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Who better to judge a sales force than its customers? In 1998 more than 7,300 U.S. businesses were assessed for The HR Chally Group's World Class Sales Award. In the end, 134 companies emerged as having the world's top-rated sales forces. In this exclusive article, the five top companies agreed to share their secrets for success with Selling Power.
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NUMBER 1-- HONDA MOTORS ON:
American Honda Motor drives up sales by delivering what buyers want and maintaining a reputation for quality
Lest you associate the Honda name only with cars, Parts Field Operations Senior Manager George Richardson reminds you that you can also find the Honda name on motorcycles and power and farm equipment and that the company is even venturing into aeronautics. "Honda's business is mobility, he says, "we're not just a car company. We want to move people around." They've been doing a lot of that lately. Honda's World Class Sales Award comes largely from its knowledge of the market and its determination to provide vehicles that serve that market better than anyone else's. "Wherever Honda sells their products, they act not just as importers, but instead set up some base of operations to give them a foothold in that community," says Richardson.
To establish that foothold, the company lends a hand to the dealers, who are the ones who determine its success. American Honda doesn't sell direct to the public and works only with a total of about 1,000 Honda dealers nationwide. With its future resting squarely on those dealers' shoulders, Richardson says American Honda first had to get to know the dealers and their agendas and help them focus on where they wanted to go, then be sure its people had the tools to help the dealers achieve their goals. With highly developed skills to solve dealer dilemmas, Honda representatives partner effectively with them to both parties' benefit.
"Our people can present dealers with methodologies to approach almost any challenge they might have in their parts department, fixed operations or total dealership," Richardson claims. lt's important that our people be seen as very professional business people, and they come across that way."
Pair skilled people with a quality product for them to sell and you have a winning combination in any business. Richardson explains that every vehicle and vehicle part Honda makes meets the Honda Engineering Standard, which often exceeds any other industry standard. He cites the Accord as an example of a quality product that filled a niche other cars couldn't.
Honda broke ground in that the Accord was economical, but it was sporty and comfortable. When you got into it, you immediately got a sense of comfort, but it didn't cost an arm and a leg and it lasted a good long time. Honda brought it to market because our engineers found that there was a niche not being served by any other manufacturer. And to this day, the Accord still fits that exact niche.
"The Honda name is one that we're all really proud of. To defend that name, we work hard to make sure that we present ourselves in the same light. The tools and products we present to the dealers are first class; our people are trained to Honda standards. We don't call on dealers until our people have the skills to get the job done. We represent that name just as that name represents us."
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NUMBER 2 -- SUCCESS IN PARTS:
Solving problems and understanding customers help Gar Smith and GM Parts provide superior service
For general sales manager Gar Smith and GM Parts, winning customer service means keeping your eyes on the dealer. To ensure GM Parts' success, Smith knows he must first help ensure the success of the GM dealerships he serves. With a thorough understanding of their operations and how to solve their problems, Smith and the rest of the GM Parts team help shift dealer performance into high gear.
"Dealers expect GM people to come into their place of business and add value," says Smith. "To do that, you
have to know what makes the dealership tick, and that is basically new- and used-car sales and service and parts sales."
Great people go a long way toward keeping customers happy and building sales, but they can go even farther in a company that implements the right strategies to attract and keep customers. "At GM," says Smith, "those strategies include recent improvements in product quality and a tripod strategy in place at GM dealerships."
"Product quality improvements are good news for the dealer, great news for the customer and great news for the company, but they also mean less warranty work for the dealership, and that takes away service and parts revenue. So we came up with the Goodwrench Service Plus program, which is one leg of a three-legged strategy in place in our dealerships. Goodwrench Service Plus helps bring GM customers back to the dealership for maintenance and repair work they could get done anyplace, because they have to pay for it."
The second leg of the strategy, the GM Parts System, represents a parts department management protocol in place in about 5,000 dealerships. By showing dealers how they can increase parts variety and decrease the numbers of each part, the system has boosted GM Parts' ability to fill dealership service department needs on a same-day basis by 10 percent.
