Distributors and manufacturers find themselves in a constant state of training these days. If it doesn't involve yet another upgrade in one technology or another, it can be a new and improved product line that the sales staff has to know ASAP.

These days, it isn't "Always Be Closing" as much as "Always Be Learning."

Industrial Distribution looks at three companies that are experiencing this constant training curve, their methods and practice, and the successes that have resulted.

Würth Service Supply is a distributor of industrial fasteners. To the outsider, a fastener may not seem like a particularly "technical" item. But, that's far from the truth, Bill Holden, general manager of Würth's Indianapolis location, explains.

The fasteners that Würth carries are "a relatively technical sell," Holden says, "There can be a lot involved in terms of specifications and applications of fasteners. There can be a million different types of grades, configurations and so forth."

Over the years, Würth has used various methods of training for its inside and outside sales staffs. In many cases, these long-established methods had shown themselves to be effective. But company officials realized that something was lacking in their overall training concepts.

"The basic reason for putting this training together was our size, and the rapid rate at which we're growing," Holden explains. "So we needed to have a consistent, centralized system to provide people with some basic knowledge and skill sets relative to our products and how we bring them to market."

Würth officials also wanted to be able to monitor how employees were progressing at any point in the training process. They eventually settled on establishing their own Web-based, interactive training program that was launched in July 2004 after three months of planning and rolling out.

Würth has a variety of fastener groups or modules, Holden explains. For each individual group, Würth created a learning course for its employees. There are three components on the Web site that support Würth's training program, he explains.

Würth's people go through the various phases of the online programs at their own pace, albeit with an expected start date and an agreed-to date of completion.

The online segments are augmented with hands-on training and experience, Holden adds. Würth technical trainers and engineers go to each site to conduct face-to-face training with the outside and inside salespeople.

"Selecting the right partner to work with was important, and we were fortunate to get connected with Sales Training International in Houston," Holden says. "We looked at various options before selecting them and they've been terrific to work with."

Some suppliers and manufacturers "provide some level of assistance," Holden adds, "but for the most part, this is home grown."

Würth was helped by the fact that one of its application people had a series of power-point presentations that covered the relevant categories. They then worked with STI to "cull out the proper information from these power points to drop them into the specific learning modules," Holden says. "If you don't do that properly, you can end up with a rambling presentation, and that can be very confusing."

Each module consists of various selling skills, products, and strategic sections. At the end of each section is a "quick question" which refers back to one or two key points of that lesson. Each trainee gets two attempts at getting a correct answer, Holden explains, before being given directions on where and how to find the correct answer, if needed.

Supportive tool

The training system at Würth includes a lot of monitoring by supervisors, "not to evaluate people," Holden stresses, "nor to determine promotional capabilities or merit increases. We monitor it to see people moving through the program. So it is not a punitive tool. It's a supportive type of mechanism designed to make their lives easier and let them be more successful."

Sales numbers alone are not what Würth officials use to follow the progress and evaluate how the overall training is going, Holden explains.

"We monitor their progress through the program," he says. "But we can also tell based on general attitudes, sales performances and especially by the number of questions that come in from new people to the support people here in Indy."

Employee turnover rate is also a key criterion for judging the training methods, Holden says.

"If you're reducing the amount of turn rate on your people in your organization, that's usually an indication that your program is working," he says. "And our rate has dropped dramatically over the past year."

Würth has nearly 200 people enrolled in the program, roughly two-thirds of its Indianapolis employee base, Holden says.

"The mere fact that they know we are looking at this stuff [scores] causes them to want to move through it," Holden emphasizes.

Holden says that he still occasionally hears of some companies that have cut back on training, a decision that is puzzling to him.

"What happens then, is your people get frustrated. They want to go out and do their job but wonder, 'Should I use a grade 5 or a grade 8?'" he said, referring to different fasteners. "Because [Würth employees] have gone through this [training] program, these day-to-day stresses aren't eliminated, but certainly they are greatly reduced."

Fred Messmer has worked in the general tool business for close to 30 years—most all of his work in that time has been sales or sales-related.

In that time, he's heard and seen various theories and practices aimed at improving sales. Motivational talks, psychological profiles of customers, various "you had me from 'hello'" sales approaches, guaranteed to win the day. He never bought any of them.

"I'm a very skeptical, old-fashioned cutting tools sales guy," he says. "My basic philosophy on selling was, you get yourself out of bed in the morning, put your face in front of a customer, put the tool on the spindle, document what it did, and make sure the customer understands it. Then get out of there and go do it again somewhere else."

Messmer is vice president of sales for Walter USA, a manufacturer of cutting tools based in Waukesha, Wis. Last year, Walter's global headquarters in Germany initiated a new training approach for its sales force worldwide. Messmer admits he was skeptical.

"I have been in this business since the mid-seventies and I was a toolmaker before then," he says, "and I'd never believed that there was an effective professional training program that was really applicable to our business."

The type of selling tool salesmen do is so unique, Messmer thought, that "normal" sales programs simply did not work in the cutting tool arena.

Instruction and advice on closing the sale, for example, or customer acceptance—"That's for car salesmen! Not for a cutting tool guy," he laughs.

Initial skepticism

For this new training initiative, Walter USA got together with Mercuri International, a consulting and training company that specializes in sales. Stephane Malouin, a Mercuri consultant, oversaw the revised training methods and confirms that Messmer was indeed skeptical when they first sat down. It was not an unusual first reaction, Malouin recalls.

"He was suspicious, but I wouldn't say Fred was against [the training]," he says. "But that's so typical for industries. The first thing they'll all tell you is, 'Our industry is different!'"

