Print
Solutions June 2005
Cover
story
Top
100 Distributors
CTP Solutions — #45
Northern
Printing Network—#20
Hire
the Best and Give Them Something
to Sell
Two
distributorships maximize sales
per employee through careful hiring,
ongoing training and a steady
stream of new products and services.
BY
ANDREW BROWN
The
difference between knowing how
to succeed and actually succeeding
is evident at CTP Solutions, where
17 employees generated $10,000,030
in sales last year. How does the
Agoura Hills, Calif.-based information
and document management company
produce above-average sales per
employee? The answer is twofold,
according to President Jack Schachtel:
“You do it by training people
properly and having a continuous
infusion of new products and services
that gives [salespeople] the ability
to grow with the company.”
Sounds
simple enough. So why doesn’t
every company do the same? “You
can’t just go, ‘Hey,
here’s a new product and
isn’t this great?’”
Schachtel says. “You have
to train them on how to sell it:
What are you selling, what the
marketplace is, who the competitors
are. We go through a whole process
on introducing new products and
services.”
The
process begins when Schachtel
discovers a product or service
that he believes his reps can
sell. “Part of my responsibility
is always going out there and
finding new solutions, listening
to customers, reading trade magazines,”
he says. Schachtel introduces
the solution to his reps, and
they identify customers and industries
that might benefit from it. The
sales department meets two to
four times per year and holds
monthly meetings by phone. Often,
the solutions he finds are so
innovative that his customers
aren’t ready to buy them.
“They don’t buy the
new solution right away, but they’ll
buy the old solution we’re
doing, which will be a stepping
stone to getting them the new
solution,” he says.
For
example, CTP Solutions took over
one client’s billing operation
by converting them to an electronic
billing process. CTP Solutions
now sends the client’s paper
bills and electronic statements
directly. Over time, the client
also contracted CTP Solutions
to provide electronic archiving.
“A lot of the new products
and services [we sell] are related
to converting paper processes
to electronic processing,”
Schachtel says. “We’re
still dealing in a transactional
business, but it’s an electronic
transaction versus a paper transaction.”
Schachtel
distinguishes between what he
calls “product” and
“concept” sales, with
the electronic services CTP Solutions
offers falling into the latter
category. His traditional business
forms reps sometimes have difficulty
making concept sales at first,
he says, but the company’s
investment in hiring and training
pays off. “We’re very
picky about who we hire, because
we know that if you make the wrong
hire, it causes more damage and
takes more time to fix than just
hiring the right people,”
he says. Schachtel emphasizes
that hiring the best support staff
is equally as important as hiring
the best sales reps. He points
out that the support staff at
CTP Solutions have an average
tenure of six years.
The
right people, according to Schachtel,
demonstrate self-motivation and
entrepreneurial spirit. “You
need a unique type of salesperson
to sell [conceptual services],”
he says. “We give a lot
of responsibility to everyone
in the company, and they either
sink or swim on their own. No
one gets lost in our company because
they’re all responsible
and know what they have to do
to be successful.” The sales
reps constantly seek new business,
to the extent that CTP Solutions’
largest customer accounts only
for 7 percent of the company’s
business. “You never know
what’s going to be changing
around the corner, both in technology
and with the customer as far as
being acquired or going out of
business, so you always have to
fill the pipeline with opportunities,”
he says.
The
Mark of a Good Rep
Distributorship
Northern Printing Network, Wheeling,
Ill., also made Print Solutions’
Highest Sales Per Employee rankings,
and CEO Art Collins cites his
employees’ willingness to
work hard for their clients as
the reason. “Our sales reps
get to know their customers,”
he says. “They get to know
their customers’ needs,
and they make sure they meet their
customers’ expectations.”
Northern
Printing Network reported $16,438,000
in sales with 26 employees. Hiring
the right people has been key
to generating those sales with
a relatively small work force,
Collins says. More than half the
company’s reps are former
UARCO employees, where Collins
also once worked. All of the reps,
though, share certain characteristics.
“They’re very
detail-oriented,” Collins
says. “They’re very
customer service-driven, and they’ve
been able to build strong relationships
with their clients.”
Once
clients build relationships with
Northern Printing Network’s
sales reps, they tend to stick
with them. As the clients grow,
they rely on the distributorship
to provide new solutions and services.
Individual contacts also appreciate
the company’s expertise
and keep in touch if they move
to a new job, Collins says. “We
do a lot of network selling,”
he says. “We’ll have
a good contact leave one company
and go to another, and they’ll
bring us in there just because
we’ve done such a good job
at their previous company.”
Andrew
Brown is assistant editor of Print
Solutions. Email him your comments
at abrown@PSDA.org.
