Relocated to the area that you may have sit in my very brief bio, hymns for about ten years. I've moved five times in the last eight years since with the company started out as an intern while I went to Jane you. And they kind of did admit their management training program and upheld virtually every edit shut up. So now my current position, I'm over 16. The duty of the entirety of the peninsula and my job is to help them anyway that I can't grandma share would try not to to make it too complicated. I mean, our goal is to sell. That's, that's what we do. So small-scale, large-scale, that's what kind of we do as a company. Yes. We're going to talk about the selling process as a whole and the importance of needs assessment. It's difficult to talk about needs assessment without talking about somewhat the entirety of the selling process. Needs assessment is, is it's an important part of it. And at each step of the selling process, every step of the process you're doing some form of needs as we'll get into a, even from qualifying those first customers, you begin their need and see what that looks like. So that's kind of what we'll talk about. We'll go through some of that and we'll have, we'll hit some high points of the other part of the selling process with the mainframe on needs assessment. So we're going to talk about water, what we're looking at here today. One of the things I've missed was the continuous prospecting. They especially with now with coded when you're doing business to business selling, the, Unfortunately the failure rate of companies is very high. But what that means is there's going to be new businesses trying to fill. So over the next year, over the next two years, there's going to be more and more new businesses out there and every market obviously in my, in my world with painting contractors, I'm going to see that the restaurant industry, you're going to see that you're going to see hotels that were, that saved their money and didn't build a year ago that are able to build a team if it comes back. So we'll talk a little bit about that. I do have a brief 3-minute video just talking a little more in-depth about Sherwin Williams, what we're about in case I don't wanna kinda doesn't know what, what we do outside of song. Yeah, we're super excited to have you all today. And especially with Jane speaking it, we want to have it to where Phil opens, ask questions, you know, definitely to share. Now, in our process, a lot of people think like James alluded to earlier, that like, hey, you got, most people think we're actual the painter, so they're like you just paint like no, we sell a business to business sales. I'm so we're really happy to show you kind of, you know, the entirety of what we do it. How is way more than just paint? So really excited today and have you that are participating and listening. So thanks, games back to you. Sherwin Williams, trust, respect to global. Inspired by the world around us. We are diverse and sustainable. We are inventors and innovators. We have a proud, biased and we are working towards a brilliant future. We're focused on codings. It's what we do. It's all we do for rocket ships, to battleships in the skies, on the roads, in the fields. Showmoonnames, products are protecting and enhancing the world's most important assets. Far away. Close to this. This is Sherwood Williams has always been a people business with Enrichr won an Edward Williams founded the company in 1866 and Cleveland, Ohio, they imagined a successful international codings company guided by strong values, integrity, people, service, quality, performance, innovation, and growth. Over the years, we lead the way with new ideas, new products and new technology. And our customers, the first ready mix paint, the first latex paint, and the first parasol. We invented the first payroll and the receivable picking from decorative paint to industrial coatings. We grew and evolved with our customers. We fold them into different industries, different cities, and eventually to different continents. Today, we have customers, partners, and facilities around the world. We hold more than 900 patterns. And you will find our high-performance coatings on wood, metal, and plastic surfaces everywhere. You Sherwin Williams, recognized leader when it comes to renewable resources, reducing waste and conserving energy. And we appreciate the diversity of individuals, cultures, and points of view and are committed to improving quality of life to the communities we serve. On future as a global codings company depends on growth across the world. We're open to new ideas and new approaches. And we partner with good people than strong brands. I and press Enter. And I have the distinct honor of serving as just the eight, the chairman and CEO of our company. Since our founding in 1866. You've heard about our products, our markets, our technology in our grown, all important parts of the Sherwin Williams story, we believe what really makes our company's successful, as are people, everything our organization has accomplished and most proud of, and thousands of people around the world who bring just the right combination of intellect and integrity to their work. Every day. We're excited and optimistic about our global partnerships. And we welcome the opportunity to meet, to learn, and to explore future possibilities. So yeah, so that's as one of my colleagues used to say, where in the people business everyone loves to buy, No one loves to be sold. So people buy from people that they like, that they relate to. So that's what's so important. What we look for and in our leadership teams and our salespeople. Great interpersonal skills, great leadership, professional qualities, doing what you say you're gonna do, showing up on time being prompt. Yeah. If you say you're going to stop by and see the next friday, stop by. Next Friday. I will nerd out with are you guys on the the tentative paint tech side, but where we've come in the last 150 is in pain codings is, and even in the last five or ten years is leaps and bounds. I'm really able to do that because we have good quality people. They were able to go out there and teach those new, there's new values and new products to our, to our people. And we touched on earlier than the value of continuously qualifying new customers. You're only going to grow, you're only going to be a successful salesperson if you continue to grow market share. You say you're a salesperson for a company and you have a $1 million territory. That's great. You know, you have a 100 customers, they buy ten grand from you. Everything is area and they've got $1000 from me. Everything's great. You lose three of those customers. All of a sudden you're down 3%. You know, if you're not continuously looking for new accounts to, to backfill and grow. And you're going to become stagnant and you're going to lose. So you've gotta be continuously qualifying and that way you can move in and to gain market share. You know, virtually every customer that you get, your pulling it from the, from the competition, the, the easy conversions or if you somehow find a brand new account and are first in their infancy and you're able to work in them from the process. Those are the easy ones when you're having to create value-added propositions and pull that from the competition. Those are the ones that take good sales professionals