Over the past several years, MHEDA members have gone from trying and uncertain times to incredible business success, thanks to the growing necessity of the material handling industry. While financials look better because of the business boom, distributors and the supplier community still rely on each other to partner and ensure the best possible experience for customers.
In this feature, we look at how several companies partnered to create sales success stories.
All Lift and CultureWise Maintaining a World-Class Company Culture
Over the course of its 50 year history, All Lift has had a great culture. Yet, President John Gelsimino wanted to go the next level with his culture. He wanted to create an environment that team members never wanted to leave. He wanted to create clear and consistent channels of communication around what was expected to create and maintain an extraordinary culture.
John began working with CultureWise to help him clearly define the culture he wanted to create and implement practices with-in his company to reinforce that culture. John first defined the fundamental behaviors that comprised the type of culture he was looking to build. Creating this level of clarity allowed John and his team to become better at recruiting and retaining team members that were a fit for the company.
Each week all team members at All Lift focus on of these important behaviors. They begin weekly meetings with a brief discussion about the behavior. They’ve deployed a mobile app that sends daily reminders to team members about the fundamental behavior. The app also sends a weekly quiz to get team members thinking about the application of the behavior. Also, every week a team member at All Lift shares his or her personal insight on the behavior of the week. All of these practices keep team members focused on what’s important and essential in building an incredible culture.
While John implemented the program to benefit all of his team members, John said he feels he has probably benefited the most from the process. He’s found that he’s become a more effective leader by being more willing to address challenging issues (one of his companies’ fundamental behaviors is to “Speak Straight”). John remarked that in meetings with his managers, he’ll often say, “In the past, I wouldn’t have said this.” However, since implementing the process, he’s much more willing to speak openly and honestly.
This is a long-term process – it’s not a short-term fix or training program. The process has provided the language and clarity to help all team members to get on the same page in building a world-class culture that delivers world-class service to All Lift customers.
ePicker and Victory Packaging
Finding a Product to Boost Safety and Efficiency
The challenge for the customer started with how they were down stacking pallets in the back of their trailers. The pallets contained different packing materials, but one of their high-profile main customers delivers everything from bubble wrap to boxes. When the product is double stacked in the trailer, there isn’t an easy way to get the top pallet off. In some cases they only single stacked pallets which created a situation where more trips back to the DC to reload were required, which created very inefficient routing. With double stacking, the operators were pulling the top bundle off manually, which was very dangerous for the operator. They needed a solution to down stack safely.
ePicker showed multiple products, including a custom-engineered solution, to determine what was the right for the customer. ePicker worked with the safety and operations management team to develop proper instructions on how to use the equipment correctly in the trailer. The product they ended up going with was our ES10-62 stacker. It was very important for to help the customer change its process in how they handled product, and that required training.
ePicker worked with local dealer Shoppa’s Material Handling to provide national training at multiple locations to ensure each driver and operator was comfortable with the new down stacking process. ePicker flew representatives all over the country and performed training over the course of a month to get them up and running as fast as possible.
The end result was significant to Victory. They now have a safe and secure process for down stacking pallets in the trailer, which increased the amount of product that could be delivered on a single run. That move cut down on return trips and resulted in a significant amount of savings in time and money.
Tynan Equipment and SalesLeads, Inc.
Prospecting Service Drives ROI
Tynan Equipment, located in Indianapolis, Indiana, has been around for three generations. The family-owned material handling business earned its reputation by growing with its customers and earning new ones with its dedication to quality service, equipment and support. While the company has steadily grown over the years, the company is always searching for a new way to stimulate lead generation for the sales force.
Current Challenge
The company used lead generation services to support the sales force over the years with minimal results. While the previous lead generation companies found their strength in smaller maintenance leads, it proved to be too high a task to uncover the type of opportunities Tynan needs. They are looking for new equipment sales and rental opportunities for the various business verticals, namely forklift, railcar, cleaning and racking equipment or PM opportunities with large enough fleet sizes.
