Anatomy of a Sales Call

Act One: Before the call

While leafing through an issue of Facilities Manager magazine, Nalco Chemical Company sales representative Ford Caldwell stopped to look more closely at the article on page 26. As a district account manager in Nalco’s Water division, Caldwell sells chemical solutions to industrial customers with large-scale air-conditioning needs. His customers include some of the more prominent hospitals, college campuses and downtown buildings in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. To stay on top of changes affecting his customers who operate university physical plants, Caldwell reads Facilities Manager, the official industry publication.

Besides the article’s topic – customer service in the university environment – the name of the author, Robert Casagrande, caught Caldwell’s eye. Two years earlier Casagrande had become the director of plant operations and facility maintenance at Southern Methodist University – located in the heart of downtown Dallas.

Until 1977 SMU had been a Nalco customer, but they had switched suppliers, accepting a bid from Nalco’s closest competitor, Betz-Dearborn. The following year Caldwell had joined Nalco, and during the intervening years he had made intermittent attempts to get Nalco back into SMU – all of them unsuccessful.

“In this business I often encounter people who feel like, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,'” Caldwell notes, with a hint of exasperation in his voice. “So my job becomes to show them how, even if everything seems to be okay on the surface, there may be real problems underneath that need to be addressed.”

In the magazine article, however, Casagrande sounded ready to shake things up a bit. In the piece titled “How Valuable Are We To Our Customers?” he talked about the importance of being proactive in determining the needs of a physical plant’s customers and then bending over backward to deliver top-notch service. This stance struck Caldwell as remarkably similar to Nalco’s Six Service Standards which company sales representatives use to guide their sales efforts. He decided to take another shot at SMU and called Casagrande.

“I had made two or three calls on him,” Caldwell says, “and never really got very far until the last call. That’s when I went in and talked to him about his article and how it relates to the way Nalco operates with our customers. And that’s what got him interested.”With more than $1.3 billion in annual sales Nalco Chemical Company is the world’s largest provider of water treatment and process chemicals in the world, servicing such diverse customers as the refining, steel and metalworking industries, paper manufacturers, hospitals and food producers. For university customers like SMU, Nalco provides chemical solutions that help run physical plant air-conditioning systems at maximum efficiency while expending as little energy as possible.

Industrial university air-conditioning systems, like the one at SMU, run water through pipes around the entire campus, exchanging the heat from inside the buildings to the outside via cooling towers. During this process water is recycled in the cooling tower to conserve water consumption. The recirculated water is hard, meaning it contains dissolved minerals. These minerals can cause “scale” to occur, which builds up on the chiller and cooling tower, insulating them and restricting the transfer of heat. The chemicals sold by Nalco and its competitors inhibit scale, ensuring energy-efficient operation.

According to Caldwell, scale buildup can increase a system’s electrical consumption as much as 10 percent. For a building with an annual electrical budget of $1 million, that thin layer of scale can cost the physical plant an extra $100,000 a year.

Naturally, there’s more to solving the problem of scale than simply dumping chemicals into a system at regular intervals. With a dynamic system affected by changes in temperature the need for chemicals added to the system waxes and wanes. The problem facing the physical plant operator is how to monitor the system and adjust the chemical feed when necessary as efficiently as possible. The solutions Nalco offers are called “Trasar,” a proprietary monitoring system, and “Trendcheck,” a software program that allows users to call up and plot the plant’s previous week’s chemical level information.

“Nobody else in the industry has this,” Caldwell says. “I use it as a diagnostic tool to streamline the customer’s program and make it operate more efficiently. Then if the customer wants the program he can have it too, and he is able to do the same thing from his computer. But I call the information up every Saturday morning for all my customers who use the program, and if I see that there’s a problem I can contact the customer immediately and help them correct the problem. Without this type of program it might be two weeks before anyone notices that something’s wrong. And that adds up to a lot of wasted energy.”