are to pull that. You guys, I'm sure, have seen something similar to this that the sales funnel, you know, you get you get suspects he may have in the it may be worth something. You would all those down to prospects. Those prospects you qualify and they've become customers. So you just gotta constantly backfill that, that funneled so that you can greet, creating, grow new customers. So that normally would do this in a setting pre-coded where I have a room full of people and we can do group activities and I can separate everyone. We obviously can't do that, so I'll just kind of talk through a couple of the group activities. Different ways to prospect for new business. You know, 30 years ago, sales rep would grab a phonebook, run down the yellow pages and look for new business. What's, it's a little different now, we have all kinds of different, you know, for us personally, it soon as how's it's Better Business Bureau. There's also tools out there like Salesforce that depending on what business that you do, making, create prospecting lists for you to call one. Once you find those prospecting, listen those ways. How do you improve on them? You try different things, find what works for you. And those are the type of prospecting list that you continuously during both rooted brothers customers. So you have all these prospects that what do you do once you have the prospects? Pretty simple, you make contact with them. You know, there's, there's two ways to make contact. Your digital tools or face-to-face. And this is the first level. Penny Lane, our sales process needs assessment as the step three. But from that first time your contact can that customer, you're beginning to assess their needs. You're beginning to assess their communication style, what their business is about, what they're doing. It's the beginning of that process. So digital or, or digital communication or a personal visit. Once again, pre Coven personal visits where a real thing right now, 99% digital. So advantages above sleep digital. You can, you can reach them more, it's more convenient, it's faster speed. You can contact us digitally where, you know, you want that same anger contacting one-person face. You can also use a guide early on or started out. They said, Give you a list, hey, cold call these 30 people who were kind of looking around like, how do you do that? Like what does that look like? A good company or a good sales manager that they'll have a guide for you in bullet points that you can kind of hide behind and you can, you know, those first ten or 15 calls until they get easier. Who had a list of Go for it we something to fall back on. When you're doing a face-to-face, you don't have that to fall back on a personal visit, you know, outside of them slamming the door on your face, which does happen if you're doing your job and opening the right doors occasionally you get stung closed on you, you know, it's hard to ignore when you're saying that I'm talking to them face-to-face. You can kinda observed their body language. C, if they're open, if they're receptive or if they're kinda close dos. Some people don't like to get, you know, random phone calls. I know that I am much more likely to answer a year to read a spam email than I am answer some phone number. I don't know. That's just that's a personal level for me. So everyone's kinda different. That's why once you get to know your customers will all of the first questions that you'll talk about is how do they like to communicate, or they textures, or they email, or are they phone calls or what, how, what do they, how do they like to communicate so that you guys can work together and form a relationship. So the needs assessment and the selling process, I put Needs Assessment separate. Once again, technically needs assessment is part of the selling process. But if it's vital to kinda do the needs assessment for the entirety of the process. So seven step selling process is the preparation. After the preparation is making the call. Then review and understand that account. And once again, it's technically needs assessment. But you're doing that and your preparation, you're doing that and you're making your call, you're doing that in the fourth stuff which I can't read and can't remember off the top of my hand, which is presenting the proposal and the number five is reviewing the objections. And in number number six, closing the sale, which we'll talk briefly about, that's so important that once you do a great job, you figure out what moves them. You gave them the value added solution, and then you go, thanks, have a great day and you don't sounding thing. It's a wasted cough. We're not asking for that final my closing the sale. And finally, follow and build that relationship. You saw on that first problem forum, that's great. Follow what other problems are they adding? How can you help them? Review what you know about the prospects on some of the writing tools like Salesforce type tool will give you good, good feedback and you'll have some idea of the prospect. Sometimes you won't, sometimes you'll find their name, find their number, and you'll pick up the phone and call me. And your and you don't know anything about and that being said, you always have to have an objective if you don't know anything about them, your objective in your first call, find out what the who they are. Are they in business? Are they in fact in your market? Like are they worth a second, third, tenth phone call? And just pay any possible objections that you know, if it's your eight sales call, then, you know kinda what you expect versus your first sales QA. This is so important to make sure that your meat shoemaker, you had a great, you know, you pick up that had a great six that phone conversation. That's wonderful. That's great. What yeah. What one can take them restore? Well, let me give it to Tina and see what she thinks level. Who the heck is Tina? That's the person that you should have been talking to the old time. Well, you just you just wasted your time not talking to the decision maker. Second step, making the call. Start to build that relationship. Start to learn about their business. Once again, still a needs assessment here, what you're building the relationship, you're finding out what makes them tick. You're finding out about their business, but also finding out about what they like to do. It once again, people like to buy from their friends. So like granted, you don't want to be their friend. Like you're going out drinking every night when you want to be their friend that you can kind of BS back and forth with them and talk about the game, talk about what's going on in the world. They're more likely to buy from you if they have that level of relationship with you. Show a genuine interest in their business and who they are and to be a partner. Once again, no one likes to be sold. You want to work with them, create a partnership. And so that way you're creating value and adding value to their business. So review and understand the account. This is the the mean potatoes, a needs assessment that kinda works through the entirety of the sales process. So find out what they want through qualifying questions. We'll touch on what qualifying questions look like here in just a moment. Create money, even when they don't know they had an E. It's easy, relatively easy to spell a customer when they