Selling Floor Safety Supplies

It’s possible that the increasing need for independent distributors to diversify their product offerings couldn’t have come at a better time: the nation is currently in a period of expanding its focus on safety, and the safety-products market is providing distributors with some of these alternative product lines.

Safety products aimed at flooring are becoming essential for nearly every public place because of the number of slip-and-fall accidents and the resulting lawsuits.

Knowing why these accidents happen, where they happen and who to talk to are a few of the main things successful safety-products distributors should be making a priority.

Manufacturers say they are starting to see more jan/san distributors showing interest in, and having success with, safety-product sales. Jan/san distributors generally find floor-care safety products an easy sell because slip-and-fall accidents are one of the most common and expensive types of accidents. So helping to prevent them can prove lucrative for distributors.

Safety First
There is a wide range of products that help keep people safe from danger, and one of the biggest categories is floor-care products. According to the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI), falls are the leading cause of emergency room visits, even ahead of automobile accidents, with the average slip-and-fall accident claim costing $100,000. With the prevalence of accidents as well as the expense associated with them, building managers and safety directors are taking steps to ensure their facilities are safe.

To combat accident-causing conditions, manufacturers have produced a number of products including slip-resistant cleaning agents, floor matting, floor signs and spill clean-up. Dale Burson, president of Dynamic Research Co., Inc., Portland, Ore., says one of his company’s most popular product lines includes a cleaning solution that leaves slip-resistant agents on the floor.

“This is used in the normal cleaning or maintenance process, so the regular cleaning and maintenance personnel with the same equipment and cleaning protocols that have been used in the industry for years can utilize these products and incorporate them into their cleaning protocol,” Burson explains. “It's a two-in-one type concept; enhancement of safety with the cleaning or polishing procedures or techniques that they are doing already anyway.”

Making the floor safe through proper product application is important, but doesn’t provide a 100-percent guarantee that no one will get hurt. To try to further reduce incidents of slips and falls, facility managers often use warning signs.

Mark Hoyle, senior project manager with Rubbermaid Commercial Products, Winchester, Va., believes barricades will become an important purchase for facilities in the near future because of the aging population. Their vision isn’t as sharp, their reflexes aren’t as quick and their injuries can be more serious.

“If your vision isn’t that good and you can’t read a sign that says ‘wet floor,’ a barricade will prevent you from even getting on that floor and slipping and falling,” explains Hoyle. He also notes that people have become so conditioned to seeing safety signs that the warnings are often overlooked, therefore defeating their purpose.

Reducing Liability
Protecting people from accidents is the ultimate aim of floor-safety products, but they can also aid in protecting a company’s bank account. With the high costs associated with liability insurance and lawsuits, taking steps to ensure safety makes good business sense.

John Irwin, vice president of product development for Impact Products LLC, Toledo, Ohio, says using safety signage is the most proactive investment a facility manager can take to protect people from slip and fall accidents and the associated lawsuits.

“Cases have been won by showing consistent cleaning processes along with appropriate signage when floors are wet,” says Irwin. “The cost of a sign is insignificant compared to the cost of one slip-and-fall accident.”

Burson says libility issues cause floor-safety products to go deeper than just the cost of claning products.

“These are like the hidden costs that are not realized except by facility managers or the person that’s ultimately signing the check for the insurance or medical claims,” says Burson.

Given the liability costs, more distributors and their customers are beginning to view safety products as an integral part of a facility as opposed to a necessary evil. “Customers are asking for help and oftentimes that is motivated or directed by the insurance company for the facilities because they don’t want to pay the claims,” Burson says. “Many of the insurance companies demand that their customers do something to improve the measure of safety of their floors.”

A Safe Bet
Distributors who excel at selling safety products attribute that success to their ability to think beyond traditional sales techniques. The best way to make that sale, manufacturers say, is to prove to the buyer that the products they’re selling offer a clear benefit to customers’ operations.

Tom O’Brien, sales manager for A.R.P. Safety Products, St. Louis, says salespeople who are highly motivated, willing to enter new markets and eager to show the positive cost effects of having safety products in a facility are those who achieve the best results.

“You have to show customers that the gross margin dollars are typically higher on safety supplies than the traditional products that they sell, like the toilet paper and tissues and so forth, but you then demonstrate to them that they can make a higher margin through eventual savings,” he says.

Ron Gustafson, marketing manager for Superior Mfg. Group, Inc., Chicago, says distributors should come prepared with statistics and information about safety products. Many manufacturers make that information available to distributors. “We do a lot in researching insurance claims, premiums and how much insurance companies are spending on those things each year,” he says. “Knowing those things can really go a long way in making a sale.”

Burson says salespeople who recognize the need for floor-safety products, and actively work with their customers to make that need clear to them, are the distributors who have the most sales success.

“The most effective distributors are the ones that have sales reps that can do problem solving for their customers … because the concept of safety is a problem-solving concept,” says Burson. “The problem and the need are there, so the distributor sales rep has to be aware that there are solutions available.”

There are many techniques salespeople can use to ensure that they are offering the optimal benefit to their customers.

O’Brien thinks salespeople need to break out of preset boundaries and be sure to show customers new products to spark their interest. Inviting customers to an open house or luncheon can also be a useful tool. “It’s kind of non-traditional selling,” he says.

“Instead of knocking on their door and saying, ‘This is what it is,’ maybe make it a little less formal.”

Show-and-tell is an effective way to make a sale, Burson adds. “You can show the cleaning, but you do have to demonstrate the improvement in safety and then relate that to the overall cost savings and enhancement in sanitation.”

Gustafson recommends emphasizing the savings achieved by reducing insurance claims. “If you look at some of the statistics that are out there about the amount of insurance claims from injuries that are the direct result of slips and falls and trip hazards, the numbers are pretty large.”

Having distributors learn about products is a good way to enhance discussions between a distributor and a customer, Gustafson says.

“Our regional manager and our manufacturer’s reps are out there on a daily basis working in the field with the distributors, training their people and making sure that they’re up to date on the most recent advances,” says Gustafson.

Being knowledgeable on all aspects of safety products a company carries is important, Hoyle says — from knowing regulations and how to sell the products to the finding the appropriate person to talk to in a facility.

For example, an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) code requires that warning signs show a person falling on a horizontal line that represents someone hitting a hard surface. “If there’s a safety sign that has a picture of a wave on it (for example), it’s not officially a safety sign,” says Hoyle.

Also, he says there are two Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OHSA) codes that require the background of a sign to be yellow, and any text or figures must be black. This is important because if a distributor sold a red and blue sign, for instance, the fact that the colors don’t conform to those required by code could be used against a facility’s management in a lawsuit.

Hoyle also stresses the importance of knowing the best way to sell a product. “Don’t just sell a wet floor sign,” he says. “You would never want to put a standard wet floor sign in a stairwell, for instance. You would want to sell a product that is geared toward stairwells and that unusual surface because the safety sign itself becomes a safety hazard in a stairwell … make sure that you focus in on a customer’s needs.”

Offering an “audit tool” to customers is also a useful, he says. A lot of distributors will provide a checklist for all types of facilities that outlines the product needs for different building areas. Either the distributor can run through the list on-site or the customer can fill it out themselves.

Finding the right person to talk to is also one of the best ways to make an impression — and a sale. “It’s important to make contact with the safety director of the facility,” Hoyle says. “Safety directors are also sometimes loss-prevention directors. They’re the ones that you want to talk to about filling their need for safety items.”