In addition to the Trasar and Trendcheck programs Caldwell was hoping to impress Casagrande with Nalco’s stainless steel tank chemical containment system called “Porta-Feed.” Like most industrial air-conditioning facilities the SMU plant uses plastic drums to store the highly toxic chemicals fed into the water system. These drums have to be moved by hand or on dollies, and sometimes require that employees drain or mix the chemicals manually. All these human interactions with chemicals increase the risk of injury.

“So what I’m going to suggest,” Caldwell says, “is a program we have called product stewardship. That means we evaluate the potential hazard our customers face in their facilities. If, based on this assessment, we find they have a moderate or high hazard level we look for solutions that can bring their program down to a low hazard level. Nine times out of 10 that solution is in the form of our Porta-Feed system, which utilizes stainless steel drums that do not have to be moved and which keep human contact to a bare minimum.”

Preparing for the call

As an organization that emphasizes professionalism, long-term partnerships and focusing on the customer’s needs the Nalco sales team has created a system to help sales representatives handle each stage of the sales process. In preparing for each sales call, account representatives fill out a 13-point precall planner, identifying the objectives and strategies of the call, which probing questions and sales aids to use and any objections they anticipate from the prospect. In reviewing his precall planner Caldwell detailed how he hoped to discover more about Casagrande’s ambitions for the future at the SMU physical plant and position Nalco as a diligent business partner capable of offering better service than the current supplier.

“One of the things I’ll say to Bob,” Caldwell explains, “and I’ve said it to him before – I say it to every one of the prospects I call on – is that my goal is to be part of his profits, not his costs. Right now, the water treatment he has is part of his costs – he’s buying chemicals from someone else. But what kind of changes to the program have been implemented over the last five years? His program is probably the same today as it was five years ago. If you take a look at my customers, whenever something new comes out I always offer it to them.”

With prospects, Caldwell likes to demonstrate the importance both Nalco as a company and he as a sales professional place on developing new products and making them available to customers. This, he says, more than anything else, can demonstrate a clear difference between Nalco and the competition.

“In this industry we find that when you’re in an account for a long period of time, if you’re not careful one item comes back to bite you on the rear, and that’s complacency. The supplier feels like, ‘I’m locked in here so tight that they’re not going to kick me out,’ and that’s when you stop offering opportunities and providing suggestions for improvement. And if I can show the customer that his current supplier is being complacent, but without coming out and actually saying it myself, then I can impress him with the innovations that Nalco has to offer and make some serious inroads toward closing the sale.”

In addition to presenting more details on the Nalco system and delving more deeply in the SMU physical plant’s needs, Caldwell hoped to use this call to persuade Casagrande to provide the SMU plant’s specific data on recent chemical log sheets. A customer’s own data, Caldwell says, is often more compelling than a whole ream of statistics from other customers.

“If I can take some of his daily readings,” Caldwell explains, “and plot them on what we call a ‘trend check graph,’ and show him where his levels were for the last two or three months, and how up and down it’s been, then he will see exactly what he will be able to do himself from his computer once he has our system in place. If he takes daily readings now, which I suspect he does, then he should find this very interesting.”

No precall preparation is complete without anticipating objections, and the SMU call was no different. Since this particular opportunity was still in the discovery phase of the sales process, however, Caldwell did not anticipate having to address the more intricate objections that crop up when the customer is close to making a major decision.

“Cost is always a challenge,” Caldwell says, “because people often want to take the lowest bid. But the lowest bid is certainly not the best value. So price is always an issue. Other issues we deal with are recognition and familiarity. People become comfortable with their vendors. That’s certainly true with my customers too. So it works for you and against you. And that’s why I have to find out if there’s a complacency that’s set in, so I can help the customer see how the other supplier might be taking him for granted. But on this call I don’t anticipate any objections that will be particularly difficult to address.”

The personnel

Because SMU represents such a great opportunity for Nalco to win business away from the competition, Caldwell’s district manager, Jeff Burt, also attended the sales call. Burt explained that at Nalco, whenever a manager tags along with a rep on a call, the two decide ahead of time what roles they will play, based on the company’s training guidelines.

