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Back to school

Back to school

When distributors hire new sales recruits fresh from college, these newbies can struggle with a steep learning curve. Here are a few pointers from value-added sellers…

by Paul Markgraff

No matter what the university professors say, learning to sell industrial supplies cannot be taught in the classroom. Rather, selling skills must be learned through real-world experience.

This is the dilemma faced by fictitious distributor Primo Industrial Supply sales manager Kevin Fitzpatrick. He recently hired a brand new salesperson fresh from the state university's industrial distribution program. His new recruit is eager to begin selling, but Fitzpatrick wants to make sure the new kid does his homework before trying to sell value to a potential customer.

But Fitzpatrick usually hires seasoned sales professionals. Primo has not hired a fresh young face in a long time and Fitzpatrick is unsure what the new kid already knows and what he needs to be taught. So, what's a sales manager to do?

In our last Q&A, we asked subscribers what kinds of advice they would give a new recruit about selling value to a customer. What should the new kid learn about a customer before he attempts to sell based on total cost of ownership? Are there particular customer characteristics the new kid needs to understand before going into the field?

Quay Smith, president and CEO of Advanced Deburring and Finishing Corp. of Statesville, N.C., says Fitzpatrick needs to teach his new recruit to do as much research as possible about his prospective company before going on a sales call.

“He needs to know who the end-user’s customers are and why they purchase Primo’s products,” says Smith. “Then he needs to know his products well enough so he is able sell the value of that product as being a value they can sell to their customers.”

Bob Kitchen, store manager for East Providence, R.I.-based Contractors Supply Inc., says the new hire can learn much by comparing his product with other similar products on the market. He says that by listening to the sales agenda of other salespeople pushing similar products, a new hire can learn a lot about how to approach a customer.

“Weighing the value of input from other salespeople would greatly enhance his product knowledge,” says Kitchen.

Joan Hoppock, vice president of sales for Simi Valley, Calif.-based General Industrial Tool and Supply, says if you want the new hire to sell value, it’s important to know what value means to your company as well as what it means to the customer.

“Most salespeople, even seasoned salespeople, will say their value is selling service,” says Hoppock. “But it’s important to know what service means in everyone’s eyes. Most salespeople want to skip this step. They think they can fast-talk it but they can’t.”

When new hires are fresh out of school, they don’t understand a lot of concepts that most distributor salespeople take for granted such as cost-plus and profit, she says. There is an assumption on the side of the new employee and an assumption on the part of the employer that these concepts are known, but they may not be known.

“If I were a student, knowing what I know today, I would go to my employer with a list of classes, because I think there’s a tendency for people to try to hide what they don’t know. But with outside salespeople, that’s a real danger because they don’t have anything to fall back on,” says Hoppock. “I would ask if there’s anything my employer thinks I should know that I might not have taken a class about.”

Time spent hitting the books certainly helps prepare student sellers for life beyond college, but learning to sell requires time in the field. The pointers above will help turn the new kids on the block into the revenue producers distributors need.