Summary:
In this episode, we sit down with Mike McVay, President of Cross Company’s Mobile Integration Group, to explore his remarkable 30-year journey in the fluid power industry. From his beginnings as a mechanical engineer to becoming a leader in sales, Mike shares valuable insights on the evolution of technology, the shift towards electrification, and the critical role of company culture in employee retention. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to the field, Mike’s experiences and advice offer a wealth of knowledge. Tune in to learn about the challenges and opportunities in fluid power and how to navigate them successfully.
Takeaways:
- Mike McVay’s journey from engineering to sales highlights the importance of leveraging technical skills in diverse roles.
- The fluid power industry is evolving with a shift towards electrification, presenting new opportunities and challenges.
- Company culture plays a crucial role in employee retention and recruitment, as emphasized by Cross Company’s long-tenured staff.
- Understanding customer needs and the technical aspects of products is vital for success in sales, especially in technical fields.
- The integration of IoT in fluid power systems offers significant benefits in remote troubleshooting and software updates.
- Efficient hydraulic design is becoming increasingly important as machinery shifts towards electrification.
- Investing in personal development and technical competence is key to a successful career in sales and engineering.
- The transition from engineering to sales requires patience and the ability to handle rejection and setbacks.
- Cross Company’s focus on culture and employee value contributes to its success and longevity in the industry.
- The future of fluid power involves a blend of traditional and new technologies, requiring adaptability and continuous learning.
Transcription:
Meghann (00:01.225)
Hi everyone, welcome to Unfiltered Flow ELSC. I’m Meghann Cook, that’s Allen Burdette, and today it is our pleasure to welcome Mr. Mike McVay President of Cross Company’s Mobile Integration Group. Welcome Mike.
Mike McVay (00:16.258)
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Meghann (00:19.817)
So Mike, my favorite question, how did you get started in the fluid power industry?
Mike McVay (00:24.728)
How did I get started? So I got a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Alabama and went to work for a foundry down in that area near Tuscaloosa.
And we did a plant expansion project where we added a lot of equipment and a lot of new hydraulics. And I was picked as the person who was going to be responsible for gaining an understanding of those systems, developing maintenance plans for the systems. And so this is a fairly long story. So I went to night school at a local technical college to
understand fluid power. And during that tech school run, that was about a year long thing. I met a lot of fluid power salespeople who then started calling on me at the plant where I worked. And I just really didn’t enjoy the day to day engineering grind, but I wanted to use my technical skills. And just as I got closer to these folks, I started realizing that I thought I like to branch out and go into sales and started looking
for a position in sales and that’s how I wound up at Cross Company. Cross Company was the first company I interviewed with and last week was my 30th anniversary.
Allen Burdette (01:44.635)
That’s great.
Meghann (01:45.663)
Impressive.
Allen Burdette (01:47.528)
That doesn’t happen too often. That doesn’t happen too often nowadays. Wow.
Mike McVay (01:47.982)
It’s a great place to be.
Meghann (01:49.658)
No it doesn’t.
Allen Burdette (01:54.675)
Okay, 30 years in the industry, So you’ve worked on quite a few projects, I’m sure. You’ve sort of worked your way up through the sales organization. What would you say is one of the most memorable projects you’ve worked on? You know, whether you made the most money there, was the most challenging or the most fun or whatever. What would you say one of the most memorable ones is?
Mike McVay (02:20.363)
You know…
That’s a really hard question to answer. I can tell you, and I’m gonna answer it, but maybe a little differently than you asked it. So when I started working for Cross, I was very heavily industrial focused. So steel mills and paper mills and that sort of thing is where I spent my time, industrial hydraulics, power units. without going into the specifics, our model started shifting and we got into
to the mobile OEM space and I started calling on mobile OEM customers exclusively. I was the sales guy for Alabama and Mississippi for a few years while we were trying to grow that business unit. just mobile systems just really grabbed me. It’s what I just turned out to be good at. It was really fun because on the industrial side it was largely MRO stuff and being in front of these mobile customers
gave me a chance to exercise the sales muscle, but also exercise the engineering muscle a little bit. you know, solving problems for customers, going home and doing a schematic and a bill of materials, because I had a cool idea and presenting those schematics to, you know, customers and getting and winning that business is just not one specific machine. But it is kind of fun to be driving down the road and see machines that, know, hey, I did the initial hydraulic system on that machine.
along of course with the customer. That’s just really, that’s fun. Now my family gets sick of hearing it, know, hey, you see that machine? but you know, that’s, that’s the fun part to me is marrying the applications skillset with the sales skillset and making customers happy. That’s what I love.
Meghann (03:59.167)
Bye.
Meghann (04:14.664)
Well, Mike, this is knowing cross and how stout your engineering department is there. Smart technology and advancements there and in fluid power systems. What have you seen in the 30 years to now? And then what do you think the future holds with regards to that?
