I'm Scott Stinger. I am AllMakes Vacuum and Sewing, and I'm a partner. Can you tell me about the business? How long it's been here? What do you sell? We've been here for about 17 years. We started in 1993. We retail and repair sewing machines, vacuums, and accessories for both of those genres. Floor care equipment, more generally. Where and who are the product reps? Any more, that's evolved a lot over the years. It used to be a lot more face-to-face, the companies. We're in a pretty sparsely populated state, and there are not many people in our industry left in the area. At the same time, those things are really always been true, but the companies have pulled back the reps, I think fairly drastically. On the sewing machine frontier, we went through a dozen reps in probably 10 years, maybe not quite that many. I would say 20 percent of the time, the territory was vacant. So now, pretty much you're either dealing with people over the phone or through emails. What is your background in sales, and how long have you been doing it? No background in sales. When I was in high school, I did some canvassing door-to-door for West Virginia Citizen Action Group. I don't think honestly I'd ever sold anything until we opened the store up. The original plan was, I was not going to be very involved initially with the actual selling of the original partner that I had at the time was in sales. He was a door-to-door guy from way back, and he would be dealing with them. I was his backup. It turned out a little differently, and I've been pretty much dealing with them day-to-day for almost a quarter century now. Travel is a big part of sales reimbursement and indirect expenses. I know you all travel at least once a year to a certain conference, do a lot of training there, and that sort of thing. How does that factor into your expense plan, and how do you think that helps with planning ahead for, I don't know, budget, or changes, or product changes? That one conference, National Vacuum Dealers and Sewing Dealers Trade Association shows. It's a significant expense, but I see true value in it. It's something that is annual and it recurs, and so it's fairly simple to plan for. Our main sewing machine manufacturer, they'll do an International institute, and it's become erratic. It used to be fairly almost an annual thing, and it moves all around the country. It's now fixed location. It's difficult to plan for, and its much more expensive than the national conference. If it's not without value, but there have been lots of times when I just have been able to justify the costs associated with attending. It's difficult I think as a small business to find extra funds for training, for attending. I think so. It is a big consideration of ours. You really have to get value out of what you're going to. Pretty much on the annual trade show without exception. It's rare that I go and I find new products that I hadn't heard of, but you can actually see them. Then, the training is super important. It's something that distinguishes us from other people in our niche. It's one of the reasons why we are here and so many of them are not after the past 20 years. It's a big, big reason. I think that's true. The budget that we're working with is so small. It's hard for me to talk about planning. It's something that if you have to do it, or feel you have to do it, you have to come up with the funds for it. But if you're really, it's uncommon that we have excess funds where you say, "Well, okay. I don't think we're likely to get much out of this, but we're going to take the expense and do it anyway." You're not the only one that goes? You see enough value in it to where, you have another partner who was also a salesperson. I would say you're still like Sales Operations Manager, but he is here as well and all that, and it's very beneficial for both of you to get those skills to see those products. I know that you tend to work maybe more on the sewing machines. He tends to work maybe more on the vacuums, stuff like that. So, you guys can split up, and then come back, and share knowledge. That, yes. I think we get different things out of attending the show. One of the things that I think we both do, we can feed off each other's enthusiasm. I have always been turned off about sales meetings that are just like a cheerleading event, but it's not so much that when something is worth getting excited over. At the national show, there are hundreds of new products and dozens and dozens, if not a couple 100 of vendors and manufacturers there. It's too much space to cover. I mean, we do spend a lot of time on the show floor together, but if the show was three times as long and were split up the whole way, you couldn't really spend a lot of time with. There's a lot of time pressures, is what I'm saying. But when we see something, it's good to have someone else confirm that, or your enthusiasm, or bring up possible drawbacks. Do something that maybe you didn't see that the possible downside or objections that customers are going to raise. Because sometimes, you're only going to see or you're looking at what essentially is a sales presentation at the show. So, you're a little skeptical, just like customers are a little skeptical, but you're only seeing the positives. Different set of eyes I think is always good. I think also, we're different personalities, and so different people learn different ways. I think that there's the seminars, the roundtable meetings, things, as well as just the exhibits on the trade show floor. Depending at each of us derive different benefits from those different aspects. I'd say I'm much more