Summary
In this episode of Unfiltered Flow, hosts Allen Burdette and Meghann Cook welcome Ron Holcomb from Hydrodine to discuss his top 10 do’s and don’ts for sales professionals. Ron shares humorous anecdotes and practical advice to help new salespeople navigate the complexities of customer interactions, emphasizing the importance of professionalism, attentiveness, and appropriate behavior in sales settings.
Takeaways
No cussing in front of customers is a basic rule.
Avoid discussing politics or religion during sales calls.
Always put your phone on vibrate to focus on the customer.
Never disclose competitor’s information during a sales call.
Make sure to keep promises made to customers.
Listening and taking notes is crucial in sales meetings.
Dress appropriately and avoid changing clothes in public.
Silly remarks can lead to awkward situations in sales calls.
Maintaining professionalism is key, even in humorous situations.
Sales tips are essential for anyone entering the field.
Transcript
Allen Burdette (00:01.759)
Hello everyone and welcome to Unfiltered Flow ELSC. My name is Allen Burdette. I’m here with Meghann Cook today and we have a gentleman who’s joined us before but who has an interesting perspective on some things that we think you might enjoy and that’s Mr. Ron Holcomb from Hydradyne Welcome Ron. Nice to have you back again.
Ron Holcomb (00:27.342)
Great. Hi, Ellen. Hi, Megan. Merry Christmas.
Meghann Cook (00:30.541)
Good to see you.
Allen Burdette (00:31.91)
Same to you.
Well, Ron, we’ve been talking to you about this list you have. It’s not a naughty and nice list. It’s more of a naughty list than anything else, I think. So pretty good to have it during the Christmas time. tell us a little bit about this.
Ron Holcomb (00:45.24)
But it’s just some handful, some handful. Well, you you’ve been doing this a long time. You gather knowledge and then the factories hire a new young whippersnapper fresh out of college and he goes in there all green. And I started to put together a list of things not to do.
And so it developed into, it’s evolved. We’ve added things over the years. Something happens to one of the other salesmen and we added or subtract as needed. so whenever a new factory guy comes in or even a new salesman we hire here at the Houston branch, I always give them a copy of my top 10 do’s and don’ts list.
and then I tell them some of the stories about each one of them. So anyway.
Allen Burdette (01:47.679)
That sounds really interesting. So this is a compilation, not just a Ron Holcomb developed list. This is input from other distributor salespeople that you know.
Ron Holcomb (01:51.022)
Thanks.
Ron Holcomb (02:02.83)
Correct, correct, correct. Many of them happened to me though, so.
Allen Burdette (02:03.871)
Okay, all right. that’s it. Oh, okay, yeah. Well, you know, when you do this a while, you get some weird things happen, you know. I’ve been asked to leave a couple of accounts and different things like that and been under the table while people were fighting. So, you know, there’s a bunch of different things that happen to you when you’re in the profession long enough. Yeah. Well, why don’t you jump into this and tell us about the…
Meghann Cook (02:08.628)
You
Ron Holcomb (02:14.88)
You get some weird things that’s happening.
Meghann Cook (02:17.367)
you
Ron Holcomb (02:25.518)
Exactly,
No. All right, so we’ll start off with number 10. And that’s a common sense one. Just no cussing. You don’t know your customer. Try not to use foul language. That’s just a common sense one. And number nine, again, not knowing your customer’s persuasion. No discussion of politics or religion.
I had a rep one time that was ripping on George Bush and I knew that the customer was an avid Republican conservative and so I wanted to kick him in the shins but I didn’t. I him don’t ever do that again.
Meghann Cook (03:23.081)
Especially not in Texas. mean, I, you know, it’s, that’s probably the roughest place to do that.
Ron Holcomb (03:25.108)
Not in Texas, not a good idea.
Allen Burdette (03:29.597)
Yeah, don’t mess with Texas, that’s right.