come to you and say, Hey, Company B, screwing up, what can you do to help me with this? It's difficult when you're calling a customer and they say, company B is awesome. I love what they do while I have no reason to switch. Those are the things that's when you have to kind of create that awareness and start talking about what value tools that you can offer that they might not even know that they need. Finding out what products they buy, what services that they, that they would use and from you and just kinda talking through some of that with them. To determine their motivation to buy. Everyone says price. Everyone says they want to save money, but that doesn't always mean money on the product. If you're saving them, if whatever you're selling, if you're selling pain or if you're selling software, it doesn't really matter if you're able to save them time, make your business run more efficiently. That's still saving them, that's still pranks, that's still saving them money. So what aspects can you use that to help with that? So what are some of the qualifying questions that you might ask during a sales call? We, in those questions you're trying to learn about their business. Learn how they run, learned, you know, you might be qualifying the size, the first one. Do you have an account with us? Do you even know who the heck I am? You know what my company is? Do you know that we exist in a very advantageous thought that generally everyone in the paint industry at least knows us. They may hate us for some reason, but they do know who we are. So that's a I usually don't have that if you go to work, not only want you to work for anyone else but us, but if you go to work in a start-up that assign a new product, that's a different conversation because you're going to have to explain who you are, what your company's about versus where we can kind of go, right? We can kind of go past that and go into some deeper tools. You know, what type of work you do for us there there are different type of painting contractors that work in different segments so that that looks different depending on what they do is kind of a difference of a tactic that we're going to take. You may find out that the industry that you're in, whether it's, it's painter or what may have been, you may find out that they are there in a different industry. So maybe this is your last call to that customer and they're not worth you continue continue in that process with him. You know, a way to evaluate size for us is how many employees do they have? You know, we kind of have a rough idea if they have 12 employees, kinda how much they're worth it in terms of value, who they bind from. Some people love to boast about who they're buying from. Some people are a little more cryptic and kinda want you to play the game and find out, you know, the main types of products or using. Once again, if you can figure out the products that they're using, then you can kind of figure out maybe why they're using those. Maybe you have another competitor that you recently flip that use those products and you already know why people use those, then you're kind of a leg up if you can find out that information for us. This is kind of specific to us where you work in the day. If the customer is in your market and they're working 20 minutes away of their work and their cool. I'll see you in a half hour and you can go there. You know, something you know, for for our industry. It's tough to sometimes track down some of these guys because a lot, not all of them have a physical office. If you can find out where the worker and they'd tell you, boom, you go there, you can see and you can have that face-to-face interaction. This is a question I think is a great question that some people don't want to ask because they're afraid that they're there showing, you know, they what did they do better, but you also want to ask what they're doing well, what do you like from them? And then after that, okay, you like those things? That's great. If they could do things better, I know that you like the company, but if they could do things better, what would those two things be and how would they go about doing it? Well, that's great. We actually already do this. So just, just a way to tie it in and makes them, without knowing it, tell you something that they need. And that allows you to, to, to leverage that kind of down the road with you, the presentation. And that's a lot of questions. So make sure it's a conversation. You know, you may not get to every single one of those questions. I don't know what the number is now, but it's 11 points or eight points of contact, whatever that number is before you actually sell something or they call you back. You don't have to tackle every single one of those the entire time. You may find out one need in the, in the first column. And then you're like, oh, that doesn't really make sense. And it might take three or four more before you figure out what really moves them. So don't make sure you're not interrogating them, that no one likes that. So just make sure it's kind of a conversation. You know, you ask them. What issues you're having right now it's easy. You know, how has it affected your business? Well, you know, it's made it tough to find leads will tell me more about that. And then you can kind of go into it. They give start talking about their business. You can start learning more about their business. So once you've kind of assess their needs and went through and found out more than you can begin to build with that proposal. Once again, the you're still doing you're still doing needs assessment during this process because even when you're presenting the proposal, even when you're doing that, you're still going to get feedback from the customer. So you're constantly learning from the customer about what makes them tick and what makes them mine. You know, determine what products they use. Be prepared to discuss pricing. Everyone wants to talk about price, you know, sell unique value-added solutions if you're just another person selling a similar product at a similar price with similar similar advantages. There's no reason for them to change. No one likes to change, changes, not fun. It can be a pain in the *** and can be time-consuming, especially if they're busy and and things are going well, they don't want to change. So you're going to have to find, find that need, find that pain point that is actually causing the trouble and flip that so that you can use that to advantage. So what are some of the value added solutions? Once again, for us, I'll give you a couple for us and then a couple of that other companies have used and some business to consumer selling, you know, we we keep customer records for ten years. You know, we have a painting contractor that paint someone's house paints the barium is house. Steve's dog bites off deciding and he needs to paint two more two more sheets, deciding we have that color on file for them. So for the for our contractor sake, to comb through their records, I don't have to pull a sample. They can call us a hay. Back in March of 18, I painted Steve's house. What was that color? And about 30 seconds we can tell. So it saves them time, saves them money, having to go back through, saves them having saves their home owner having to repaint their entire house, nakedness, paint that section. Kinda some business to