interested in a thorough knowledge of the industry in general. Then, I think my cohort is, I think he's less interested in that and more of the specifics, ins and outs of exactly what we carry. I think I tried to look at trends, trying to make sense out of things. I think he's more of, "This is what I got. This is what I'm going work with." The other thing that as opposed to, like if only one of us were to ever go, it's the reinforcement of the downtime when the trade show closes at 5: 30. Then, you're still eating dinner, and you're talking about the trade show on your way to the trade show. Just organically, the most important things, get resurface and all the stuff that she did that day, because you don't want to talk about just a frequent trade show over dinner. But obviously, it's going to come out because that's what you've been doing all day. It's the things that are most worth bringing up that are going to be brought up. It's a filter that one person I think just simply can't have for themselves. It's much more beneficial to have two people, that the synergistic effects are, I think extreme, in that situation. If one of us were to attend something like that, something as broad as a trade show by ourselves, I think the benefits would be greatly diminished. Just greatly diminished to the point where, even though it's close to half the cost, I think it would be nowhere near half the benefit. So it sounds like well and also I mean you guys, the reps take you out sometimes too. Yeah, you do get some free meals bought and obviously some companies are a little bit more friendly than others. But swag is swag and they have a big budget and the bigger dealers are getting that kind of stuff all the time. We when we had multiple stores and I think when the reps came around in person more often, because I was a lot younger then, and we were growing, I think they were more excited. So we got more stuff from the dealers, I think they also had a lot more discretion than they do now. It goes from the personal meetings where you're talking about their product over lunch or dinner, depending upon whether or not they're going to be staying anywhere near here, to just phone calls, to no maybe not even phone calls. We have one rep for a company that numbers that we do, they use to be good enough for them to be excited about it but I honestly, he's been our "rep" for three- I think four or five years now and I don't know what he sounds like. I know his name, he sends me emails. I've never spoken to him. What would you want somebody to know who's taking that leap from salesperson to sales manager? What do you think they should know? What's important to you? Okay, what they did- two totally different answers because there's what they should know and then what's important to me. What they should know, what's going to be important to them if they want to keep their job, I guess there're all kinds of different situations but if you're going to be managing other people as part of this job, that is training them is the most important thing if you are bad at it, find somebody who is good and have them do it but training the other people is the most important by far. Because if they know what the hell they're doing, then you're going to look good. I am horrible at that and I'm not interested in telling other people how they should behave, how they should behave. I apparently I'm not interested. I can tell you how the President should behave but I really I am not comfortable in that role and hence fundamentally, I'm a miserable, what I would call sales manager. If you're really interested and if it's important to sell more, the way that you do that in making more profit, the expense ratios and all that, that's easy that's number of stuff that actual selling more is in- if they were from salespeople they know this. The only way to make more profit, I think because the margins that the world is changing for that, and margins are- everything is becoming commoditized, period. I can think of almost no exceptions. The repair work being one of them where you have specialized skills that by definition really are difficult to commoditize. But if you're selling products or services, the people that are actually selling that have just got to, one, know what they're doing and two, be good at it and constantly be getting better and that's the most- that's my long-winded answer, that's the most important thing and there's always- that's one of the things as culture changes, people change as wants, needs, desires change because I do think needs change as well. A sales person and certainly a sales manager has to change with that, they have to be adaptable. If it is just an accounting thing, you can simply be an accountant and that's- but if you start squeezing out the reason, like the one company that I mentioned, that the reason that people are buying from you if you're making it hard, then you're not getting any savings there because you're costing yourself sales. If you hold everything else constant, they ultimately the salesman that is well-trained and is simply going to sell more and knows more which I mean train is such a broad word but it's depth of knowledge and obviously how the rapport with other people. I'm not sure there's another aspect of being a sales manager except having sales people that are constantly improving and then if they are constantly improving, like Dylan said, he not busy being born is busy dying. If they are constant improving, then eventually, they'll be good enough. If they're not constantly improving, I don't- then you should be looking for other salespeople.