“At Nalco we have different kinds of calls involving the coach and rep, depending on the situation,” Burt explains. “With Caldwell, who has 18 years’ experience, we agreed that he would control the flow and present the information. I would just add input in bits whenever necessary. But if a new sales rep and I cold called on Bob Casagrande – an upper-level decision maker at a huge prospect – I would probably handle the entire call while the rep just watched and learned. That’s what we call a modeling call.

“But then we might go to a different building, cold calling on a smaller opportunity and I would let the rep take control. Then afterward we would talk about ‘How did you introduce yourself? Did you demonstrate propriety? How did you warm up the prospect and develop the relationship?’ These types of questions. But on this particular call I was there just to provide Caldwell with whatever backup he needed.”

Before entering the SMU physical plant building to meet Casagrande, Burt and Caldwell also talked about the Nalco “Warning Signals” that help define whether a prospect is cold, warm or red hot. The six indicators they look for are a change in “George” (Nalco jargon for decision-maker), change in competitor’s sales rep, competitor complacency, problems real or perceived and future contraction or expansion of the business. Since Casagrande had only been plant director for two years, he qualified as a new George. Caldwell mentioned that he hoped to ferret out more warning signals on the call, including complacency and any problems SMU might be having with its current supplier.

Act Two: The sales call

The call took place in a conference room in the physical plant offices on the SMU campus. After briefly commiserating with Casagrande over the SMU football team’s disappointing loss to Texas Christian University the night before, Caldwell launched into his presentation. Referring to Casagrande’s article in Facilities Manager, Caldwell talked about the similarities between Nalco’s system and the points about proactive customer service Casagrande had highlighted in his piece. Caldwell showed Casagrande the customer feedback survey Nalco salespeople use to evaluate how well a sales representative is handling every aspect of the business relationship, from responsiveness and accurate reporting to technical proficiency and professionalism. The purpose of this survey, Caldwell explained, is not to monitor the sales rep’s performance, but to ensure that the program is fulfilling expectations and growing to fit the customer’s changing needs.

As a means of punctuation Caldwell asked if, during the two years Casagrande had been director of plant operations, the current supplier had done any sort of business review. “No, they have not,” he responded.

Then Burt joined in to ask, “Is there any formal method in place for delivering feedback to your current supplier?”

“Only verbally,” Casagrande answered, implying that none existed.At this point Casagrande admitted that although he is no expert on water treatment, he still knows what he wants from a water treatment supplier.

“I know that when water’s good, things are good but when water’s bad, things are bad,” he said. “Historically speaking, differentiating one water treatment company from another was purely a matter of cost. I’m not a chemist, but I know that there is almost no difference in one company’s chemicals from another’s. Whatever you make I can get cheaper somewhere else. But as things have changed, other areas have become more important, like how we pay. If I’m paying $48 a gallon for hundreds of gallons of the stuff, and it sits in a tank here for six months, then I’m not getting my value out of it. I ought to be able to pay as we use it. Then there’s handling – these are hazardous, expensive chemicals, and I want people to be trained on how to use it so that they’re both safe and efficient. Then you have to consider labor. Labor is expensive, so if we can automate some of our processes, then we can save a great deal of money. These are the types of issues I want to get into. So where are you guys with regard to all that?”

Burt and Caldwell said they were glad to hear Casagrande state so clearly his desire to look to the future and find a water treatment supplier with the kind of value-added service Nalco offers, rather than merely look to the low-price bid for chemicals. In response to Casagrande’s questions Caldwell talked about quarterly training programs Nalco offers, certificates of completion and the $42 million Nalco spends on R&D annually.

Keying on Casagrande’s mention of looking to the future, in particular to the problem of human contact with highly toxic chemicals, Caldwell turned the conversation toward the Nalco product stewardship hazard assessment. The goal of the Nalco program, he said, is to automate processes and eliminate regular handling. Using Nalco’s 11-page material safety data sheet (MSDS) Caldwell proposed assessing the SMU cooling program for risk of human exposure to toxic chemicals on a scale ranging from “low” to “moderate” to “high.” Then, based on the results of that assessment, he could suggest changes to the system to minimize risks.