consumer. Things that people have done to hit some pain points. You know, Amazon has their their one-click purchase. You don't have to log in, put your address, put your put your payment, and every night you go in and want to order 24 paper towels, you hit one button and it to your house to save you that times you don't have to input that money. Subway was one of the first companies to implement six. Well, you know, at a larger scale by five you get 63. And I remember I remember when that came out. I remember when he hit me and it made sense to me. I was like, great, I'm going to be these things anyway. Like I'll, I'll get a 61 for free. So creating that type of value. But at a business to business level, that's, that's what you're looking. Those are the value things you're welcome to do. So obtain feedback and resolve objections. Once again, you still assessing the need. You're going to get pushback customers or program to push back and not to accept the first thing that you often than if it's too good to be true, it usually ends at least that's the mindset. That's my mindset. That's the mindset of most customers. So, you know, just excellent. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Like they can't that can't work. I don't think that's going to work for us. Okay. Well, tell me about what you know, what, what issues it is this gonna songs? And don't, you know, you can't take it personally. Think that'll come up in a slide or two. But you can't take it personally. You know, you're going to be told no, thousands of times if you, if you're in the selling business, people are going to tell, you know, people are going to say no, people are going to hang up on you. You can't really take it personally. You get there, you kinda gotta move on, take a breath, act professional, and move on and try to find something else that can help them. So yeah, I mean, with obtaining feedback kind of thing that you're working through the proposal, you know, and maybe you missed maybe you missed their their needs. You didn't quite hit what they were looking for. You may have to go back to the drawing board, like OK, that didn't work. What did I miss? And then when you when you set up that next call, that next meeting that you have with them, you can kind of dive deeper into that and ask those deeper questions and tell them more about their business. You know, the the drawback as someone who is a gas bag to talk for five hours. It's easy to sit down with a customer and just talk and all you want to do is cellae, cellae, cellae, cellae. So important when you're, when you're there, shut up and listen to what they have to say. Because that's when you're going to learn. If you get them talking, you know, in a 30-minute conversation, you talk five minutes, they talk 25. That's great. You can't learn anything from them if your talking. So that's that's something that I had to learn early on that was taught to me. It was just key. You've got to slow down and listen and assess their needs. You, you have all these brilliant ideas. You have this product that you want to sell, the service that you want to push and you start trying to jam it down their throat. That service doesn't matter to them. You may have something that does, but the one that you decide to want to sell doesn't fit them. So that's why it's so important to, to find out what, what moves in and what motivates them so that you can create a solution tailored to that specific customer. Will kind of buzz through these, I mean, verbal buying signals. If if they're giving you an indication like they're gonna Wiener way, they might ask how much it costs. What does it cost to implement that system? What does the warranty look like? Leading questions that, that they seem to be committed to purchasing. Fiscal buying signals are not as good. Eye contact. Handshakes, smiles, physical direction, shaking their hand, eye contact, crossing their arms, tapping their foot. In that type of stuff. They're not so likely. And that's that's something you can kind of pick up on the fly back when we get to have face-to-face meetings. You can kind of pick that up on the fly and kind of reassess your selling on the spot and kind of take it in another direction that, you know, you're missing and you may not have the exacts proposal ready, but you can start leading them down another path and 80 mining more successful on your next call and you meet with them. Verbal objections. I mean, once again, we don't can't really set up the group activity, but this easy when like your price is too high, I don't want to change. That doesn't matter to me. Those type of things you're going to get, you know, industry dependent, You know, how you, how you react to those. The easiest way is to, to role-play, talk to your peers, find out when they're getting those objections, how they're handling those is the easiest way to combat knows. I mean, if you're whatever industry you're in, if the push back and you're getting the the verbal objections that someone else has had something similar and you can get your team on that. It See you to respond to objections. It can happen at any time. And that's why you're you're constantly kinda read going through the needs assessment in your head because when you're responding to their objections, you're like, OK, I missed on that when I struck out what myself proposal didn't work. I miss their needs. So you kinda gotta reset it. Once again, you can't take it personally. If you do that, you'll be, you'll be grumpy and have artists act by the time you're 30, you can't, you just can't shake every single thing like that to heart. You kinda gotta move on. You know, empathize with the customer, helps to end up at the top. Work, then that's not good for you. Tell me more about what does For worked for you. What would you if we were able to do that and just kinda get them talking about what's a positive for them. And as we've talked about several times, you may need to go back go back to step three, qualify the account there, and find the actual we'll need that they're that they are doing. And I'll harp on this for a minute. Nothing more frustrating than being with the Rep. Then having an awesome sales call with the customer. And then at the end of the sales call, we got, thanks, have a great day. And we don't sell anything. You know, our job is sales professionals is to sell. We gotta be comfortable asking for the sale. You know what that may look like. You know, I'll send over the contract tonight. I'll follow up with you in the morning. Wants its side. I'll stop by next week for your first order or if I don't hear from you by Friday as we're talking about now. I'll call you Monday morning for that owner. You've got to ask for the sale in order to get it. If you can't if you can't close that, you're wasting your time inlets. And unfortunately that happens when we focus so much the process going forward that sometimes we forget to ask for the sale of your job and you're adding value. They should, you know, you can tell they want to buy you, you've let them, they've come 90% of the way you gotta go the ten. So you just got to kind of bring them in and kind of grab him over the line. So just a quick two-minute video. I thought this this isn't our company's history. I don't be mad. But the I thought they'd get a really good job of talking about what was important to their