Lester Sales Company is an electrical manufacturing representative firm committed to meeting and exceeding the goals set forth by its vendor partners. Hear from Rick Gill, VP of Lester Sales, share his experience with Lushin sales and business coaching.
"We measure that success by looking at the market rate growth and if we don’t outgrow the market by two to three percent, we figure we’re not stealing shares so we’re not getting the most out of our training. Bottom line is, it pays an incredibly positive return on the investment."
Rick Gill, Executive Vice President, Lester Sales Company
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Video Transcript
What are all the different decisions that need to be made throughout the sales or relationship process?
If you view that sales training as a cost, you would never do it. If you viewed it as an investment, you would do it 10 times out of 10.
I'm Rick Gill, and I'm the Executive VP of Lester Sales. I have responsibility for all of our sales team across all three states, as well as the operational responsibility for the business.
We're really three organizations in one. We're a commercial sales organization, an industrial sales organization, and a lighting sales organization.
So we sell everything from commodities--which are highly price sensitive and change on a day-to-day basis--to heavy industrial products that may have a 12- to 18-month sell cycle.
About three years ago, John Scott, the owner of Lester Sales, came to us, and he kind of proposed what he had found out from his networking about a new sales process, so to speak.
Being in sales for 30 years, you've had different training courses, so I think the mindset of myself and a lot of the other people in the business were, "OK, we're willing to listen, but is it going to be anything different than what we've seen in the past?"
We were successful for a long period of time, and we brought Lushin in in the midst of a period of great growth. There's a certain stagnant nature that can come when you just have insular beliefs and insular perspectives on how to do your job.
What we wanted to do was challenge our sales team to take everybody to the next level and not be satisfied with the success we were having.
I think a lot of what Paul and Aaron have offered to us is a fresh set of eyes on our business, which is incredibly valuable.
It's really helped me dial back and think before I open my mouth. And then, there's also times to where I need to listen, rather than monopolize the conversation.
And I think--dealing with sales guys out in the field--sometimes, as a sales leader, you want to interject your thoughts, rather than listen, and I think Lushin's helped me be a better listener for them and try to see what they need to get their job more productive and to help them, support them, and do whatever they need to be successful.
Success breeds momentum. And as they started adopting the skills that they were learning, and they started having additional successes, it got a momentum of its own. And now, it's--I think it's self-sustaining.
But we have to continue with our training. We can't take for granted that we're going to continue to move forward. We have our sales guys spread across three states, so it's always a challenge to have ample amounts of communication.
In the first two years of our partnership, we gathered all of our sales team in one place once a month. Now, we gather physically quarterly, but monthly, we have our webinars and our video conferences that keep everything fresh and present new ideas.
With the webinar, it's really not much different than seeing Aaron face-to-face.
Typically, it becomes personalized and goes off into a tangent that's more specific to the challenges we face on a day-to-day basis.
It's still the same open forum for the salespeople to interject their information, and there's not much difference in that whole process.
We've used Lushin not just for our outside sales team. We have a group of what we call high-potential employees, which are a lot of our younger folks who are progressing through the organization now.
They have a separate little peer group that works with Aaron, so Aaron is constantly talking to them, assigning special projects--doing things like that.
So it's more than just our outside team. It's the entire development of the culture of the organization.
We have totally changed how we interact with customers. I see it from all my guys and just talking to them.
We are not the show-up, throw-up, monopolize-the-conversation sales team.
We've had an uptick in sales growth over the last three to four years, and we're all convinced that it's all due to the part of Paul and Aaron and the whole Lushin process.
We measure that success by looking at the market rate growth. And if we don't outgrow the market by 2% to 3%, we figure we're not stealing shares, so we're not getting the most out of our training.
Bottom line is, it pays an incredibly positive return on the investment.
We are better people, and we're better sales professionals because of Lushin.