To this suggestion Casagrande asked, “I guess my first question is, why not use something safer?”

“There isn’t anything safer,” Caldwell responded. “Biocides by their nature are designed to poison one-celled living organisms – and that can include damage to human tissue.”

“You bring up a great point,” Burt added. “We’re working on a new technology that’s less persistent in the environment and less hazardous to humans, but any time we’re trying to kill a bacteria, an algae or fungus, you’ve got to be aggressive. There’s a fine line between making sure that the product does its job and minimizing risks to people and the environment.”

Seemingly satisfied with this answer, Casagrande mentioned upgrades the physical plant was making to the smaller cooling towers on opposite sides of the plant, increasing their capacity.

“Say we got this all set up and everything’s running fine,” he said, “now we come to make this kind of change [switching to a Nalco system]. Do you come in to work with us to make the transition, and make sure it works?”

“Yes I do,” Caldwell responded enthusiastically. “I design it for you. That’s one of the problems I have, being in this industry for 19 years. All the other salesmen call me up and say, ‘Can you help me design this thing, so I make sure it gets in there right?’ So I will design the system to make sure that everything is operating efficiently and fits your needs.”

Casagrande then asked about Caldwell’s territory. Hearing that Caldwell handles the Dallas area almost exclusively, Casagrande wanted to know who would be available as backup if Caldwell were unavailable or left Nalco. Caldwell said that after 19 years as a Dallas-based account rep for Nalco he wasn’t about to jump ship. He also described the seven other Nalco reps, the district manager and a new service representative who is fluent in Spanish – all of whom are in the Dallas area and could be called upon to provide backup in case of emergency.

Then Casagrande explained the reason for his question.

“One of the things we’re going through right now,” he said, “is that our rep got transferred. He had a great relationship with the guys [in the plant] and they just loved him. But the new guy who came in had a different kind of attitude. He didn’t mesh, and nobody liked him. So from a service aspect all of a sudden I’m getting all kinds of complaints. ‘They’re not doing this right.’ ‘They’re not checking this out.’ So they’ve ended up taking him out and the district manager has taken over. And he’s running the show. So that’s what I’m asking about. Because relationships are important.”

In response to this revelation Caldwell said he sympathized with Casagrande’s situation, suggesting that he was looking for some stability. Caldwell then reemphasized the length of his tenure with Nalco and, to show how Nalco salespeople work together, described ways he has helped with the systems at the University of North Texas and Baylor University.

After a brief discussion about safety issues and assessments, during which Burt explained how Nalco’s program could help SMU with OSHA concerns, reduce the possibility of environmental exposure and minimize insurance costs, Caldwell unveiled his laptop and launched into his presentation on Nalco’s Trasar and Trendcheck programs.Positioning the computer so that Casagrande could see everything on the screen, Caldwell showed how the system monitors the primary cooling tower inhibitor level. Screen by screen Caldwell walked Casagrande through how the program allows the user to choose a site (this way Caldwell could run through his list of high profile clients: the Galleria Mall, Southwestern Bell complex, Republic Bank Tower and others), go into that site and check chemical levels.

Caldwell had the program default set to show levels for the past graphed by the readings taken during each day. He then showed how the program can investigate an individual blip at a specific time.Casagrande grasped the value of this function immediately. “So now you’ve identified that there’s a problem,” he commented, “and you know what time it is, so you can go back and find out what happened.”

Next Caldwell moved on to Trendcheck. As he explained, this program allows users to chart different readings based on any number of variables the user is interested in investigating. Some examples he cited include long-term graphs of conductivity and chemical level trends over days, weeks or months, and side-by-side comparisons of different parts of the cooling tower’s functions.

His interest piqued at the possibility of all this information at the ready, Casagrande naturally had a few questions for Caldwell.

“If we have computers can we access this information? God forbid I would want to get up Saturday morning to check my cooling tower levels,” he joked, “but what if I did?”