customer. It is business to consumer, but what was important to their customer and, and kinda how they went about doing it, and how they were able to provide value for the customer. Main's mark Heitor. I work for Ericsson corporation. Erikson's headquartered out of Sweden, very large and the LTE space, early telco, over a 100 years old within Ericsson, I work in a unit called media room. And media room is all the technology that's required to deliver a television platform to set-top boxes that most consumers have in their home and deliver media like television service. It's not talking about a rented movie that I download or something. I'm delivering the Superbowl, not me but media first, we'll be delivering that Super Bowl to you. That can't go off the air, that has to be crisp. But what's most important is, are you delighting the customer? Right? So let's just break it down to four things that your customers, you get frustrated with the tolerating. They're either satisfied or they're delighted. Just one of the Fourth. And what we've tried to do is keep them at least satisfied. And we always shoot for delighted. Because you're doing things at very large scale. You're dealing with environmental factors, either the, the environment that with the air we breathe or technology onto the year, things change. Things happen, right? It could be a hurricane, a tornado. You have to be prepared for these. So how do you do that? Even in a, even in a crisis when things are totally on the floor, not get, how do you prevent things from really escalating? You communicate. You communicate if you know what's going to happen. So you proactively inequity change, right? You can be a plan change, planned downtime, ever bridge gives us this vehicle. It is it provides a way that we can guarantee. Because you had the quick communication. You didn't have to go, you didn't go up, you get up and goal is my cable modem down as is that top box broken. Did someone's grew up in my backyard touring for him to say I feel more comfortable. You feel like there's no action for you that will move you from frustrated tolerating, right? And if you're in tolerating, your likelihood to go to a different provider is lower. That's what I think is the beautiful thing about the communication I'm trying to tell is, is the one common denominator in all these things. What wasn't it was ever Britain, ever Bridge was the pipe that communicates. Some homeowners want to be informed me in text. Somebody want to be informed me of email. Some may want to get a boy boys call. Everybody could do all of that. So why can't I do like my customers, even though it's a bad thing is happening. So that's where I'll stop it, but things are gonna come up during the process. During, you know, you have a relationship with the customer, being able to communicate kinda what they found. If they were able to communicate with our customer effectively, what their customer know what was going on. It limited the pushback. I mean, there's going to be things that go wrong during the entirety of your your relationship with the customer. But, you know, if you're able to communicate with them, if that's what important to him. He talks about specifically that the type of communication they want, knowing your customer, knowing what type of communication they're looking for is what allow allow them to effectively communicate. So I just thought that was kind of kind of a good way to sum it up in a little bit different life than me talking about Sherwin Williams or 45 minutes. And kinda, kinda just suggest a different way that they look at it. So sometimes when we talked about basics of closing a sale, be prepared be prepared to ask for the sale. Be optimistic. I mean, if you've done your job, you should expect this. As we've talked about, you're going to get pushed back. That's what customers are programmed to do. Be persistent, ask for the sale. Don't be afraid to ask a couple of times. As you're as you're going through the call, if that will work, if they're prepared to commit. As we've talked about a couple of times now, if the answer is no, be professional, don't get frustrated, don't huff and puff. Cuz you're gonna your, you will lose all credibility with the customer. If you can't win a 100%, went 30%. Hey, this, this is our proposal, this is what we're looking to do. That doesn't really work for me. Okay, what does work for you? Well, this and this, okay. Now we have something to grow in a maybe you don't close it there. You go back to the drawing board a little bit, work on a couple of things that work for them and fit their business. And you're able to, to push that forward. You know, we've talked about these specific, specific value added solutions for each individual customer. There you're generally not going to have one umbrella fix that's good for everyone. You're going to have specific value added for every single customer. And follow up. You've gotta follow up, follow up to close the sale follow up once you have the sail and kind of build that relationship. And if you say you're going to follow up, follow up with him called The we've talked about most of these are readiness and the buying signal, talking to the wrong person. Fear of failure. If you don't ask for the sale, you can't be told No. Unfortunately, in this business are that you're going to be told no. A lot, especially early on. You're going to be told no a lot. And the sooner that you can get comfortable with being turned down for that, the easier it's going to be and it easier. Same thing with cold calling. After your first 1000 cold calls. Coke on. It's pretty easy to lists and kind of run with it. It's no problem. After you've been told no. 20 times about this proposal that I mean, over different stretches being told no, again, not a big deal. Back to the drawing board onto the next one. So common organ through that and the more practice that you have, you know, no one wants to be told. No one likes to be told. No. But unfortunately that's, that's, that's the nature of the beast. So followup, build the relationship. A lot of times customers are going to have different things that may crop up. And that's why continuously evaluating their needs is so important. Especially now more than ever, it will be like this. From now until eternity, It's only going to get faster. The needs of customers is only going to change faster and faster. So work today is not going to work six months from now. We'll work six months from now. I'm not going to work a year from now. So constantly evaluating there needs to be able to provide different solutions for the customer. And finally, thank them. We appreciate their business. They could, they could buy from anyone they buy from you. So don't forget that. Don't forget to be a person. Don't just be a selling machine, you know, talk to them, you know, we appreciate it. And generally you do. You've gotta put yourself in their shoes. They're going out on a limb is switched for you and be appreciative of that. So that's it. I mean, that's kind of where kind of we're where I left it. I didn't wanted that you deep into the entirety of the selling process, but more how how important needs assessment is at every level of that process and why it's so important to create the specific solutions for the customer. Thank you, James. I don't know what the students have any questions, but