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Shane Bybee of Gordon Food Service in Grand Rapids, Michigan has earned the DSR of the Month honors for May of 2018, placing him in the DSR Hall of Fame. Bybee began as a golf pro, then moved into the general manager position. He loved the life of a golf pro, but it wasn’t working for his family. So, he decided he wanted to be a sales person and happened to receive a call from his old salesman who had heard he might be looking for a job. According to the rep, the people at Gordon Foodservice thought Shane would be great at it so he spent a day in the car on that rep’s route. Bybee was pleasantly surprised while riding on the rep’s route as it was full of friends that the rep was helping to make their businesses better. Shane received the job offer and has been there for 14 years.
Shane encourages his customers to order online because using the technology helps him to grow as a sales rep, believing there’s no need to touch every order. Incremental sales are there when they can see your entire catalog. Some downsides are that Webstaraunt and your competitor are a click away, but that’s where the world is today, so embrace it. It increases our need to make our own websites more robust and bring more tools to keep customers on the sites longer. Be the go to website for foodservice.
Bybee uses TripAdvisor for reviews on restaurants from the customer’s perspective that give him a point to discuss with the customer (if negative reviews) that he could help them with. Facebook does a good job too. TripAdvisor is good at vetting the reviews to make sure your buddies aren’t just posting glowing reviews. Make sure you use due-diligence when bringing the bad reviews up. Or you can focus on building up the products that are receiving the greatest reviews.
Tips to doing this job well:
- This job is a marathon, not a sprint. This job will wear you down if you don’t recognize that.
- Our Inside Sales Team (IST) really helps with the blocking and tackling throughout the day, contacting our customers. That person is his partner in his business. He/she communicates with the customers making sure their orders are coming in. This allows Shane to be more of a consultant and get into deeper discussions with the customers about more than what’s on their order, like how he and his company can be of better help to make their business more profitable.
- His IST gives him the time to determine what’s keeping the customer up at night. It is imperative to let your inside sales person know how important they are with thank you’s, because the IST is not your employee/servant, he’s your partner and a big part of the reason Shane can reach his goals. This doesn’t mean leaving the IST with all the garbage work either.
- All the work you do during your day is nothing if you fail to deliver/miss your cutoff time by one minute. The ultimate goal of the day is meeting your cutoff time or everything else done throughout the day, was done in vain. DSRs, Be a Resource…and Sell Something!
