the wrong product? Manufacturer catalogs provide charts that indicate which product to use for given spills, but a more common-sense approach works, too.

“The two things I tell salespeople to do in order to steer their customers to the right product is to look at what they’re using currently, then look at what they’re throwing away,” says SPC’s Johnson.

If they’re throwing away a pad that is modestly saturated, say, only 20 percent wet, they could probably get by with a smaller or lighter product. If the pad or sock is heavily saturated, they may require something with more capacity, need to change it more often, or stop the flow by putting
a drip pan in place.

Durability is another issue. If you see a product in the trash that is shredded to bits, the user might want to switch to a more durable product designed to withstand pedestrian or vehicle traffic.

Close analysis of how a product is used might result in a larger sale. For example, for areas with heavy liquid flow and pedestrian traffic, SpillTech has introduced a modular floor tile unit. It’s a snap-together tile system with a layer of absorbents underneath.

“Now you have an anti-skid surface with anti-fatigue properties and a layer of absorbent materials that is protected,” says Purdy. “It prolongs the life of the absorbent. That’s just one way to transition a customer from one product to another.”

Johnson says SPC designed a detailed environmental survey that salespeople can use to do plant walk-throughs to spot sorbent applications. A new Web site under development will also provide end-users and distributors with detailed information about the types of fluids found in plant settings, product application assistance, and OSHA and EPA environmental regulations pertaining to various fluids and chemicals.