I thought I'd I'd kicked it off by maybe getting getting your perspective and maybe you can talk about those from your experience and sales over the last ten years. And Sherwin Williams, right? With especially in a B2B kind of selling environment. You know, maybe, maybe it might help students relate to this a lot better if you talk about, if you give an example of a customer that you found really hard to deal with and how you went about kind of uncovering what needs or because they weren't. I mean, we always come across customers who don't really want to tell you what they want, right? I mean, it's almost like you have to figure it out or help them figure out what is it that they actually need? I'm sure you've come across something like that and maybe you can give that as maybe as a case study example and talk about how you handle that, what kind of questions you asked and how did he manage to kind of convert that convert that customer? Yeah, I think that definitely come across that. I don't know. I'm trying to think of a specific one. I think I have Prius specific customer in mind and the way that you do you tackle that specific customer, probably the most difficult one to handle is kind of the boisterous, loud. I don't want to talk to you, don't want to do anything. So we've we've, you know, and that's I think that's why it's so important to talk to them on a personal level. If they have, especially if you come into a scenario where you're there for us, you're there new rep. And they didn't like the way a three, they've already decided they're not going to like you. They're loud about it. They don't like you. They don't want to talk to you. So I think that's why it's so important to talk to them on a personal level and talk about their interests. But we've had success, you know, not even talking about business. Hey, do you want to go you want to go to the nascar race? When you start talking about nascar for, for 30 minutes, I'm a huge Nascar guy. I can Google as best as anyone, so they'll hit that. Our our next call happens. We can kind of talk about it and I'll just an ascending to the race. And then you follow. Maybe you go, maybe you don't even sit with them, but you've though you observe and it's it's a talking point, then you start talking to them about that and then you you eventually get to business. I think the easiest way to break down those customers that they don't want to talk business. Don't talk business. You, your first calls with them don't have to be about business. Learner out there, their personal interests, and being able to dive into the, sorry for not having a specific example, I should've had that prepared a little better, but yeah, I think that's that's key is being able to talk about it. You know, it's, it's a call, but about selling something, that's not always the objective when you're, when you're learning about learning about what, what their interests are. And then on a personal level. Treat them like a person. That's most important. You know, you always have to put your selling had on portrait people had on. I put my my camo hat on and enroll, you know, put my my baseball hat on, efficient hat, whatever needs to be done to kind of talk to that person. I've been fortunate enough that I had a lot of ventures. So it kind of helps me being able to blend and talk to different customers. And I think that's, that's so important to be able to, to, to just break it down and talk to them about about things besides what you're trying to sell. Okay. Well, thank you. And I wasn't planning to put you on the spot with agents. Generally examples of it is actually much better than a specific one way. So that really helped and hopefully help the students as well. Because, you know, again, I mean, you know, I spent years in sales before I got my PhD. And interestingly enough, I mean, even today ISL, right? In my most recent sales acoustic, re trying to get a ship aims to agree to coming in. But part of my goal while telling, spending a fair amount of time telling you what the program was about is really to kind of understand what is it that Sherwin Williams is looking for? Rate, I mean, not that she was a difficult customer or didn't want to talk to me as a person that I that I've come across and I have to I'm not trying to just say that for the sake of telling you that should he or she is cheer issues. So it's easy to talk to her. Right. So that so what I was trying to get at was I've come across customers where they literally again, we'll let you in through the door. I mean, they may agree to meet with you because you lose someone that they know. And therefore you've gone in there and then you have to really work and breaking them down to at least talk to you and tell you. And that's usually been my approach. I just wanted to get an idea of what your approach would be because I tried to understand a little bit more about themselves. Them. I talk less about business. I talk, I don't talk about my product or services at all. I tried to put everything on them to find out what is it that they're looking for. And that's where needs assessment plays a really strong robotic. What do they need as, as, as an employee of the organization that they work for, as a leader of the organization, as an individual, right? So looking at all those needs, I'm trying to kind of say, okay, this is how we can help you. Alright. So but yeah, I know they oh, I'm sorry. I cut you off, but I know you're just seeing like in any role, you're always selling even if you're not in themselves rule, I was an HR preceded and hire people. So obviously I'm on the company. But even as a person seeking a role, right, you're kind of selling yourself. And a lot of times, especially in this market currently, is to a lot of things that people are really looking for in you are new in college, but you may be competing against someone that had been in the, in the industry for about five years, right? So you have to kind of see what their needs are and, and understand a little bit more about the role. So you can say, oh, here's the benefits of hiring me, right? So I think it's all necessary all around. And hopefully I'm not taking all the time, but also kind of, you know, what James was saying a lot about our customers and in building that relationship. Like a lot of people think, PE, I know nothing about pay. Like most of everyone that worked here. Probably knew next to nothing unless their parents were like a general contractor or something like that. And still we innovate thousands of products every year. So we're all constantly learning together and we do have like some programs that helps you build up that knowledge to gain that trust. Because since we're doing business to business selling where science of contractors that probably had been in the industry for five years plus. So you kind of have to let them know that they can trust you efforts we introduced themselves because they're like, oh, you're a young phase. What do you know about pain? And obviously if I was in the I don't know anything. So, you know, as you as you kind of get an employee learn our products and things like that, you'd definitely kind of one of them and then they're more able to kind of have those conversations with you because they know that you generally know what you're talking about. And then shameless plug. But you know, what we do have is