The Distributor as Educator

It used to be that your customers’ most reliable — if not only — source of information about products and industry issues was you.

That is no longer the case — not by a longshot.

The massive amounts of information available in all forms to consumers — and jan/san end users — have given them the resources necessary to become smarter, savvier, information-armed guardians of their own organizations’ outcomes.

So where does that leave jan/san distributors, who base their business models on providing products and related education to their customers?

According to industry experts, it means distributors must retool their business approaches to address customers’ big-picture needs. They must look beyond product education and training (a given in many distributor businesses) and target ways to improve customer efficiency, safety and profitability. They must help customers solve their greatest challenges in creative, novel ways.

These distributors must become one-of-a-kind resources to their customers. While they continue to serve as product trainers and educators, they also look at the bigger picture. These “educators” — the ones that do it well — pinpoint the roots of a customer organization’s inefficiencies and shortcomings, and help customers find ways to patch those holes. Instead of joining the crowd of “me-too” sellers, they become the go-to guys when customers have questions, problems or challenges they can’t solve alone.

A Stand-Out Seller? Me, Too
There’s no arguing that there is a place in the jan/san industry for “product sellers” — distributors who sell products to customers at the lowest possible price with little in the way of value-added services. Commodity products lend themselves to this type of selling, and additionally, some customers prefer it — they know what they want, how they want it, and they won’t pay a cent more than the rock-bottom price.

“If the customer has complete knowledge about a product or service, and the product is available from multiple sources, then the customer can choose to buy it from the place with the lowest cost,” explains Dr. Bill McCleave of W.R. McCleave & Associates, a distribution consulting firm in Cornelius, N.C.

He says this situation creates a field full of “me-too” sellers, which gives customers the upper hand in choosing among a number of distributors who are viewed as offering the same thing.

When you’re a customer who has 10 jan/san salespeople trying to sell you the same product, you will work to negotiate the best deal for your organization, adds Michael Marks, principal and managing partner of Indian River Consulting Group, Melbourne, Fla.

So it makes sense, then, that customer-focused, education-oriented companies can emerge from the pack.

“If someone comes along and is helping me train my employees, is taking a genuine interest in me instead of the way I run through and clean a building … if I have someone who can walk with me and tell me about best practices, now the customer has choices. I’ve got nine guys trying to sell me stuff and someone who is trying to help me — that’s a real difference,” Marks says. “Price is really only important if that is the only differentiator.”

Selling Expertise
Selling education and distributor knowledge has become more than an industry buzzword; approaching sales in this way helps distributors improve customer retention and satisfaction, increase profitability and stand out from competitors. It’s a shift observers are seeing in many distribution industries — a move from product selling and related education to “selling” education and knowledge in general, in the interest of helping customers improve their operations.

“Training someone to be effective in their business is different than training on a product,” Marks says. Training and education shouldn’t just be about product, he contends. For example, distributors might instruct customers on how product application relates to how you design and set up work crews. Or, distributors might help customers devise cleanliness standards to guide their operations.

While this paradigm shift is gaining traction in other distribution industries, jan/san has some catching up to do. Like other trends, jan/san sellers are a bit behind the curve, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t companies doing it — and doing it successfully.

The distributors who excel at this type of selling have developed ways to get at the heart of an organization, learn what makes it tick, and find ways to make it function more efficiently, safely or more profitably. Some of the more progressive companies have gone as far as to hire dedicated training managers to facilitate their companies’ educational initiatives.

Full-Time Help
Hiring someone whose position is solely dedicated to developing training programs and formulating customer-specific solutions can be one of the most financially rewarding hires a distributor can make.

Still, few distributors have full-time training managers on staff. Philip Rosenau Co. Inc., is one that had the foresight to create the position 10 years ago, with worthwhile results. Philip Rosenau’s owner started its company training program, “Rosenau Cleaning University,” or RCU, more than 12 years ago, and the training manager position evolved shortly thereafter.

Bill McGarvey has held the training manager position for the past three-and-a-half years. His job, in part, is to be his customers’ “right-hand man.” He pores through trade magazines, stays on top of industry trends, and deciphers all the information available so that he can be an information resource to his customers.

“My role is to keep us up to speed on [industry trends], keep our customers in the loop, and make them understand that we’re in the loop,” McGarvey says.

McGarvey is his company’s customer advocate. He does not “sell” product, but rather discusses business improvement strategies. When he discusses products or cleaning methods, it’s usually not product-specific.

A Varied Offering
One of McGarvey’s tasks is to host a series of seminars at the company’s onsite 2,500-square-foot training facility, which includes six floor types and a working restroom built specifically for demonstrations.

The educational courses include: basic custodial, for those new to the cleaning profession; advanced floor care; carpet maintenance; and a management course. The management course helps train new managers, who many times work their way up through the ranks but lack hands-on management experience or training.

The seminar lineup regularly features the most popular courses, such as hard floor care, but McGarvey is also able to develop courses and design content based on trends.

For instance, over the past six months, McGarvey put together a seminar on green cleaning, and what it means to end users. With more information becoming available on green cleaning almost daily, McGarvey has been busy keeping up to date and translating that information into a concise, interesting and engaging format to hold customers’ interest during his presentations.

The company also has the ability to pack up its seminars and take them straight to customers — a service that more and more customers are requesting. McGarvey spends much of his time providing education and demonstrations at customer facilities. Most are tailored to the specific needs of that customer.

Training can be done with the company’s mobile audiovisual equipment, laptops, PowerPoint and VCRs.

Both methods of education are highly valued by customers, but for this organizational arrangement to work well, McGarvey’s training must also complement the money end — the efforts of the company’s sales force. McGarvey and the sales manager bounce ideas off one another, and McGarvey uses feedback from the sales force — who get the feedback from customers — to gear seminars and training to the issues of the most importance to them.

