Relationships Are Still the Most Important Part of Heavy-Duty Sales

Episode 316: We have two heavy-duty experts ready to share the most important tips for heavy-duty people to succeed in the industry. Get ready to take notes because we’re talking about business relationships, fundamental skills needed to stay relevant, and how to adapt to ever-changing technology in the industry.

Join this heavy-duty roundtable conversation with our host Jamie Irvine, David Seewack the CEO & Founder of FinditParts, and Walt Sherbourne the VP of Canada and Group Sales at Dayton Parts.

Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.

Sponsors of this Episode

FinditParts: Are you looking to purchase heavy-duty parts and get your commercial vehicle repaired? Get access to the largest source of heavy-duty truck and trailer parts in the United States and Canada. Buy your parts from FinditParts.com

Hengst Filtration: There's a new premium filter option for fleets. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hengst filters will save you. But you've got to go to HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/Hengst to find out how much.

HDA Truck Pride: They’re the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/HDATruckPride today to find a location near you.

Disclaimer: This content and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, The Heavy Duty Parts Report may receive a commission. 

Sign up for our weekly email so you never miss out on an episode: Follow the Show

Transcript

Jamie Irvine: 0:39

You're listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. I'm really looking forward to today's conversation. My guests today are David Siwak, the CEO and founder of Find it Parts, and Walt Sherbourne, vp of Canada and Group Sales for Dayton Parts. Now David's been on the show many times. We're excited to have Walt here today. Walt has 30 plus years of sales and marketing experience in heavy duty and specifically in the heavy duty trucking industry, so he's a wealth of knowledge. I'm looking forward to talking to both of them. So, walt, welcome to the Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.

Walt Sherbourne: 1:22

Well, I'm glad to be here. I so, walt, welcome to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.

Jamie Irvine: 1:24

Well, I'm glad to be here. I appreciate the invite and David welcome back to the show.

David Seewack: 1:27

Glad to be here and thanks for having me. And nice seeing you, Walt.

Jamie Irvine: 1:31

Yeah, good to see you as well, david, so I'd like to take a couple minutes just to give the audience an opportunity to get to know our guest. So first of all, david, can you just give us a brief overview of your career and what makes Find it Parts such a different company when it comes to parts distribution? Sure, I'd be happy to.

David Seewack: 1:50

So I've been on the show before so I hope I don't repeat this too many times for the other viewers that have seen it, but I'm David Siwak and I started in the truck parts business from the time I was young and I went to work for a family company that we had one store and we grew that distribution company from one location to 24 locations and it was great business. I loved it. I loved everyone I dealt with, built really strong relationships with people like Walt. We did business I don't want to admit how long, but we've done business forever and then, when I exited the business after a few years, I wanted to do things differently and I always had the vision of building an online marketplace and that's where we brought where I came to today, which is in building Find it Parts, which is an online marketplace strictly selling heavy duty and automotive parts.

Jamie Irvine: 2:42

All right, Awesome and Walt. We mentioned in the intro 30 plus years of experience, but could you give us some of the highlights of your career?

Walt Sherbourne: 2:51

Yeah, I mean it's almost coming up on 40, which is kind of sad for me to look back that long. I've known David quite a while, but I started my career in 1984 at a little company called TRW as a district salesperson, then went to a company called Rockwell that is now Meritor, and then they turned into Cummins and spent almost 20 years there before coming back to Dayton Parts in 2014 as the VP of marketing, and now that Dorman has acquired Dayton Parts, I've gotten back into the sales side of the business, which I am very passionate about. So that's been my span over the last almost 40 years.

Jamie Irvine: 3:31

So did you start right from day one in the sales and marketing side of the business? Or, if not, when did you transition to sales and marketing?

Walt Sherbourne: 3:39

Well, I started right out of college in 1984. I was given the opportunity to have a region or territory with a company called TRW, as I mentioned, and covered basically all of New England all the way down to Maryland, and got to meet a lot of people.

Jamie Irvine: 4:03

I mean, they took a country boy who lived and grew up in Pennsylvania and threw me into New York City, so that was a wide awakening for me, but I loved every minute of it. That makes a lot of sense, okay. So as someone who grew up in Eastern Canada and then, at 17, left home and moved to Vancouver, I know what that culture shock feels like to be a country boy in the big city. When you are thinking back on your career, let's talk a little bit about some of the fundamentals that you learned early on that you would say are still very applicable today.

Walt Sherbourne: 4:29

Well, I would think back, I mean, as I watched some of my as I want to call them mentors growing up, when I was growing up as a child and I had a father that was in sales and he taught me a few fundamentals. I'm going to just give you five of them that really stick with me and they've stuck with me for 30 years. It's really listening to whoever the customer is, listen to what they're saying, try to gain an understanding of their pain points and see if you can develop solutions for them. Gain all the knowledge you can on the products and services you're selling, because this way you can help guide the customer to come up with solutions and help them create sales and revenue through their channel that they're selling through. And the other thing that I really, really believe in and I tell everybody that I talk to that ask me these type of questions is you got to follow up? I mean, if you don't follow up, you know your, your customers are going to look at you like, okay, he's just around for a little bit, he's not going to be there for the long haul. Make sure you follow up with anything that they ask you, any tasks that are given.

