Guy Gordon, Marketing Manager, Cintas

“We sell uniform rentals and facility services and supplies. We have both national accounts and regional accounts, but I am responsible for local and regional accounts.

A regional account might have 13 to 15 locations spread over North Carolina. Generally, a regional account is determined by the number of locations and how many different plants they have. There is also an element of dollar value to it, but it is primarily a question of logistics – the number of different people we must have to make contact and service the account.

I got involved with one very large firm that had its corporate headquarters in the territory that my reps cover. I initiated the sales process with them, but it turned out they were a monster account spread across the nation, so we turned it over to a national account management team.

For regional accounts, we get more people involved, especially on the service side. We use the Miller Heiman target sales strategy to execute with these larger accounts. The number of people involved will vary with the size of the account, the number of locations and the intensity of service. It could be anywhere from 10 to 100 people.

These regional accounts are very good for my company. Cintas is very concerned about high volumes and longer-term payoffs on these accounts. There is a huge payoff on these regional accounts.

But I am not involved in any residual future sales. My job is to find new customers, get them to commit to Cintas, turn them over to the service team and then look for another new customer. So the payoff of regional accounts to me is the size and volume of the account, the references and referrals I can get, and boosting our name recognition.”

Arnold Rowe, Regional sales manager, GE Health Care

“We sell biotech materials to companies that make new medicines. We segment our customers according to the importance of their dollar business. Our theme is, ‘The best for the best.’

We try to give good service to everyone, but for the big accounts we may have a quicker response time, and perhaps even have certain people within our company they can go to. Their demands can be much greater and far more urgent, particularly if they produce new medicines. They have a lot of money at stake, and sometimes they need assistance immediately.

The benefits of serving these larger accounts include more revenue, of course. But they are also industry leaders – decision makers – and have a lot of influence on the industry. Serving them well can help get other business. They are good references and opinion leaders; their executives speak at national meetings and lead forums at these meetings.

It’s just like when I fly on an airplane. I fly a lot, so I get good treatment – upgrades and so forth. If I am wait-listed, someone who flies even more than I do may get the seat ahead of me. I may not like that, but we all do the same in our business.

Overall, our business is good today. We were just acquired by General Electric, so we are part of GE Health Care now.”

Brad Graver, Western regional sales manager, Professional Office Services

“We have been a printing company. Our niche is efficiency in the customers’ offices. We are now evolving into a marketing company that provides marketing services for health-care firms. We do direct mail for them, newsletters and so forth. Even doctors’ offices are getting into marketing. Marketing used to be a four-letter word for doctors, but now there is so much competition.

We have about 60 reps across the nation, and we are in every major city. Two of us manage these reps. I manage the West Coast.

Each of our reps has a protected territory, so we do not have national accounts. We sell mostly to midsize doctors’ offices with two to 10 doctors. We do have different marketing programs that target different types of business, for example, orthopedics versus pediatrics. And we do tailor our marketing for our top accounts to keep them in the fold.

For example, here in San Jose, we have a Planned Parenthood account that has different needs than a doctor who only comes into his office three days per week. We definitely shape our products and presentations according to the size of the practice.

For us, targeting these larger accounts is a way to get our foot in the door with other departments in that organization. In the past, we just had contact with the person who made the printing decisions. Now, as we expand into marketing, we need to get into more depth with these accounts. That is a key objective, especially with all the turnover in medical offices. We need to increase our piece of the business, and we need to increase the number of people we know in these organizations.

Business has been great. We have had sales growth every year for the past 35 years. Health care has tended to be a recession-proof industry.”

Stephen Mills, Sales Manager, Boulevard Brewing Company

“We are a regional company, and we have to deal with the national accounts that are in our region – the accounts that are nationwide. These companies have buyers that handle all their purchases. We handle these accounts ourselves. The only thing that really makes them harder to handle is that it is not simple for their buyers if they cannot say, ‘Okay, we are going with your company for this program for all our stores.’ So we must coordinate and make sure we act together in our organization when we go to them and present a program.

We sell beer. In most states, there is a three-tier system for selling alcoholic beverages. I am the supplier, and I sell to a distributor network, and they sell to the retailers. We may supplement the distributors for a national account or a chain account or a high-volume independent account. We go ahead and make the sales calls with the distributors.

The advantage of selling to national accounts is the volume. You either have access to them and are doing business with them or not. We do not provide any special services to these major accounts. The alcohol business is so regulated that they cannot demand special credit terms or pricing, so we are pretty insulated from that sort of pressure.

Business has been great lately. We are now among the top 25 breweries in the country, even though we sell in only 10 states. Sales are up 23 percent over last year. The economy is rebounding, and people are looking for a brand they have confidence in, rather than something unfamiliar. Our number one brand, which accounts for 60 percent of sales, is our unfiltered wheat beer.”

Randy Lofland, Sales Manager, Lanx Fabric unit of Xymid

“We sell protective gear for chemical and biological warfare. We sell only to government agencies in the U.S. and Canada and other friendly countries in the world. We sell only to governments that are approved by our State Department, so the bad guys do not get their hands on this stuff. And we do not sell to individuals, because they might not have $125,000 of necessary detection equipment or the right training to use the gear safely.

Some of our customers are small, local government agencies that order only five or six protective suits, while other agencies buy hundreds or thousands of suits.

I am the one-person sales and marketing department for the company. I have about six to eight main distributors I use to reach customers. That way, I do not have all the personal drama and soap opera of managing a full-time sales force. I sometimes go on sales calls with my distributors to do the technical presentation, and I sometimes compete with them. That gives them an incentive to sell more, because I show them, if you don’t get the business, I will. I give my distributors special prices, and they add on whatever markup their business model requires.

Sometimes, we get calls from customers who just want to buy one or two suits. It is not fair to our main distributors to sell these small accounts. So I have created a down-line system of a couple of distributors who are willing to work on pencil-thin margins.

We do not treat different-size accounts differently. My clients are very self-motivated to educate themselves on how to use this equipment. The first-responder community has done its homework and asks me very tough, challenging questions. And my competitors sell top-notch equipment, too.”