Other Education Sellers
Most distributors lack full-time training personnel, but many emphasize consultative selling and improving customers’ businesses in their sales messages.

Linda Silverman, vice president of sales and marketing for Maintex, City of Industry, Calif., puts together customized training presentations for customers on a regular basis. This educational role helps her build relationships and loyalty with customers.

For instance, one of Silverman’s clients voiced a need for a carpet-care seminar with an emphasis on spotting. Silverman obliged and spent 10 to 12 hours developing a tailored presentation.

Hillside Maintenance, Cincinnati, also offers an extensive menu of educational offerings, from bloodborne-pathogen training to IICRC classes to workers’ compensation classes. Frank Shaut, the company’s seminar coordinator, says Hillside is always trying new ideas. He mines the company’s buying group, manufacturers and manufacturer reps for information and speakers.

And while some seminars are more well attended than others, Shaut says, just offering them gives customers peace of mind that their distributor is looking out for their best interests.

Tracing It Back
Most distributors don’t have formal tracking procedures for determining how sales tie in with the education they provide. It’s understandable, given that it’s difficult to measure the influence education has on buying patterns. Still, the distributors that SM interviewed for this article believe they’re getting an adequate payback on their training and education-related investments.

Silverman tracks the payoff informally. “When you talk to a customer and explain the value-added [benefits] of the things you’re doing for them, it creates tremendous loyalty. We’re helping them be more efficient,” she says.

Shaut says it’s impossible to determine the profit that results from seminars and training, but he’s not concerned.

“A lot of our customers just make comments about how they appreciate these things and we continue to do it because customers like it,” Shaut says. He says end users have more confidence in a company that supplies this type of training, and it lends credibility to the business.

McGarvey says Philip Rosenau does not track the dollars that directly result from his efforts, either. But he knows the payoff is there.

“We’re not the cheapest distributor on the block and we’re in a competitive market,” says McGarvey. “But education is one of the things that does set us apart from our competitors.”

The Value of Loyalty
One payback that’s difficult to quantify, but that is highly valuable in today’s competitive business environment, is customer loyalty. In at least one instance, McGarvey’s role can be directly tied to customer loyalty and retention. A large client — a university — recently began requiring that any distributor it worked with have a dedicated training manager on staff; it’s now a part of the university’s bid specifications. This was a direct result of success they had in working with McGarvey. The addition of this requirement to their contract solidifies the relationship the university has with Philip Rosenau.

“They want someone who can come in, who is independent themselves, whose main focus is training three or four times a year for their 200 to 250 employees,” McGarvey says.

“Our main focus, and the way we try to go to market, is to be problem solvers for our customers,” McGarvey adds. “If we can solve [their problems] today, we can solve them tomorrow, and we believe that builds great customer loyalty.”

He adds: “It’s really a value-added service. They get it for nothing. So we hope that helps us when they’re comparing products.”

Shaut, too, has seen customer loyalty flourish based on the company’s educational focus.

“When they see we offer this training, it gives them more confidence in our company, that we’re going to do what we need to do to train them,” says Shaut.

Can You Do It?
To dedicate multiple resources to a training and education program, and especially to hire a full-time employee, requires a “leap of faith” on the distributor owner’s part, McGarvey says, but it’s one that pays for itself in spades.

The tough part is that companies that are doing this well are reluctant to divulge the secrets to how they’ve done it, says Marks. But there are a few rules of thumb.

A shift in company focus such as this must originate at the executive level, Marks says. Business owners must decide to define themselves by who they sell to rather than what they sell. After that, meetings, discussions and internal training can be done to support the mission.

Businesses can then decide how best to embody the new customer-focused business principles.

Marks gives one example of a company that undertook this challenge: salespeople were charged with helping customers reduce their supply spending by $1,000, but the sales staff was not allowed to cut its profit margins. One way salespeople did this was to go through an exercise with customers in product standardization. Not only did the distributor end up saving its customers money, but the customer-supplier relationship was strengthened becuase the distributor approaching customers’ needs in this novel way.

“Having a conversation about what the salesperson is trying to do — it changes the dynamic,” says Marks.

Because jan/san touches so many areas of a customer’s business, Marks says there are many tangible benefits distributors can offer, such as safety certification or programs for specific types of cleaning.

Preventative-maintenance programs are another cost-saving service distributors can offer.

Selling these types of programs in a consultative role is the way distributors will operate in the future. The migration, however, is slow.

There are also various types of consultants, some whose roles are more complex than others, and distributors have to determine where they fall in the hierarchy. For instance, a customer could have a situation where oil or grease has penetrated concrete, and the distributor is challenged with helping them find a way to get it up.

“One consultant might say, ‘I’m going to show you a product.’ A higher role could be ‘let me work with you to provide a floor covering or sealant that would prevent that oil or grease from ever penetrating,’” says McCleave. A more complex assessment, he says, would be figuring out a way to stop or change the process that is causing the oil or grease to get on the floor in the first place.

Having salespeople knowledgeable enough to solve these problems is a must.

“First of all, [distributors] have to have the ‘onboard’ talent to be able to analyze customer problems and teach customers how to solve them, and that’s not trivial,” says McCleave. “That requires some exceptional people.” He suggests using manufacturers’ and manufacturer’s reps’ knowledge to augment the expertise within a distributor’s own ranks.

Information Free-For-All
If one thing is for certain, it’s that customers will have more access to information as time goes on, especially when it comes to products. So the distributors who delve deeper into customers’ needs are the ones providing a fresh and valuable service.

McCleave sees the divide between these problem-solving organizations and traditional product sellers widening. He also believes the gap in the amount of money each type of organization earns will grow.

Marks agrees. “Training can be one of the highest return-on-investment jobs there is,” he says.