Ask a room full of parts distributors and sales managers what they look for in an ideal outside salesperson and you will get enough adjectives and attributes to fill the entire “Help Wanted” section of a newspaper.
In fact, just such an exercise took place last month during a “Recipe for Improving Sales Proficiency” workshop at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week in Las Vegas. When asked what it takes to be good at selling heavy-duty parts, the audience offered enough suggested qualities to fill page after page on the presenter’s easel.
But while the shortage of service technicians seems to get the lion’s share of the industry spotlight, outside parts salespersons – effective ones – are every bit as in demand. Most every warehouse distributor relies on an outside sales team to both tend to current customer needs and track down new business. It’s an essential role that directly impacts both the bottom line and image of the company.
However you go about it – grooming candidates internally from other departments, hiring salespersons from other professions, recruiting them out of school, tapping the full potential of existing ones, or a combination thereof – building that winning outside sales team is fundamental to future growth and success.
“I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that to most people the salesman is the company,” says Doug Smith, Midway Truck Parts sales manager. “He’s the guy that when a customer has an issue – something good or bad, and it’s usually for realistic reasons going to be something on the negative side – they rely on their salesperson to ameliorate it.”
Adds James John, chair of Northwood University’s Aftermarket Management Dept., “For the people on the street, salespeople are that company. They are the face of your business.”
The Qualities
With so much responsibility resting on the position, putting the wrong person in the job can have dire consequences. Factor in that that person often is operating largely without direct supervision, and if you’re not sure it’s the right person, you could find out quite unexpectedly and quite unhappily.
“There are a few things we look at and if I had to rank them, I would have to put personality at the top. Underlying that is we look for an outgoing person, someone who’s honest and accountable. Someone who’s energetic,” says Randy Kray, sales manager for Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based Sadler Power Train, which has four locations and five outside salespersons. “Salespeople have to get out and beat the bushes, and it takes a lot of time and effort. It can be easy to relax and slouch off because you’re not in front of the boss every day.”
The list of desired qualities in an outside salesperson is long, with the majority being tied to personality and behavior – things not easily taught.
“The single most important thing I look for in a person is attitude,” says Smith, who manages 20 salespersons from all 12 of Midway’s truck parts locations. “I have taken people with absolutely no experience whatsoever, but they had a terrific attitude and they allowed themselves to be coached and mentored, and they did very well. Every month they increased their sales and they made money for themselves and the company.
“I’ve had other people who, on paper, should have been nothing short of supermen,” Smith continues. “But they were either so stuck in a fictitious mold that died five or 10 years ago or they just simply couldn’t change and learn new ways.”
The fictitious role Smith refers to is a popular misconception about the sales profession, especially among those who have never experienced it firsthand or base their views on a bygone era.
“It’s hard to find good salespeople these days because so many people have misconceptions about what sales is,” Smith says. “They think of it as it was years ago when it was a lot of entertaining, golfing, drinking after work and telling jokes. There’s nothing further from the truth today. Customers have gotten very demanding and very intelligent. They have a lot of sources of information. If you can’t add anything to what they already know, you’re wasting their time.”
The Role
Identifying the right outside salesperson is going to vary by business model, goals and company culture. Everyone agrees that the basic function is, of course, to sell. But the strategies behind that range from prospecting new accounts and growing existing business, to expanding new product lines and simply keeping the best customers satisfied.
Tom Easton and Chuck Udell, both senior partners of Essential Action Design Group, conducted the “Recipe for Improving Sales Proficiency” workshop at HDAW. Part of the content was based on an extensive sales practices study they did of 30 distributorships throughout the U.S.
Through their visits they saw a wide range of sales approaches, some effective, some less so. Udell succinctly expresses what he believes is the primary role of an outside salesperson: “I’ll give you a real net-net. It is to earn gross profit for the company and to earn more tomorrow than they did today.”
While it sounds fundamental, Easton and Udell discovered that the metrics with which distributors measure the success of their sales team vary significantly.
“Some do a better job tracking the key performance indexes than other distributors do,” says Easton.
He uses gross profit as an example.
“It’s much more than just sales; it’s gross profit contribution. You could have high sales, but low gross profit,” he says. “There’s always going to be variances by product line, some lines just have a better gross profit than other lines. But if an outside salesperson has an account that’s just purchasing low gross profit items, it’s not a very profitable account for the distributor.”
