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A. F. Wendling’s Foodservice’s, Brandi Parks is a Greenhorn DSR who has been on the job for less than two years and is writing $2.4 million! That’s a 30%increase since taking over the route in the middle of the economically challenged coal fields of Southern West Virginia.
The downturn in the coal industry has created economic challenges for customers in her territory, but Brandi is turning those challenges into opportunities by suggesting different products and helping her customers with their business.
Ms. Parks says the key to her success and growth in a relatively short period of time is by her outworking the competition and using the A. F. Wendling’s drivers to DOUBLE-TEAM customers. She learned from being a customer of Wendling’s how important the drivers are, and she also learned that if she treats the drivers with respect and as a sales partner, the customers respond with more business.
Brandi is just in her second full year as a DSR. This is the “new” career that was always in her blood. Her family has owned and operated “Fat Eddie’s” Restaurant in West Virginia for more than a decade and Brandi grew up in the business learning the front-of-the-house to the back-of-the-house and everything in between.
In the AUDIO interview Brandi talks about everything in her first 18 months on the job including:
- Why she takes great care of her drivers
- Prospecting new accounts: how she does her market research and how she uses her gut instinct
- A/R
- Spending a lot of time asking questions of the wait staff and bartenders
- Working with brokers every chance she can
- Going back into accounts that have rejected her… She says ALWAYS GO BACK, ALWAYS!
- How she works with the entire team to learn about products and how to be a better DSR
- Product knowledge has been the hardest thing about the job
- Why she uses Google every day many times to research products
- The first thing she sells is herself. Be a friend first and it makes the partnership even stronger.
- Why competing with the big distributors is not stopping her from growing her business
DSRs, Be a Resource…
and Sell Something!