A New Kind of Prospecting Service
John Battiston, President of Tynan Equipment, received a call in Fall 2022 from SalesLeads, Inc. Tynan Equipment is a long-time customer of the industrial market intelligence services and was curious about how their prospecting services work. He listened to what SalesLeads had to say, but two things caught his attention that were different. First, most lead generation companies require an upfront, long-term contract, committing Tynan Equipment to their services regardless of whether they were satisfied. With SalesLeads, flexibility to try the services was the main goal. Second, SalesLeads made it clear early in the discussions that they are not a “one size fits all” lead generation company. They took a hands-on approach toward customizing the program to align with Tynan’s goals and objectives and iterating as priorities evolve in the future.
3 Key Sales Support Services
During the course of the past six months, numerous sales support situations arose, allowing Tynan to experience the full breadth of the prospecting services.
Appointment Setting: Battiston and general manager Kirk Whittaker work intimately with the day-to-day sales team and leads. They know in order to achieve the levels the sales team is capable of, they need help generating new appointments. Tynan works closely with the SalesLeads team to define target companies that need equipment in Tynan’s many verticals. SalesLeads’ experienced sales development reps use various techniques, including calling into the account to build and nurture their interest until an appointment is set.
Targeted Lookup: When sales are out on appointments, they maximize their drive time by stopping in at other companies around the appointment. If a sales representative experiences difficulty breaking into the account, Tynan solicits the help of SalesLeads to reach deeper and uncover information on adjacent target accounts and facilities to support the rep’s efforts.
Intermittent Territory Coverage: There are times when a territory opens up, and coverage is lacking. Tynan Equipment strategically uses SalesLeads to continue the development of the area until coverage can be managed by a Tynan sales representative again.
Measurable Success
Tynan Equipment measures success by the number of leads generated and how many of those leads went into the sales funnel. Since its launch, the prospecting services program contributed between 5% – 8% of their pipeline. Based on Tynan’s experience, the percentage achieved equals a successful, ramped sales rep.
What’s Next for Tynan?
Now that the initial phase is complete, the next six months are about further learning and integrating each team in order to better perfect the prospecting efforts. Battiston’s goal for the next six months is to achieve a 10-15 percent contribution of SalesLeads’ efforts into the sales funnel.
VARGO® and WineDirect
Fulfillment System Expanded to Meet Increased Demand
VARGO®, a leading provider of material handling systems integration, warehouse execution software and equipment solutions for major fulfillment and distribution centers, was selected by WineDirect, the wine industry’s leading fulfillment solution, to expand its fulfillment center to increase efficiencies.
Since the start of the pandemic, home delivery of wine has grown, leading to WineDirect installing the second phase of the packing sorter.
VARGO® added nine diverts and four take away lines to the existing packing sorter to help meet increased demand. A third taper was also added to the fulfillment solution. VARGO®’s updates doubled the processing capacity of the fulfillment center, allowing for shorter order cycle times.
“VARGO® was able to expand WineDirect’s fulfillment processes to meet the growth in demand for home delivery,” said Jeff Lammert, Client Executive, System Sales at VARGO®. “The installation of the second phase of the packing sorter sped up fulfillment processes by doubling their capacity.”
“Our partnership with VARGO®, specifically their warehouse execution system and their proprietary Continuous Order Fulfillment Engine, enables us to properly align our key resources of people, product and processes to seamlessly scale our business,” said David Dennigmann, WineDirect’s Director of Operations. “The events of 2020 significantly increased our clients’ demand for home delivery, so we also added additional capacity through the expansion of the packing sorter, enabling us to combine necessary scale and personalization to our process.”
The solution includes VARGO®’s Continuous Order Fulfillment Engine (COFE®), a Warehouse Execution System (WES) that works in real time to organize, sequence and synchronize all warehouse resources — equipment, people and processes. COFE® is a waveless WES that enables continuous flow picking to minimize order cycle times, maximize efficiency and eliminate waves and buffers.