The final leg of the strategy, the Goodwrench Service Merchandising Program, "takes the universe of maintenance and repair parts most commonly used on GM vehicles and prices them competitively so dealers can compete effectively for business," says Smith. "All three strategies support one another: Service Plus brings customers back to the dealership; the Parts System takes better care of them when they do come back in terms of our ability to supply the parts; and the Goodwrench Service Merchandising Program prices those parts competitively in the marketplace. The three pieces together allow us to help our dealers grow their service business and improve the amount of their total expense that is covered by service and parts, so they think we're pretty neat people."
Most dealers' intense concentration on new and used car sales opens another window of opportunity for Smith and GM Parts to prove their problem-solving mettle. The greater the dealer's focus on car sales rather than on managing the service and parts element of the business, the greater the opportunity Smith and GM Parts have to step in and add value by showing dealers how it's done.
"The extent to which we can provide expertise that helps dealers make more intelligent investments in parts operations, get better inventory turnover and get more bang for the buck in terms of investment is what makes dealerships say that we're providing value by solving problems. Then the dealer makes more money, and when they make more money they're a happy group and they end up taking better care of the customer."
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NUMBER 3 -- SALES BY THE REAM:
With anytime accessibility, fast response and problem-solving ability, Tom Wolven and Alling & Cory deliver all-purpose service solutions
When it comes to superior sales and service, paper supplier Alling & Cory is truly on a roll. By offering customers 24-hour accessibility, superior responsiveness and reliable problem-solving ability, Alling & Cory can provide its customers the peace of mind that comes from knowing that salespeople are on call and on the job anytime their buyers need them.
"When they want you, you have to be there," says Alling & Cory Regional President Tom Wolven. "We carry beepers, use car phones, use voice mail - we do everything we can so that even if customers call in the middle of the night - the printers run 24 hours a day - they can still get us. We're their total resource in terms of responsiveness. We even equip our trucks with two-way radios, so if a guy needs his delivery because he's running out of paper, we can divert trucks. We do the whole bit."
To keep the presses running and help buyers avoid the paper chase, Alling & Cory provides next-day delivery of any paper product its printing customers might need. Besides allowing its customers to offer their customers a broader range of printing services, Alling & Cory's fast order turnaround also helps ensure that salespeople and customers stay in close contact.
"It's a day-to-day, supplier-to-customer relationship," Wolven says. "Our customers really can print anything, from business cards and stationery to a coated magazine-type application to cardboard boxes or whatever else fits through the press. They can take any type of order from their customers and count on us to deliver what they need to fill that order the very next day, so they can maximize their product offering to their buyers. With this kind of fast-paced sales, you have to be accessible, you have to be responsive and you have to solve problems - and staying in constant touch is key."
Not only must Alling & Cory salespeople be ready to come to a customer's rescue at the drop of a hat, they must also provide advice or assistance that solves the problem. Wolven says that of all the attributes salespeople need to succeed at Alling & Cory, problem-solving ability takes a back seat only to accessibility and responsiveness. To provide customers with an all-purpose service solution, salespeople must be able to understand and correct problems in departments from order fulfillment to shipping to billing and beyond.
"They really get involved from one end of our business to the other," Wolven says. "They understand credit, they understand finances, they understand shipping systems and they understand product knowledge. I think the customers really appreciate and support the salesperson who is well-rounded across all departments of our company, because at different times problems crop up in every discipline, and if he's got the knowledge of where to go and who to go to and how things work in each of those areas, and he's accessible, he's a successful sales guy."
Whereas the value of an award depends on who gives it and why, the value of competition is seldom in question. In the competition for Chally's World Class Sales Award, winners and losers, participants and spectators alike, can identify the qualities that go into a winning sales performance and learn how to develop those qualities more effectively. On the surface competitions seem to separate winners from losers, but for those who learn all they can from the experience, it can ultimately narrow the gap between them.
