A passion for learning

BC Bearing Group wins the 2007 Progressive Distributor Sales Training Excellence Award

by Rich Vurva

Although he’s now president of The BC Bearing Group headquartered near Vancouver, British Columbia, Dermot Strong is an accountant by trade. He believes the education he received to earn the chartered accountant designation, comparable to a certified public accountant in the U.S., helped put him on a successful career path. In addition, he remembers and appreciates the time and money his earliest employers spent on employees like him to equip them with the skills they needed to perform their jobs.

It’s because of his high regard for education that Strong set a plan in motion to develop a formal training program at BC Bearing Group, a family-owned distribution company that includes BC Bearing Engineers Limited in Canada and US Bearings and Drives in the United States.

In 2004, Strong approached company executive Bob Lewis, who has more than 30 years of industry experience, with the idea to develop a training curriculum that closely matches the typical career path in a distribution firm, starting in the warehouse and progressing to branch management. Now called the Wendy McDonald School of Industrial Distribution, named after BC Bearing’s chairman and CEO, a longtime supporter and contributor to education, the program has trained 250 company employees.

In recognition of the company’s devotion to training, Progressive Distributor is pleased to present The BC Bearing Group with our 2007 Sales Training Excellence Award.

Commitment to excellence
The BC Bearing Group’s value proposition is to serve its customers with the most competent people in the industry.

“We’re very proud of our value proposition,” says Strong. “We feel it’s what sets us apart from our competition. If that’s what we believe, we’ve got to invest in our people. There’s nowhere to go to find people that know all about our business. We have to train them internally.”

The company’s training is broken into modules that focus on the skill sets required for a career in distribution, starting with warehouse shippers/receivers and moving to customer service reps, inside sales, technical service representatives, outside sales and branch manager.

“If we hire an inside salesperson, his or her first requirement would be to go back to take the warehouse shipping/receiving training,” says Lewis. “Then that person would take the inside sales/CSR training. If he or she has a desire to move to outside sales, that can’t happen unless the person has completed our outside training program.”

Most training takes place at corporate headquarters, but the company also has a training facility in Fargo, N.D., is building a training center in Reno, Nev., and has plans for another in Edmonton, Alberta. Along with Brian Bailey, a professional trainer hired to help develop training materials, Lewis is also putting together online training tools.

“The online component will allow us to continue training on a 12-month basis. We won’t have to pull people out of their branch,” says Lewis.

Before developing the School of Industrial Distribution, most training followed a catch-as-catch-can approach focused on vendor products.

“We need to train our staff to be product specialists, by all means, but they also must have skills such as dealing with customers, sales skills, computer skills, interpersonal skills and the like,” says Strong.

Last November, the company started putting US Bearings employees through the Bearings Specialists Association sales training curriculum developed by industry consultant Joe Ellers. In December, professors from Texas A&M University traveled to Calgary to hold a four-day educational session for 50 Canadian salespeople based on the school’s Professional Distribution Sales (PDS) program. The program covered client acquisition, key and target account development, and explained concepts such as time management, steps in the solutions-based selling process, questioning and listening techniques.

“While it’s based on Texas A&M’s PDS program, they were willing to customize it to include our sales approach called Sales and Marketing Effectiveness,” says Lewis.

The Sales and Marketing Effectiveness (SME) tool links to the company’s Eclipse distribution management software. Part of the training helps employees learn how to navigate the computer system. Beyond computer training, however, data from the SME tool also helps managers determine other training needs. For example, the SME program tracks customers by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code. Managers can extract data that shows how much product a typical customer in a specific segment, such as mining, might purchase annually. If one branch or salesperson lags behind the norm, it may be an indication that additional training might be needed.

“For years, we’ve mapped sales by product to determine where a salesperson is strong and where they’re weak. Obviously, where they’re weak is where they might benefit from further training,” says Lewis.

Tangible benefits
Company executives say they’ve already seen tangible benefits. Lewis says training in the Eclipse software system resulted in a 23 percent improvement in on-time deliveries compared to a year ago because employees are doing a better job of entering delivery dates in the system. Strong says gross margins are also up, and credits that to educating employees on the importance of maintaining margins.

Some of the benefits are not so easily measured. For example, Ross Brown, vice president of sales for US Bearings, says sales training helps employees from different locations speak the same language and use similar techniques.

“Since our company was built in the U.S. by acquiring other distributors, we all have different ways of doing things. This approach allows us to develop similar thought processes,” Brown says.

A new mentoring program that pairs veteran salespeople with less experienced salespeople has created a learning atmosphere where co-workers can help one another succeed. “It’s drawing the people in our group together so they can share ideas. They call each other every couple of weeks and have a 10- or 15-minute discussion about what they’re doing,” says Brown.

Meeting co-workers from different locations has added benefits. Some branch employees who visited the Vancouver headquarters had never been to Canada before. A few had never flown on an airplane. The experience helped them realize they’re part of a bigger, international organization with a broad range of knowledge.

“These are the things you can’t put dollars on in a profit-and-loss column. But I know there’s a benefit. We have to look at non-quantifiable benefits as well,” Strong says.

That attitude might seem surprising coming from a trained accountant. But Strong understands the importance of investing in his employees.

“I know there’s a lot of cynicism in our industry and perhaps in our company that would say when things turn around, this will be the first thing cut. Well, this will be the last thing cut. Otherwise, we have nothing to set us apart from our competitors,” he says.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2007 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2007.

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