“Yes, you could,” Caldwell answered. “Or during the week while you’re here. Some of my customers check every morning, or at night. Some program it to automatically call up the data every night.”

“What if there’s a problem?” Casagrande continued. “Can you program it to alert you if there’s a problem?” Burt handled this one. “We’re investigating that,” he said. “We’re at the point where we can get paged by the system. But the question is, at what level or for what alarm do you want to be paged? You don’t want it contacting you for a nonemergency, so that’s the challenge we’re dealing with right now.”

Using powerful “before and after” examples from an existing customer, Caldwell was able to show Casagrande the kinds of results he might expect from changing to the Nalco system. Before adding real-time monitoring Caldwell showed how the customer’s readings fluctuated dramatically, spiking and falling like an EKG. The “after” graphs told a different story, showing much less fluctuation and smaller disparities in readings.

“Holy cow,” was Casagrande’s only reaction.

“These changes convinced this customer to have us do their other, identical building as well,” Caldwell said. “And that’s the power of this program.”

Burt reinforced the points Caldwell had made by relating back to what Casagrande had said during the beginning of the call.

“When you talk about the value we can provide, and return on investment, when you’re getting consistently high levels in a large system, then you may be wasting a lot of chemical. By offering this to our customers we can say, ‘Okay, let’s look at what your control is now, compare that to what we know our control will be, and calculate exactly what your savings will be.'”

This being a sales call, it was only a matter of time before the issue of price came up.

“Putting all this controlling equipment in is obviously not cheap,” Casagrande observes. “What’s the return?”

After Caldwell explained the dollar costs of three-year leases for the two controllers, Burt noted some of the program’s benefits and long-term savings. “As far as return on investment,” Burt explained, “if you’ve been overpaying continuously, you can save 10-20 percent, and that will pay for itself within one or two years. And that’s not even throwing in the labor costs.”

Burt then addressed the issue Casagrande had raised earlier about paying for chemicals to sit around in tanks at the plant for six months or longer.

“One of your concerns was inventorying the chemical here,” he explained, “and our Porta-Feed program has a direct effect on that. If you’re not going to go through chemical in three to four months we would have you in a smaller container because number one, we want the chemical to turn over – it’s fresher, it’s better. And number two, from an environmental safety standpoint we would want to minimize the amount of chemical on site so as to lessen the potential hazard.”Finally, Caldwell came to his stated objective for the call. He offered to exhume the daily log data from the SMU notebooks, graph it into the Trendcheck program and provide Casagrande with the results. Then Caldwell also suggested that he could do a plant survey. This, he explained, would consist of preparing a schematic for how Nalco would revamp his chemical feed system, and draw up some diagrams for Casagrande’s later consideration. Not wanting to pressure him too much, Caldwell suggested that they could do the plant survey some months later, or put off that decision until a later date. In response Casagrande expressed a greater interest in the first offer.”I could see where it could be helpful for us to see a graph of our data, so let’s do that,” he said.

“Okay,” Caldwell answered. “We can take that as the first step. This is a progression. We’re trying to get to know you better, and see what Nalco can do for you. So when the day comes, down the road when there is a decision to be made, you’ll have all the data in front of you, and you’ll know that you’ll have confidence in making your decision.”

THE POST-MORTEM

Leaving the physical plant offices both Caldwell and Burt sounded enthusiastic about their prospects for the account. Caldwell commented on the number of buying signals he had picked up on, and the overall dissatisfaction Casagrande had expressed with the status quo. The revelation that the competitor’s account rep had been removed with the district manager taking over they saw as another positive indication.

“What I told him at the end there,” Caldwell said, “about this being a progression – that’s true. Today we wanted to let him know a little more about us, and Nalco, and get to know him a little better too. And we wanted to walk out of there with his agreement that we could plot some of his data on our Trendcheck program. We got that, and all the rest will just help us as we progress to the next round.”

