Interconnected to Win

Interconnected to Win
Rick Borkowski
Title: Group Sales Manager
Company: Total Quality Logistics, Milford, OH
Product: Arranges transportation for manufacturing firms
Market: Transportation specialists

Rick Borkowski is now group sales manager with Total Quality Logistics (TQL), a fast-growing firm in Milford, OH, that arranges transportation for manufacturing firms. Borkowski has done some fast growing himself. Four years ago, when he joined TQL, he had never had a sales job. Borkowski had supervised shipping for one of TQL’s customers and, before that, was a supervisor for UPS. “I had to learn sales as I went, and it is learnable,” Borkowski says. “I am not a natural salesperson by any means.”

The shipping specialist was attracted by the opportunity for personal and career growth at TQL, by its use of technology, and by the rigor of its hiring process. “There are five phases in hiring, and it is not easy to get in here,” Borkowski says. “Last year 1,200 people applied and only 389 got in.”

He got in and began initial sales training. TQL was just starting training, and Borkowski was a guinea pig. Since then, the company has dramatically expanded training, building a larger staff and a full classroom and using the latest technologies. Still, “you get the basic knowledge, but to learn the finer points of sales you need to work under a Logistics Account Executive,” Borkowski says.

After initial training, a sales candidate serves under a Logistics Account Executive (LAE), or broker, and if successful becomes a broker himself. Borkowski made the cut and became an LAE, eventually building his own team with two logistics coordinators (LCs) and a series of sales trainees who followed in his footsteps.

TQL is made up of small sales teams, and teamwork is learned and reinforced under intense pressure. Almost all selling is done over the phone. “It might take one call from someone who says I need a truck in an hour, or it could take a few months or a year,” Borkowski explains.

TQL offers a single point of contact for each customer, the LAE. The LCs’ main duties are to work with carriers, while sales trainees are used to do administrative work or whatever is needed at the moment. “We sit right next to each other and everyone has a defined role,” Borkowski stresses. “I don’t believe in micromanaging people but in empowering them, holding them accountable when things go sour and pumping them up when things go well.”

Motivating sales trainees is easy. They are in it to become LAEs, who can do quite well in these 100-percent-commission posts. Borkowski gives his trainees as much work as possible because success as a broker will depend on lots of hard work.

Although every person has an assignment, each must drop what they are doing to help a customer. “This mostly happens spontaneously, with a little coaching up front,” Borkowski says. “If someone does not meet expectations, we address it immediately with enhanced training.”

Each member of the team has two phones and a networked PC with load-manager software. “All four of us are looking at the same screen in the bullpen, we can leave notes on accounts, and we constantly instant message,” Borkowski explains. “Even if two people are talking on two phones, they will IM each other to straighten out a question. We are always multitasking.”

Borkowski worked at this pace for two years before he even thought about going out to lunch. He still finds sales challenging, fun, and exciting. “After three-and-a-half years, I still love my job.”

Now vice president of sales, Jeff Montelisciani started with TQL in 1998 when the firm was a year old and had four employees. With a solid job, a wife, and new baby, Montelisciani was initially unsure that he wanted to join the new firm. The current president of TQL invited him back with his wife and talked him into taking the position. “I rolled the dice, and looking back it has been great and just gets better and better,” Montelisciani says. TQL now has 240 brokers and 650 employees doing nearly $300 million a year and is shooting for $1 billion in 2010.

He says the keys to TQL’s success are honesty and teamwork. “The bottom line is simple: We tell the truth to customers, we tell the truth to truck drivers, and we tell the truth to employees.” TQL also relies on plenty of hard work. Brokers are still on call 24/7, every week of the year.

TQL is candid with prospective employees. It hires mostly people right out of college or young salespeople with entrepreneurial personalities. Montelisciani says, “We take them on the floor to see the culture and almost try to talk them out of taking the job,” to ensure a good fit.

He is proud of TQL training, which begins in the classroom and continues partly in class and partly on the job for four to six months, depending on how well each new trainee does on performance evaluations. TQL teaches the transportation basics, how the supply chain works, how refrigeration units work, the commodities that will be shipped, and so forth. TQL’s new CFO said it was the best training program he had seen, high praise from the former Microsoft executive.

Yet few people drop out of the “boot camp” approach to training. And Montelisciani estimates that, after the first year, turnover is only 14 percent, well below the industry average.

“The culture is what keeps this place going, and it is hard to describe,” Montelisciani says. The entire staff works in one large room, with a few side offices, in a 40,000-square-foot building. Waist-high cubicles separate the small teams, and there is still plenty of yelling across the floor as teams help each other out.

Teamwork characterizes TQL systems as well. The company developed its load-manager software internally, and developers respond to requested new capabilities from employees within a few days. “We don’t want to see the guys on the floor bogged down with order entries and losing their focus,” Montelisciani says.

Although almost all selling is done over the phone, sometimes new customers want to meet the TQL staff they will be working with. Montelisciani says TQL’s single-contact approach for customers is distinctive in transportation, where many companies still refer customers to different employees for rates, locations, invoices, or other matters. When a broker’s business, or “book,” gets larger, he is given more support staff.

A number of small teams, with an LAE and his support staff, form part of larger 30-person teams, or sales groups. TQL recently restructured these groups to ensure that group managers can get to know all the people who work on the front sales line. All members of each group are expected to help out other teams when needed.

As TQL expands, it wants to keep the winning environment alive. Team-building dinners are held every few months. The company has run small sales contests for a while, for example, weekly contests with a $250 cash prize for the most new business. This year, there will be quarterly competition among the 30-person groups to see which teams can beat their goals by the highest percentage. All members of the winning group – LAEs, LCs, and support staff – will get the same prizes. The prizes are being selected by a 15-person committee of brokers.