management and sales training program. And that's essentially what it, what it is for, right? So you, you, most people have a much knowledge. You're going obviously pain or, or the industry or management and sales. But that is the power of a training program we're going to train. You obviously are coming have been around for a 154 years. So we have a lot of knowledge. A lot of people have worked there for a very long time. There always wanted to teach, give you best practices, and really info. You can share it without you throughout your career basically on how to be a business owner. A majority of our stores are anywhere from about a million to about 4 million in sales annually. So isn't it nice that you potentially be a manager of a $1 million store fresh out of college. And we also have an internship where you kind of learn the same thing, how to be a business owner, Basu managing our business. So shameless, plug it definitely apply. If you apply, you'll talk to me because, you know, like they were sharing. I support Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, West Virginia. So if your net area, you'll talk to me, but if you're not in the area, I probably stick next to the person that your thought is. Again, neglect. No, thank you. Share it because actually, I was going to segue to give me a neat segue into two things. So there are two points that I want to ask you. One was, of course, I'm going to kind of ask you to elaborate a little bit more on on the on the internships and the management training positions that you're that you're looking to recruit for this current year. Maybe provide the students with kind of a timeline and maybe an approximate number of positions that you are looking for so that and what they would be doing. I mean, if you want to if you want to give a little bit more insight into that and then I'll get to my second question. Yes now. Okay. So I'll say talk about the position. Start off with the management training program. So that's full-time for seniors graduating or anyone who has graduated. So you'll kinda do, it's really a three-phase program. That first you'll be at one of our locations, but isn't learn how to run the business that's managing inventory budgeting for the store, managing employee. I was managing a relationship with our customers. So you kind of go around and then this program leads you to be the assistant manager. So what's cool about Sherwin? We're not like a franchise company. Think McDonald's and stuff like that. All our stores corporately ONE. But I will say individually, man, it's still a lot of the store manager had an assistant manager have the say. You know, if they want to be active in the community, if you want to donate pain, if you want to have events for your customers where you know, you have donuts every Monday. That's really up to you. So it's a lot of creativity in this role to make your own store successful. On so far, she'll start in one store, then we'll seed to a few stores in this area. Can the experience of our smallest or like I said, we have smaller volume, large volume, obviously smallest stores, less employees, largest stores more employees. And then after that, you'll be placing an old store as the assistant manager. Most people similar to Jane's career path, they either say level of management, they become a store manager. Some people say, look, our sales is my jam. They become rep. And move up that way. But then it's a lot of interchangeable. So a lot of store managers become sells reps later and kind of move up the past there. So a lot of movement in, you know, definitely Nambe. We did a study of like 96% in people that, you know, start, start with our, our company. I'll most of our openings are internally. So kind of once you get the industry down and know the products, your opportunities are endless, especially if it wants to relocate like James just did. It helps? Yes. And then we have an internship, essentially the baby of the full time program. It's a 10-week internship. We can do school credit is paid hourly. Um, you'll learn how to manage the business. You have a group project where you work with other interns on a business case. Some cool things too. So like, we want to open a new store in an area. And one of my other areas. So we have some interns got out where that's thought should be. They did the research. They they end at the end the internship you presented out And I think was called by our company is, as he said on the video, good ideas are good ideas. We don't care who they come from. So we actually build a store where those interns SPECT. And that was actually my balsam were area and now it's a $1.3 million or so. A lot of growth in that, in like another project you will have Darwinism. A lot of people don't know pain actually expires. So we have inventory, so we try to come up with a system. How can we rotate our product to make sure order product leaves first? So those are some of the products projects that you'll do. As far as timeline are full-time program. It's open on a rolling basis. We always have lead because we're always growing in Delaware area. We're building a few, open a few new stores like even next year. So we're always looking for people there in that internship. I'll be mostly do the recruiting from August to about April because the internship generally starts in June. So like it's there, but I hope I answered that. Yes. It's great. I mean, because I don't I think it's it's here are definitely looking at, you know, what are they going to be doing next summer on graduating and lot of them are graduating next spring looking for positions. And it's good to know, get to know a little bit about the company as well and what kind of position then what can you opportunities than our eight? Because I think James can talk to it at length, I guess having started at Sherwin Williams as an intern and then go into a district sales manager which is yeah, there's the path is good. If you're able to put in the work, you know, there's there's a lot of people they're not afraid to ask. Ask people and if you're, if you're able to put in the work, you can certainly move up. That's one of the things that I was going to agree with was, you know, even though they're all corporately owned, their your stores, you runners, or how you see fit as a small business is how you run that store. So one of the really cool things to be able to do that and you learn that in the, as someone who's done both, you learn that in the internship, you learn that in the in the management training program as well. I was very fortunate to have done the internship that I actually stayed on for about a year after the internship as part time until the MTBE. So by, you know, by the time I became the NTP, I kind of had a leg up because I did the internship. I knew about the company. I knew how to store words in a kinda, you know, put me on a quicker path to kinda move up because I kind of had a leg up. Only one of the other kind of had a leg up there because I already had some experience with the company. So it's definitely great. It's, it's definitely a fun job to do lots of different things. You're rarely doing the same thing twice. A bunch of different characters customer wise to work with. So insides, it's a great company. I don't I don't plan on going anywhere. I've been here for ten years. I plan on being here for 30 