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From the Chairman President & CEO TOBY MACK Associated Equipment Distributors Oak Brook, Ill. Perfecting Your Company���s Elevator Speeches Executive Vice President & COO Robert Henderson Associated Equipment Distributors Oak Brook, Ill. Officers You���ve got 45 seconds to convince someone to make a change and consider doing business with you ��� ready, set, sell. Chairman Lawrence F. Glynn CMW Equipment, St. Louis, Mo. Vice Chairman Mike Quirk Wagner Equipment Co., Aurora, Colo. Sr. Vice President Timothy J. Watters Hoffman Equipment Co., Piscataway, N.J. Vice President Garry Frelick Douglas Lake Equipment, Langley, BC Vice President Don Shilling General Equipment & Supplies, Inc. Fargo, N.D. Vice President of Finance Michael D. Brennan Brandeis Machinery & Supply Co., Louisville, Ky. Past Chairman Dennis E. Kruepke McCann Industries, Inc., Addison, Ill. At-Large Directors Paula Benard C.N. Wood Co., Inc. Woburn, Mass. Rick Dahl Metrolift, Inc. Sugar Grove, Ill. Gregg R. Erb Erb Equipment Company, Inc. Fenton, Mo. Dennis J. heller Stephenson Equipment Inc. Harrisburg, Pa. Mike Rooney Thompson Tractor Co., Inc. Tarrant, Ala. Michael J. Savastio Groff Tractor & Equipment, Inc. Mechanicsburg, Pa. Regional Directors Bruce A. Bowman, Upper Midwest Reg. Star Equipment, Ltd Des Moines, Iowa Rick Van Exan, Eastern Canada Reg. Toromont Industries Ltd. Concord, ON Patrick McConnell, West Reg. Clyde/West, Inc. Portland, Ore. Mark Romer, Southeast Reg. James River Equipment, Inc. Ashland, Va. Jeffrey Scott, Rocky Mountain Reg. Intermountain Bobcat Salt Lake City, Utah Gerald W. Tracey, Northeast Reg. Tracey Road Equipment Inc. East Syracuse, N.J. gary D. Vaughn, South Central Reg. OCT Equipment, Inc. Oklahoma City, Okla. By Larry Glynn New customers are getting more difficult to approach for that first time. All business has cut out so many people and everyone is working harder. The time demands and speed of business has put more stress on everyone including all of our existing and prospective customers. All these changes in business have redefined the cold call. Considering all the responsibilities of these people, you can���t really blame customers for not wanting to waste time talking to someone they don���t know. Sometimes I don���t answer a telephone call if I don���t recognize the number. I understand. The problem is: How do you meet a new customer with whom you want to do business? Your first opportunity to talk to this prospective customer may be at a social event, business meeting or a chance meeting on the job. How do you handle that brief opportunity? How do you get his or her attention enough to get them to meet with you again and listen to your story? At our annual sales meeting this year we decided on the outlines and important points to get across to the customer in what we call our ���elevator speeches,��� that small window of about 45 seconds to talk about your company and hook them in. We had to develop several different elevator speeches because our talking points might be different to a general contractor, road contractor, government buyer, excavator, etc. This is a lot harder than you might think. You have to develop concise, accurate information about your company that would cause someone to change the way they do business and buy or rent equipment from someone new. Think about it. Why should someone change and start doing business with you? You know why you want it, but why would they want to change? Forty-five seconds and you are either in or out. What are your strong points? Is it product, service, parts, equipment availability? Outline why the customer would consider changing. What unique offerings do you have? This is a very interesting exercise, to say the least. We made a list of key points for different industries on which we focus. Here is an example of the elevator speech we created for the readymix industry: ���CMW Equipment is one of the oldest readymix equipment dealers in the United States. We have been in business since 1956 selling everything for concrete batching except the rolling stock. CMW is a full-service AED dealer with excellent parts and service departments. Our sales force supervises erection of the equipment and we do all of our own startups domestically and internationally. Our strengths range from small rural plants to major heavy civil operations. We sell new, used, rehabs and do lots of custom work. We represent many manufacturers selling concrete plants, silos, conveyors, bins, controls, water heaters, chillers, and environmental equipment for air and water. Most of our customers remain loyal to CMW through many repeat purchases. We currently have hundreds of operating plants that the company has sold in the past 56 years.��� You may not understand all the value some of those statements bring to the sales call, but we believe that little introduction will get a readymix concrete person to at least let our salesman sit down and explain what we have to offer as a company. I learned a long time ago that our customer base comes and goes. In the past year we have had three new readymix companies start up even in this economy. Many of our existing customers sell out and new managers come into our area with lots of buying responsibilities. You will be surprised how often these speeches will come into play. The hardest part of this whole scheme will be getting your sales force to memorize the agreed upon speeches. Good luck with that! Larry Glynn (larryg@cmw-equip.com) is President of CMW Equipment in St. Louis, Mo. January 2013 | Construction Equipment Distribution | www.cedmag.com | 5 5_fromthechairman_KP.indd 5 12/21/12 10:19 AM