While there is that initial skepticism from sales professionals, there is also the awareness of how rapidly the whole concept and definition of sales is changing, Malouin explains.

"Selling is being able to convince someone of the value of your product, in order to get an effort in return," Malouin says. "An effort can be time, money, a purchase order. Today, the customers are more knowledgeable, more individualistic. They can make decisions on their own."

After going through the session that Mercuri had created for Walter, Messmer was swayed—so much so that he now calls it a "life-altering experience, and that's no baloney. That's how I felt about it."

Perhaps the example that best illustrates the changes that the new training approach has made at Walter is summed up when Messmer talks about the specific sales process.

He realized that if his salesmen were asked about how a particular sales process works, "you'd get a hundred different answers," Messmer says. "And they still couldn't give you a sales process."

Messmer and Mercuri went about identifying what a sales process is, or should be, for Walter USA salespeople.

"When we specifically identified what a sales process was, it was an eye-opening experience," he says.

Messmer's sales department now analyzes its sales process as, "basically 10 steps, following a stair-step pattern which starts from identifying the customer to closing the order and following up," he explains. "If they follow this process and exert their energy in the right places, especially on the front end, it can make the back end of the process a whole lot easier."

It is the "front end" of the process, as Messmer describes it, that has heretofore been overlooked—not an unusual tendency in salespeople. Then, when it comes to the closing, they aren't well prepared to overcome and handle possible objections.

Walter salespeople were also trained in the best way to identify the proper presentation of the solution, and then test the products to provide that solution.

"As you come closer to the end of the process, all the work has been done and all the questions have been answered," Messmer explains. "So many sales guys develop bad habits. They want to go in full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes and all that stuff. And then the 'worry about that later syndrome' comes on."

Walter eagerly presented the program to some of its distributors, who soon were sharing Messmer's enthusiasm for what it could do for their sales.

"It's not a technical training session about our products," says Bernie Weihermueller, marketing manager for Walter USA. "It is about selling itself. So it [carries] a benefit they can apply not only to our tools, but to all that they have in their programs."

Messmer today admits that a new world of selling tools may well be opening as a result of the new training approach that Walter is taking.

"We're entering almost a new paradigm, where a manufacturer has found something that works for them," he says. "We hear stories from other distributors saying, 'Geez, what did you do to your sales guys?' The way we're making calls and going in is a lot better than it was before."

IBT, Inc. is a full-service industrial distributor focusing on the engineering, safety and maintenance technology industries. Training has been ongoing for IBT over the years, as those industries have evolved, creating new products with more technological knowledge required.

Based in Merriam, Kan., IBT has been incorporating video techniques into its employee training since the 1970s, explains Gary Hense, director of marketing services. In fact, as far back as 1979, it was using the BETA format for video, before the more affordable VHS came along.

They realized early on that video afforded the rapidly growing company a consistent way to present information so that each branch would learn and do things the same way. In 1981, IBT, which has 16 branches, even built its own video production studio.

Today, IBT's training consists of a five-step program, Hense explains. The first is a year of basic training consisting of the Power Transmission Distributors Assn. instructional tapes on topics such as installation and maintenance; supplier training, and even telephone skills.

After a year, employees go on to the IBT Academy, now in its 35th year. This stage includes a series of two-week sessions. The employees spend one week in class and the next week back at their branch location.

"It's intensive, with at least two or three hours of homework a night," Hense says. "Each Friday, they have a half-day final exam on what they've learned that week."

The next level is IBT's intermediate training stage, a two-year period consisting of 26 workbooks dealing with each IBT product category (e.g., bearings, electric motors and seals, among others). These books are complemented and supported by factory schools run by some of IBT's suppliers.

In the third year, "they start to get into more management type of training," Hense says. "Negotiations, for example, and more management-style training programs."

"We have a tracking system so we know where each employee is in their training," he says. "And it's all tied to their income, meaning that they cannot move to the next level of pay or advancement until they have completed their training."

Over the years, IBT has been expanding its video production work as word of its technically sophisticated equipment and personnel has grown. They have been contracted to produce instructional tapes and other production work, for various companies such as SKF Seals, as well as names such as ESPN, the History Channel and Oprah—no, Hense doesn't mean Oprah Abrasives, either.

Oprah & NASCAR

If the Chicago-based Oprah Winfrey Show needs any footage or "remotes" done anywhere in the Midwest, Hense explains, they use the talent and equipment at IBT.

"We'll do an Oprah shoot on the average of once each week," he says. "If it's in the Midwest, we'll shoot the footage for it, and then it will be satellited back to the Oprah show and to their editors."

IBT has also done a great deal of work with ESPN on its NASCAR racing coverage and have recently been working with the History Channel on one of that network's "Modern Marvels" series.

IBT recently added its own high-definition facilities at a cost of more than $350,000, Hense says. One of the first to benefit from this was SKF Seals. IBT just finished a four-tape project for them filmed entirely in high definition, their first HD format series on the industrial side.

Such work has become lucrative and profitable for the company. It has come a long way since 1985 when, focusing solely on producing video for its own training sessions, IBT was approached by an outside company (Warner Electric) about doing something for them and their training.

"I thought to myself, 'You mean for money?'" Hense laughs now. "Soon we had another supplier come in with a similar request. We saw that we had the expertise in this, and thought we could sell this expertise to our distributors."

Many of those first video agreements were not so much for financial remuneration, he explains, but usually for a material credit, meaning "they'd pay us in bearings or whatever," Hense says.

The collective eyes of IBT are still on the prize, though—training and increasing the knowledge of its employees.

"Basically, the training at IBT never ends," Hense adds.