Additionally, the expense of supporting the account – the cost of parts deliveries, the cost of the salesperson servicing the account, etc. – needs to be factored against the gross profit dollars generated by the account.
Delving into account details and setting customer-specific goals can more accurately reveal a salesperson’s success. Udell says most distributors they studied track sales by account for a salesperson, but not, for instance sales per sales call. And rather than giving a salesperson one annual sales growth goal, realistically tie the goals to the account’s potential. “Maybe you can grow this one account by one percent, but this one can go up 13 percent, for example,” he says.
Product Knowledge
A salesperson’s successes will be few and far between without product knowledge. Most agree that the right personality and character are paramount, but knowing what to sell and how it will benefit the customer is certainly not to be overlooked.
The good news is, if your candidate meets all other criteria, product knowledge can usually be imparted.
“You can teach product knowledge. That’s a lot easier than changing someone’s personality,” says Udell.
John, as both educator and a former supplier sales representative, has been on the front lines of the sales call often.
“As soon as you make a call on a customer, they’re going to test you right away to see what you know,” John says. “If you’re fumbling around, their confidence level is not going to be so high with you.”
The challenge today, he says, is product lines keep expanding while sales forces keep contracting.
While distributors still are able to directly harness the knowledge of their supplier reps, John sees these resources thinning. “The real key to salespeople calling on customers is to know their product lines backwards and forwards. Regrettably, with the advent of consolidation and mergers and acquisitions, some of these factory salespeople are representing multiple product lines and it’s tough to have expertise in all of those.”
Looking Within
Some distributors find themselves in the enviable position of having internal candidates that already possess product knowledge and want to step into outside sales roles, such as counter salespersons. While taking one gifted employee from one position and putting him or her into an outside sales role leaves behind another vacant position, learning new aspects of the business can create future leaders.
“Good help is hard to find, and I don’t care what position you’re looking at,” says Kray, noting they have had several success stories by promoting from within. He himself started at the parts counter 24 years ago, then became parts manager and next sales manager. “Basically, every manager we have in our company has come from the bottom up, whether they started out in the warehouse or as a delivery driver or in the office, and they worked their way up because they had the right traits we were looking for.
“Any time we look for any position in this company, we always look within,” he says. “And when we look within, it’s usually a pretty easy job. They identify themselves in their personality, work ethic, dependability and accountability.”
It can be an easier process than recruiting from the outside.
“You might have a couple of really good counter people who exhibit some sales skills and then you might want to train them or give them the opportunity to go call on the customer and see where that goes,” John says. “Because if they work inside, they already know the workings of the distributorship and they can carry that knowledge, plus what they know about product lines, to the customer.”
It could have beneficial secondary effects as well, he says. “That would be a positive process for all the employees because they know if they do a really good job, and may want to try something different, management will recognize it,” adds John.
Training and Tools
Once you’ve selected the right candidate – either from inside or out – training and development should be ongoing. The novice needs to get up to speed, and the seasoned professional needs to stay current.
Numerous training resources exist, both for product knowledge and general selling skills.
“At the suppliers’ websites there are lots of opportunities for online training with regards to acquisition of product knowledge,” Easton says, adding that this should be complemented by general market intelligence. He says it’s important to read the industry’s trade journals and keep current with general news to know the economic and industry dynamics that affect customers’ businesses.
Both Kray and Smith say they try to take advantage of supplier training whenever possible. Smith also notes his sales team receives outside sales skills training as well.
A potential source of training that may be overlooked, says John, is the employee you are trying to replace. “If I had a good salesperson who was in retirement mode I would try and retain him if I could as a part-time consultant to help the new people,” he says.
Easton and Udell stress that training is important, but it is equally important to follow-up on the training.
“We think there has to be an evaluation process where product knowledge is tested on an ongoing basis,” Easton says. “You need to continually be testing and evaluating their questioning skills, their listening skills, their closing skills, how they overcome objections.”
He recommends periodic role playing with the sales team using real-life customer scenarios. “If in a role play with their peers they can’t overcome an objection of price, why would you think they could do it before a customer?”
It may require more effort and commitment than what some distributors are used to, but as Smith points out, gaining that competitive edge is more critical today than ever before.
“If a large company like Midway disappeared tomorrow, nobody would be hurting for parts,” he says. “You’re going into a market where there’s already too many people. You need to differentiate yourself and it has to be by more than just price.”