Mike McVay (04:42.51)
You know, being a 30-year guy, especially in the distribution calling on smaller and mid-size OEMs, we saw a pretty slow adoption rate when Canbus systems started being introduced to the market.
piston pumps and pressure comp valves and those sorts of things. Our customer base was a little slower to adopt that kind of thing. I mean, that’s normal technology now, but when I started, it was gear pumps and open center valves and we really don’t want to, you know.
expense or don’t see the value. So there was quite a few years of helping customers get up to speed on that stuff. That’s now just you know pressure pump valves, gear pumps, can bus systems are really pretty much present on most machines that we we work with. The shift we’re seeing now you know you mentioned IoT I think
Where we see the most benefit when it comes to IoT is we have gateways on just about every machine that we do a system for. And we love the ability to be able to reach out to those machines and do remote troubleshooting. That has saved us quite a bit of time and money and our customers too when it comes to just engineering services and being able to quickly reach out to a machine and see what might be causing a malfunction. And frankly also,
ability to do remote software updates. You you find that, we need to update code. You’ve got 30 or 40 machines all over the country. That used to be a horrible thing if you discovered that. And now that’s a matter of, you know, doing some coordination with the customer and doing that remotely. So that’s, that’s been our biggest use of IOT. And gosh, the other biggie right now, we’re seeing a lot of investigation in the electrification space.
Mike McVay (06:42.506)
So we about three years ago started up an e-mobility group. We’ve got three team members in that group. currently we have four machines in our shop that we are doing prototype electrification systems on.
So, you know, kind of at the beginning of that, our customers are trying to figure that out. We do believe that there is going to be a place for that. And, you know, in the next few years, we definitely see that we’ll be in production on at least a couple of machines and, know, it’s not going to displace fluid power, but it’s very complimentary to what we’re already doing. And if we couldn’t do that, then we couldn’t get our hands on these other opportunities that are on the machine. So it’s just a, it’s a complimentary technology that we’re
investing in pretty heavily so that we can offer the full suite of integration services to our OEM customers.
Allen Burdette (07:41.753)
So looking into your crystal ball and looking five to 10 years ahead, where do you think people should concentrate their efforts as far as skills and new areas of knowledge as they’re coming into the industry or wanting to further themselves in the industry? What do you think they should concentrate on as far as areas of knowledge?
Mike McVay (08:05.568)
Well, you know, I think I grew up in sales, right? So I can give you the answer for our sales team. I think it’s really important if you want to have a strong career that you should make sure that you’re technically competent, particularly in fluid power, but also understanding how those other technologies might.
you know, be applicable so that you can reach into your engineering department and get the help you need. So, you know, investing time and really making sure that you understand the products you sell, how they’re applied, understanding the customer’s machinery, you know, understanding how it operates and what might make it better. You know, that’s a long process for me. Uh, my boss hates to hear me say this, but for me, it took probably five years to go from green salesperson to truly bring
bringing real value to the customer. It’s a long investment period in yourself, right? Spending the time in the evenings, making sure that you know the technologies and again, nobody’s gonna, you’re not gonna know every detail but you certainly need to have a high level overview of how what you’re representing can help your customers.
What I would say in our engineering team, and to some degree our sales team, because all of our sales people are applications people, as we see machinery shift to electrification, you are definitely going to need to understand how to design more efficient hydraulic systems. It’s kind of cliche right now. We hear it a lot in other podcasts, but it’s true. And we’re seeing it firsthand right now, the first conversation that we have to have with our customers who are interested
in electrifying is hey we’re not just gonna take the engine out of there and put an electric motor in there and run the same system efficiently. Now if you just want a beta test just to make sure you know see how it operates that’s fine but you got to identify where the inefficiencies are in the circuit and fix those or you’re gonna you know you’re not going to be able to maximize battery life or you’re gonna have to put a bunch of extra batteries on there so
Mike McVay (10:18.272)
Efficient hydraulic design is going to be a really important thing over the next few years.
Meghann (10:25.726)
That’s what I was going to say, Mike, when you were talking about the electrification portion. You know, that’s a whole other bag of tricks to train the sales team on, right? I mean, it’s definitely different and approaching customers and understanding the system and that sort of thing is, there’s some training that needs to happen there on the sales side.
Mike McVay (10:37.198)
It is.
Mike McVay (10:49.592)
Yeah, we spend a lot of time. when we bring our sales team in, we also generally bring our engineering team in. When we have a sales meeting, we try to couple that with an engineering meeting so that there can be a lot of interaction there and we’ll have engineers do presentations. But what I like to say, our engineering department is an extension of our sales force. I would say that.
any high level system that we’ve won over the past five years. It initiated with a salesperson understanding where our value proposition was and being able to communicate that and then quickly going back with an engineer so that you could have a more deeply technical conversation. Because these days with all the technologies you’re representing,
you, most salespeople, and I would include myself in that, you need that engineer with you to answer the detailed technical questions about, know, code development and how does, you know, how does your CAN bus system interact with the battery management system and how, you know, what’s going to change here. So, you know, we very heavily leverage engineers in our selling process.