more. So they see Unit. And through and through the program, you just build a network of people to, like I say, a lot of people are overwhelmed by what our product is. But you know, as you go to different stores, you mean other people, you can always call him and say, oh, like they want to do this, why should I use an Amazon? You have company resources as well, like hotline, I told you practice all the time, a 24-7. But you really kinda get that network. Obviously don't call me because I cannot help you that. Well, maybe James could. I like them a lot of things and then a lot of people are nervous at Jamestown, the presentation about making mistakes. But, you know, you know, practice makes perfect. And especially usually in the first day I work in the job you're like, what did I get into? I can't help anyone. I don't know what to do. But you keep coming back. You realize it gets easier and easier. And I'm the HR person by even make mistakes. Sometimes I help out in the store. Someone came in and they were like, oh, my paint is peeling on my deck, why should I use? And I was like, the only thing that came to my mind was a primer. So that's like maybe you need to put a primer on there. And then been gotta had people in the store to help me because primer doesn't go index, as you'll constantly do things like that, but your team is there to help you move forward. So now I just want the X-Men. Yeah. So questions, students, Any questions for James officer ray at all? I just want to say enricher, very good job. And you were the only person that I could see on my screen and you were very the whole SO I certainly. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. So I know we only have about three or four minutes. I am going to kind of talk about ask you, flip the question back to you on a, on a slightly related question to the topic which is asking questions and assessing needs. But I want to pose the question given urine and HR, recruiting firm colleges, you know, would you what would you advise students in terms of our interview with possession, maybe not just at Sherwin Williams, but at other places as well as to what kind of questions they should ask to better understand what. What a prospective employer is looking for in the ideal candidate. How would you frame the question? What are some of the best questions that you've maybe come across? Maybe give an example, one or two questions that you have. A candidate that's really kind of said that stayed with you? Yeah. So it's I think a lot of that, especially with on-the-job friend, you have to do research in advance to know who you're speaking with. A lot of times, absolute, they come in to interview with me or other Pete, other recruiters that heard and they're like, OK, what is this and what you applied, right? So the pre-work starts on when you will apply, what is the job requirements? What is it saying that you'll be doing and things like that? And then definitely ask questions if you don't understand what the roles and responsibilities most recruiters will kind of go through the program like I did earlier on, but being able to ask those questions. But I always receive a lot of questions and address have I guess to do and it's not. So a lot of times, definitely, most of time you'll, the first-price yields b2 as a recruiter. And a lot of people like to stump the recruiter. And I don't know why people do that. But they like to ask like, okay, so perspect what the company will look like in the growth will look like in 50 years, like our Earth. And I can tell you about Iran AB, you know, so they really try to stump you. So make sure to add some questions that are relevant to the job and to understanding, you know, what they need. And if you want to work there to back, that's the part of the questions. I'm trying to think of specific questions that I received kinda About the role. But most of it's really asking for clarity on kind of what their role is. So, you know, what James talked about before, we do do some type of cold calling. So a lot of people ask questions about what does that process look like for you guys, or what are some challenges that you have had with this issue? And then it's really awesome because some people know how to play that back to say, Well, I had that experience before. You know, maybe they weren't for like that vector marketing or something selling forks and knives. And they're like I had then a lot of people are slam the door in my face, but I was able to do this. So that's common until what you guys experienced Escher Williams. So I think it's just asking those questions but an overly start sad during your research in the beginning from when you apply. Thank you, that's great advice. Should I not be able to train a clock? And I know you guys have other things to do as well, so I don't want to only buy. Any last thoughts. A last piece of advice, James Phillips, children's today or I think in general, something that I try and make sure that all of our new hires know something that I would say it's very important when you're looking at. And this is again, a little bit of a shameless plug for sure one because our benefits are really good, are for one, very good and things like that. So when you're, when you're deciding, when you're, when you're, when you're graduating, you're looking at companies, make sure that's part of your conversation before you sign on the dotted line to make sure that the total package that you're getting is what you're looking for. One key matches import. They have, you know, vacation days, stuff like that. Just make sure you're looking at the whole package. Quality life is very important. So making sure that that work-life balances there. Don't be afraid to ask that question. Kind of going into it, what that looks like it that's important. Or you just want to make sure that they can, not only financially, but in other ways that the company can support you. Thank you. Thank you very much, James. Thank you, guys all for coming and thank you so much. Definitely. Amazon, we're on LinkedIn and everything's don't you have any questions? Feel free to add Is there and James, I mean, if you could, I'll show you those storms is a little bit. If you could share, maybe if the presentation via email, I can uploaded along with the recording. Students have access to that as well and can reach out to you if they have questions. But thank you very much and we're really excited to having you on board as partners. We're looking forward to a long term relationship and that you will hire a lot of our students and maybe some of your next candidates an idea today. And it sounds good, we appreciate the great Friday. Go, daddy. Very good. And stay safe and stay healthy, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.
Superstar Selling Series - Selling Business Outcomes - Needs Assessments 11.6.2020
From Kimberly Ragan November 10, 2020
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James E. Lacour is currently District Sales Manager DelMar District for Sherwin-Williams Company. He is a 2012 JMU Graduate in Business Management. He has been with Sherwin-Williams for 10 Years and in that time period has held 7 positions with the Company. He has also relocated 5 times in the last 8 years.
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- Lerner College
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