Ron Holcomb (03:29.838)
Yeah, one of them. That’s true. He’d probably be fine in California.
Meghann Cook (03:36.161)
Yeah.
Ron Holcomb (03:37.87)
Number eight is to know emailing or texting during the sales call. Put your phone on vibrate. Your attention is supposed to be on your customer and find out what his needs are and not checking texts and emails and what the score is on the Astro. So that’s happened to me and I warned the
sale of the rep not to be doing that anymore. Number seven, this happened to me. Do not make comments about customer’s competitor or disclose confidential information. We were on a sales call and there was a…
I can’t remember what the product was. Oh yeah, we’ve done that over at so and so and it worked great and we used this valve and it shut the hell up. mean, good, great. Don’t be telling this guy what his competitor is doing.
Meghann Cook (04:46.701)
It’s an excellent solution. It’s working great.
Ron Holcomb (04:50.86)
Yeah, we have a solution. I’m sure that it’ll work for you.
Meghann Cook (04:56.023)
Mm-hmm.
Allen Burdette (04:56.903)
Yeah, I’ve got a corollary to that one. It was I heard of a factory guy that was with his distributors rep and the customer was talking about needing a filter. Well, he the factory guy referred the customer to a competitor of the distributor who also had filter products.
Ron Holcomb (05:17.358)
Very nice,
Allen Burdette (05:25.183)
Excuse me, I was texting.
Ron Holcomb (05:26.318)
Number six was the same gun. We went down on the call.
Meghann Cook (05:31.871)
I need to do one for a podcast etiquette, evidently.
Allen Burdette (05:35.507)
Ha ha.
Ron Holcomb (05:35.534)
And he would make promises, yeah, we’ll have that to you tomorrow. And yeah, this, this, this prop, no problem at all, put together a schematic and get, and then he would go home and nothing would happen. So he would make all these promises of all the things that were going to happen. But then.
It was up to you to fulfill the promises that he made. So I said, don’t you be making any promises unless you plan on doing them. I’ll make the promises that I want to make. I’ll do my own.
Ron Holcomb (06:18.19)
And number five, we had a factory rep in here and he was a little on the portly side and he was always bragging about how good he was at racquetball and we were always laughing. Anyway, one of the other salesmen, I’d like to play you. So they went off and they played racquetball and our guy almost killed him. also had a heart attack.
Meghann Cook (06:46.893)
And you know it was two sales guys because it was probably about two o’clock in the afternoon when they went out for their racquetball game too. You know it wasn’t operations or engineering folks that were going out and doing that, huh?
Ron Holcomb (06:56.056)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ron Holcomb (07:04.91)
Number four kind of relates to number six, listen and take notes. Don’t go into a sale. Another part of that is don’t go into a sales call without a purpose. I had a factory rep call me up when he’s, I made this sales appointment down with the chief engineer down at this oil company. I said, that’s great. You want to come and join? Sure, I’ll come.
So we go down there and walk into the office and I had mistakenly made the assumption that there was a purpose for the sales call. It was just a sales call. was no, he looked at me like, okay, go ahead and start. I’m like, start what? Anyway, I had to do a little dance and try and find out if they had any projects going on.
I just insist don’t waste me or my customers time. My time is your most valuable asset. I had one of the young salesmen here, said, Ron, wish, man, I wish I had your money. And I said, well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll trade you all my money for your age.
“’cause I can make more money, I can’t make more time.” He said, no, I don’t want to do that.
Allen Burdette (08:33.343)
Yes indeed. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Ron Holcomb (08:41.516)
Yeah, that’s right. Now where are we? Number three? Number three is dress appropriately and don’t change clothes in the parking lot in front of the customer’s window. So this happened to one of the other salesmen. I had this appointment and this factory rep, he drove in the parking lot.
Allen Burdette (08:48.669)
Number three,
Ron Holcomb (09:11.406)
and parked right in front of the president of the company’s office window and stepped out and he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and he proceeded to take off his shorts, put on pants and a shirt and then go into the sales call. And the guy said, don’t bring that guy back here again.