Act Three: After the call

THE MANAGER

After the dust had cleared and some days passed we contacted Jeff Burt and asked him to assess the sales call. He expressed pleasure that Caldwell had capably demonstrated Nalco’s offerings while effectively probing for difficulties the prospect faced with his current supplier. He felt that he and Caldwell had formed a strong team, and that the “80/20 rule” – with Caldwell speaking 80 percent of the time to Burt’s 20 – had worked well. At the same time he did offer a criticism of Caldwell’s performance.

“There was one point early in the call,” Burt explains, “where Bob mentioned being eager to see the Trendcheck program. Now if I had been running the call, I would have just bypassed what I was talking about and gone right to the computer. Also, Caldwell has been around for a long time, and takes great pride in his work. Sometimes that excitement comes across more than necessary, and he’ll go into greater detail than necessary to address a customer’s concern. During the call, if I sensed from Bob that Caldwell might have been getting off the track I tried to interject something to move the call forward. And that’s part of why I was there.”

Burt readily admits, however, that the role of critic is much easier to play than performer.

“I was removed mostly from the action,” he says, “so it was simpler for me to watch and analyze. But at the same time what works for me might not work for another sales rep. So I wouldn’t say, ‘Caldwell should have done this because that’s what I would have done.’ He’s done an exceptional job for 19 years and he knows pretty well what works for him. The purpose of this call was to get a commitment for action to the next step – and that’s exactly what Caldwell did.”

THE CUSTOMER

Asked how he felt about the sales call, the colorful Casagrande explained his attitude about selling in terms of fishing.

“To catch some types of fish,” he explained, “you have to be patient. You can’t jerk the line around a lot or you’ll scare them off. At the same time, you can’t just sit there and do nothing. This is that type of deal – right now I have another chemical company after me and they’re trolling, jerking the line a lot. They’re not going to get anywhere with me. With Caldwell it was much better. He wasn’t pushy but he didn’t wait for me to call either.”

Overall Casagrande gave Caldwell good marks for salesmanship, expressing particular interest in both the software program and Caldwell’s diligent follow-up afterward.

“I was impressed with the fact that Caldwell asked to see our data,” Casagrande continued. “Because seeing the readings for the Galleria Mall or BankOne Center is one thing, but to see the trends with my own readings, well that’s going to be much more helpful. But it’s not enough just to ask for the data. Caldwell followed up and got after me to give him our records, even though I put him off a couple of times, and then even gave him the wrong data sheets. So it sends the right message that he kept on me to move the process along.”

During the physical plant’s recent history, Casagrande said, concerns about chemicals had been placed on the back burner in favor of more pressing issues. Now that he was beginning to look farther down the road, however, he was placing a greater value on improving the plant’s long-term functionality.

“Nalco seems focused on customer service and developing relationships,” he said. “And that’s good because I’m trying to move from the old world to the new world. What I’m looking at right now is, who do we want to have a relationship with for the next 10-15 years?”

THE SALES REP

Speaking to Ford Caldwell about a month later he remained upbeat about the prospects of closing SMU. Mentioning the six Nalco warning signals, Caldwell explained that the perceived problems he had identified at the SMU plant during the sales call had come into greater focus.

“I plotted three months of his log sheets,” Caldwell said, “and his boiler program is out of spec more than 50 percent of the time. That means that his program is going either above or below the ranges his current supplier has established. And he had no idea that this was the case. So he’s beginning to see that there are real problems there. What we do now as we go along is we outline the problems, and that creates an interest in making the change to Nalco.”At this point, by any objective measure, Bob Casagrande had become a hot prospect.

“If you’ve got one warning signal,” Caldwell said, “that’s really not too much. But if in your calls you start picking up two of these signs, then you’re getting warm. If you get three, you’ve got a hot prospect. And we’ve got four, maybe five here. So even if he might have been thinking, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ those logs showed him clearly how it is broken and needs to be fixed. It still may not be another six months before we’d even close it, but we’re certainly closer than we’ve been in 20 years.”

Epilogue: As this issue went to print the SMU opportunity appeared on track but remained unresolved. Watch for the next installment in the series Anatomy of a Sale. In addition to analyzing another business-to-business sale, we will follow up on whether Nalco’s efforts resulted in a sale.