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Wayne's view of the 2008 SSAA ConventionPosted by Wayne on 30th October 2008

Upon hardly returning from the October 2008 SSAA Conference in Perth, I was back on a plane to our US office in Riverside, California. The jet lag is all gone and so now is the time to write with some StorMan news ex the Conference.

What do you look for when interviewing for workers to operate the day to day events at the coalface in your business?

1) Industry Experience?
2) IT smarts?
3) Something else?

 

At this year's Spruikers Corner this is the question I asked an audience of 30-35 people. Here is the vote count for the various possibilities I provided for the audience to consider:

1) NIL votes here
2) 1 vote here
3) All voted here

 

The semantics behind the answers varied, but I think we were all able to agree that the answer lay somewhere in this idea - We want to employ staff who can relate to customers and our business well enough to put "bums on seats". In short, for the most part, when looking for staff to operate at the coalface of day to day business interaction this industry seeks salespeople.

This came as no surprise to me, and it likely does not surprise you either. It is, after all, the most sensible answer to my question. But if we are employing salespeople who do not necessarily possess industry experience or computer nousse, how can we best help them do the job they have to do given that, although their job is a sales position, they will (at some point) have to know something about how the industry works (so they can properly advise customers) and they will also need to be able to operate the management systems which support the tracking and reporting of day to day business activity at the coalface (i.e. management software/computers etc.).

The answer (funnily enough) is (once again)... fanfare please... StorMan!

 

I have been working with StorMan since July 2007. My background is one of sales. When I joined StorMan I was technologically illiterate and afraid of my television remote. I am still afraid of the remote but I now know which button to press if I want to start up a computer. My work experience had been in selling fitness, education, apartments, motor vehicles, office furniture, and home renovations and maintenance. Question! See any storage experience in there?!? I was, for all intents and purposes, your kind of candidate.

This is where StorMan started investing in you and your business, big time!!! See, I knew nothing about computers nor your industry and the package they had to offer to get me away from a position where I was quite knowledgeable probably meant they were overpaying me (quite considerably) in proportion to the ability I held (at that time) to fill the position they had offered me. You know the old story of buying the worst house in the best street? That is pretty much what StorMan did when they employed me. But there was a method in their insanity, and it was this... If they could get StorMan to work for me, or me to work with StorMan (not sure which was the bigger challenge), then it will work for just about anyone!

The first thing I did was to start talking to customers. This means I had to record information in our Billing system, which is (if you are not already aware) whatever the latest beta version of StorMan happens to be. I made mistakes, I broke things, I forgot things, and StorMan plugged all the gaps along the way with new procedures, modules, and strategies, (money, money, money... and more money still...).

 

Because my job is to talk with customers, I needed to know something about an industry I knew nothing about. That is where the incredible cumulative industry experience of the StorMan Management Team (Stephen, Ben, and Aaron), plus that of the entire support crew at StorMan, made me sound like a pro almost from the get-go. Yes, for a long time, I leaned, like a sack of concrete, up against the formidable experience and reputation of the StorMan brand, which gave me credibility amongst giants. You can do the same.

And so it was these things, ladies and gentlemen, that were discussed at Spruikers Corner, SSAA Convention, Perth 2008. That discussion pointed out the obvious. StorMan, and StorMan training, is exactly what you need to employ the very moment you have employed your latest sales-gun for the coalface of your business!

Everyone who attended my presentation at Spruiker's Corner, SSAA Perth Convention 2008, agrees...

 

Regards,
Wayne (VP Sales and Marketing, StorMan USA).