Allen Burdette (09:36.851)
Ha
Ron Holcomb (09:39.788)
He wasn’t appreciative of that little thing.
Allen Burdette (09:42.206)
Yeah.
seen too much of him already,
Ron Holcomb (09:47.126)
Seen too much of him already, that’s right.
And number two, a kind of a funny story. I’ve been known to make a snide or silly remark during a sales call. so we’re, yeah, yes, man, I know it’s weird, isn’t it? We were sitting there in this engineer’s office, head of engineering, and we’re going over this pump.
Allen Burdette (10:07.891)
You?
Ron Holcomb (10:21.794)
proposal and I made some remark and the factory rep kind of gothawd and his teeth came out and rolled under the engineer’s desk. So I’m looking at the engineer like, what, should we laugh or not? He’s down on his hands and knees crawling around looking for his teeth. anyway, try get out the poly dent.
Meghann Cook (10:35.039)
you
Meghann Cook (10:43.693)
Thanks.
Ron Holcomb (10:51.054)
before you go on a sales coming. Polygrip, that’s it. can’t remember the name of it. Anyway, and number one.
Meghann Cook (10:51.437)
I was going to say the polygrip.
Allen Burdette (11:02.035)
Do need a drum roll here?
Meghann Cook (11:03.627)
Yeah.
Ron Holcomb (11:03.726)
I
Ron Holcomb (11:08.514)
Number one, we were on a sales call and it was the factory rep and then it was me and another salesman here. the factory rep leaned over to the engineer, he leaned over his desk right in front of Joy’s face and ripped a nice fart.
Ron Holcomb (11:34.798)
my God. So, yeah, where do you go from there? So number one is do not fart in the customer’s office. Farts are funny, but man, you got to keep it real. We had a…
Allen Burdette (11:35.871)
How do you recover from that? What did he say? Excuse me.
Allen Burdette (11:58.464)
Keep it out of the office.
Ron Holcomb (12:03.224)
Christmas party Friday night for our church choir had a Christmas party. And so I thought they said white elephant gift or can be a gag or something good. Okay. So I go on Amazon. Here’s this remote control fart machine. So I ordered it. The choir director picked it. He had this funny look on his face.
And then it ended up that the preacher stole it from him. So, I love it. I love it. yeah, exactly, exactly. So anyway, that’s my top 10 do’s and don’ts list.
Allen Burdette (12:33.588)
Ha
Allen Burdette (12:37.324)
jeez.
Meghann Cook (12:38.763)
might have some fun with that during the sermons, Ron.
Allen Burdette (12:41.567)
That’s right. Yeah.
Meghann Cook (12:52.109)
That’s a good one. You know, there’s probably a lot of manufacturers reps that should hear these, Ron.
Ron Holcomb (12:58.894)
That’s true and salesmen and salesmen. Exactly.
Allen Burdette (13:04.905)
we’ll make sure we get it out to as many people as we can.
Meghann Cook (13:08.337)
Mm-hmm.
Ron Holcomb (13:08.366)
Yes, anybody that’s looking to get into sales should know these, find these essential tips.
Allen Burdette (13:24.169)
Megan, you’re crystal clear. You want to close this out?
Meghann Cook (13:27.027)
I know. I can close it out. see what happens when you go to roll it out. Well, Ron, as always, we appreciate your time. It’s fun having you on and seeing your face.
Ron Holcomb (13:40.302)
Well, stop by the branch
Allen Burdette (13:41.107)
Yep, always a pleasure.
Allen Burdette (13:47.922)
Next time we’re in Texas, we will.
Ron Holcomb (13:50.058)
All right, sounds good.
Meghann Cook (13:50.455)
Yeah.
Meghann Cook (13:54.381)
All right, thank you, sir.
Ron Holcomb (13:56.258)
Thank you. See you next time.