Allen Burdette (11:39.245)
you
Meghann (12:01.042)
So what do you see now as the biggest challenge in the fluid power industry?
Mike McVay (12:08.812)
Well, we alluded to it before the interview started. We see, I’ve been across 30 years. Hopefully I’ll be here quite a while longer. But most of the people who work for me or in my team, especially the sales people, have been here even longer than me. So we’re beginning to see those people make retirement decisions. And we’re going to turn quite a few people over the next four to five years.
in recruiting has become increasingly difficult. So I think.
recruiting the right people, doing a really good job of onboarding those people, making sure that your comp package is fair and market appropriate. And then, you know, this is a cross company plug, but it’s true. And it’s one of the reasons why we have so many long tenure people here, you know, making sure that when the people are here, they, they feel valued and are treated well. And culture is a big part of every conversation that we have in every meeting.
We start our meeting with a cultural cornerstone. We use it as a recruiting tool and we’ve got several people who work for us that work for us because they knew us from a previous life and they saw the difference.
Allen Burdette (13:27.643)
you
Mike McVay (13:34.958)
how our employees interact with one another, with them, the type of company we are. So really doubling down on making sure that we do not lose that culture is critical to retaining them once we find them. And it’s an important recruitment tool.
Meghann (13:50.707)
Yeah.
You hit the nail on the head there. Onboarding is such a big deal and I don’t think companies realize what a big deal the onboarding process is to retain employees and the culture piece. More and more my talking to candidates, you know, I would say a strong majority make a move because of current company culture and uncertainty.
in this situation. yeah, that’s great that that’s the route you take in keeping your employees. And you do have a lot of long tenured employees.
Mike McVay (14:24.6)
Yeah.
Mike McVay (14:34.542)
Oh gosh, We had an account manager recently give us a retirement date and it will put this individual right at 40 years with Cross Company. So it’s a very rare thing these days.
Allen Burdette (14:46.554)
Wow.
Meghann (14:46.78)
Yeah, that’s impressive.
Allen Burdette (14:51.065)
Yeah, the other point you made that I don’t think people give enough credence to is it does take probably five years to become proficient when you’re in the sales side with the product you sell. I know that was true for me. I really didn’t feel totally comfortable until about five years in. It’s just a long process, especially when you have a technical product.
Mike McVay (15:11.042)
right.
Mike McVay (15:16.162)
That’s right. And you you’re calling on engineers and so that is, that’s very key. Engineers don’t have very much time for somebody who doesn’t understand what they’re selling and how it’s applied and how it can make that engineer’s life better, know, via making their machine better.
Allen Burdette (15:33.179)
And some of them won’t hesitate to tell you that.
Mike McVay (15:37.177)
pretty direct at times. But yeah, that’s a very important key piece and we see that and as I said, it is our biggest challenge. We understand that we need to start making those hires now for those three year down the road people and we’re working on a plan for that.
Meghann (16:05.906)
Here’s a fun one for you, Mike. So, go back, go back, well you’ll like this one. Go back 30 years ago. What would you tell Mike?
Mike McVay (16:08.693)
Allen Burdette (16:10.587)
Stand by.
Mike McVay (16:21.294)
Well, know, I tell Mike a lot of things. I would say that back to referencing that long development period before you really become a good salesperson, I would tell me, it’s going to be all right. Be patient with yourself. Because I had a few tough conversations with myself about a couple years in.
just, you know, there’s reject, you have to learn how to handle rejection. You have to learn how to handle the fact that, you know, customers aren’t going to buy everything from you. not always, you don’t always have the best solution and you have to, and it took me a little bit of time and this is probably just because of my personality type to learn how to accept those rejections or how to accept, understand that a loss of order, a loss of a particular order did not mean the sky was falling.
So that’s what I would have wished that I had been better at early in my career. It took quite a while for me to get my arms around some of the emotional aspects of making that transition from being an engineer to being a salesperson, because it is a very different life. So yeah, it’s going to be all right, Mike.
Meghann (17:41.918)
Hey, I tell myself that every day, Mike. Still. Every day.
Mike McVay (17:46.478)
What’s really fun is because again many of the salespeople who are here knew that we’re here when I started, at least three. And I was having a funny conversation with one of them last week. He’s…
We used to room together at sales meeting. We used to have to do that back in the day. To save money, we doubled up in hotel rooms. And he was like, man, I can’t believe how much you’ve changed. He’s like that young guy that used to room with me. I wasn’t too sure about him. I was like, I wasn’t too sure about me either. So yeah, it’s fun to have that history with people.
Meghann (18:29.416)
Yeah.
Allen Burdette (18:31.611)
Yeah.
Meghann (18:39.664)
Hey Mike, thanks for your time today, we really appreciate it.
Mike McVay (18:42.51)
Hey, thanks for giving me a chance to talk to you. I hope you guys have a great day.
Allen Burdette (18:46.235)
Thanks.