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NUMBER 4 -- SUCCESS IN MOTION:
Product knowledge, technical support and responsiveness make World Class competitors of Bill Stevens and Motion Industries
To sell more than enough, you have to know your stuff. Thanks to the year-round classes Motion Industries offers, its sales and service people always earn high marks for application, product and service knowledge and technical support. President and CEO Bill Stevens says that as part of Motion's "present and ongoing commitment to training," company newcomers and long-timers alike receive frequent instruction from four full-time staff instructors plus Motion's manufacturers' and suppliers' technical training people.
"We run training classes every week of the year except for Thanksgiving and Christmas," says Stevens. "About 85 percent of that training focuses on product and product application, and about 15 percent focuses on skills training. We offer basic courses and what I consider intermediate-level courses as well as more advanced courses."
As the saying goes, customers don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. To show their devotion, Motion salespeople put themselves at buyers' beck and call. Strategic location of company branches for customer convenience and 24-hour, 7-day-a-week service lets Motion salespeople put their knowledge to use on behalf of customers when and where those customers need it most.
"Responsiveness is an integral part of our strategy," Stevens emphasizes. "When we look at systems, when we look at branch locations, we want everything we do to answer the question, How does this help us improve the way we can serve the user, the customer? That's why we have the number of locations we have in the places that we have them. We want to be able to respond to customers quickly, whether it's two in the morning or two on a Wednesday afternoon."
Not only does Motion make a living, breathing person available to customers at all hours of the day and night, the company also ensures that person has the know-how to understand and respond to buyer problems effectively. Service people who understand their customers' problems encourage those customers' to rely on them as a valuable resource.
"When a customer calls and says, ‘The blower on machine number four is down,' our people know what he means," says Stevens, "and we do everything to gear to that responsiveness. I think a lot of companies promote 24-hour, 7-day service, and now with cell phones and everything it's easy to answer a phone, but to call a manned facility 24 hours a day and get a person who's there on site, who can do whatever customers need to have done, I think that separates us from the rest."
NUMBER 5 -- INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH SERVICE:
Rick Shaw explains how DVA and customer jubilation took Applied Industrial Technologies to the top
Applied Industrial knows its priorities, and customer satisfaction isn't one of them. To reach $1.49 billion in 1998 sales and stay at the top of the industrial distributor business, nothing short of customer jubilation will do. Explains Communications Vice President Rick Shaw, "We coined the phrase ‘customer jubilation' to communicate to associates and customers what our customer satisfaction expectations are. We have a Customer Jubilation room at our headquarters where we display service awards and letters of jubilation from customers."
Jubilant customers require more than run-of-the-mill products and service, and at Applied, they get more. Although the company is one of the largest U.S. industrial distributors, representing manufacturers in such product areas as bearings and fluid power products, and boasting 380 stocking branches and 8 distribution centers, Applied and its customers know bigger doesn't always mean better. To show how Applied gives buyers more for their money, in 1994 the sales force conceived Documented Value-Added (DVA), which Shaw calls "a process we use to document for customers the value we add in terms of generating uptime, eliminating downtime and providing emergency service, cost savings and much more.
"We developed a computer program our account representatives use to capture information and report it to customers. In many cases, representatives consult with our customers on product replacements, change-outs and productivity problems and work to help them achieve greater productivity. The results are captured and reported but do not count as DVA unless the customer agrees to the stated value and signs off on it."
What's an hour of downtime or uptime worth to a customer? It varies from account to account, but its calculation is based on the product produced by the line or process in an hour. Most maintenance departments know their number, but with no industry data available, it has to be calculated and agreed upon for each customer.
The numbers may look impressive, but behind them lies a simple strategy: troubleshoot customers' problems, then present creative, effective solutions. With salespeople who go out of their way to ensure client success, Applied's customers know their money buys them a business partner as well as a product.
"I think our salespeople could be called consultants," says Shaw. "When they work with customers, it's their job to look for productivity problems or frequent breakdowns and to apply their knowledge of technology to come up with better ways of doing things."
Copies of the complete "Best of the Best" reprint are available using the order form
EXCERPTED FROM JAN./FEB. 1999 SELLING POWER MAGAZINE.
© COPYRIGHT 1999 PERSONAL SELLING POWER INC.
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