Walt Sherbourne: 5:39

And then the other thing is to is build those strong relationships. Get to know the people you know, not just the owner like a David Seawack in the company. Get to know the others in the company, because David is not going to be there forever. I mean I had a situation where a customer that I went to the back basically the backside of the office they actually turned out to be the owner 10 years down the road. So that relationship that I cultivated was very strong from the beginning once they took over.

Walt Sherbourne: 6:08

So I always say build as many relationships as you can. They're going to help you in the future. That's always been some of my, I want to say, fundamentals of the business. And then the one last thing that I really look at is you're not going to win every battle, but don't give up, because rejection, I know, is difficult to take sometimes, where you feel like you've done everything you can to win that opportunity, but you know what? It may not be the right opportunity for you and you just got to go on to the next one and keep working forward.

Jamie Irvine: 6:38

Yeah, and timing is a big thing, Like I've learned over the years that maybe the problem you solve is a big problem, but maybe it doesn't crack the top five problems that that company is trying to solve right now. And six months from now or a year from now they may come back around to that and say, look, we've got this other stuff fixed now. I remember you talked to me about that. It's time now we gave that some proper attention. If you don't do that follow up in between, you'll never get a chance at that business.

Walt Sherbourne: 7:05

That's that. That's correct. I mean I, like I said I, I look at every opportunity and, like I said, if I don't get it there's a reason for why I didn't get that. But I got to be resilient and, you know, maybe the next opportunity that comes along I will win because I've laid the groundwork for, you know, that opportunity based on them, seeing how hard I worked for the other opportunity that we didn't get.

Jamie Irvine: 7:28

David, when you listen to us talk about this, you, like you said, for many years you were in that brick and mortar space. What about it resonates with you?

David Seewack: 7:36

Well, first I'd like to say that Walt and I are close, specifically for the reasons that he just outlined. You know Walt was working at Rockwell that turned into Meritor for so many years and we built a really strong relationship and that relationship transcended into the different roles and positions and companies that he went to. So that's like proof positive that if you do what you say you're supposed to do and you follow up and you know if you deliver what you say you're going to and you're reliable and you're respectful and and you meet and and. Basically, when Walt Knight did business, I saw him move up the ranks and moved other companies and we just developed a great relationship. So we'll be buddies forever wherever he goes. And we became friends again or doing business when I was at Find a Part.

David Seewack: 8:29

So I think a lot of the things that Walt hit on were just like sales 101. I don't care what business you're in, what company you work for or what product you sell. It's plan your work and work your plan. It is so important that you do meet all the various different people at the companies because people turn over when you bypass someone in a position and only talk to their boss when their boss leaves, the guy will remember that you didn't give him the time of day. So I just think that I mean I would echo most of what Walt was saying. It's pretty basic stuff and I just think that if you follow those rules you'll be successful selling whatever it is heavy duty or any other product.

Jamie Irvine: 9:13

Yeah, we might all look at that as common sense, but unfortunately common sense isn't always common practice. So to us we've got that curse of knowledge where we know this and we've been applying those principles for decades. But for someone listening who's maybe just starting their career, these are the fundamental building blocks that they need to know are important. And you know, sometimes there's a lot of pressure to get results and so sometimes there's a tendency to feel like maybe you should violate one of those principles to get the short-term result. But, walt, what have you learned in almost 40 years in the business? Is that the right strategy?

Walt Sherbourne: 9:48

Yeah, I think it is. I mean, I think, the biggest thing that I can, you know, look back on my career. I mean I'm still going strong, as we say, but the fundamentals work. I know technology started to take some of that what I want to call that fundamental face-to-face meeting out of practice. But you've got to be willing to adapt to the change and just continuously see everybody. But unfortunately you're not going to be able to see the person behind the David Seawax of the world that would be next in line to take over the company doing it all virtual world. That would be next in line to take over the company doing it all virtual. So that face-to-face meeting is still very important to make sure that you get in front of. You know, not only David, who is the owner of the company, but all of his people that are there that he works with and may find a part successful.

David Seewack: 10:35

Another thing I'd add to that is that it's okay not to know something. So there's nothing worth it when you walk in and visit a business owner and you're a new salesperson and you really get over your skis by saying you know more than you actually do. I actually think it works better in the reverse to say, hey, I'm a great salesman and I work for a fantastic company. I really don't know the answer to that, but I'll find out the answer and get back with you. For me, that always resonated better than trying to answer something you really don't know what you're talking about and you lose credibility with who you're dealing with.

Jamie Irvine: 11:11

Yeah, I personally think that the person who can find the answer is more valuable than the someone who kind of conducts themselves as a know-it-all, because we all know that's impossible. There's so much to learn in this business. We've been in it for decades and we're still all learning every single week. Agreed, yes.

Walt Sherbourne: 11:26

I would agree.

Walt Sherbourne: 11:27

I mean I would echo David's comment about that.

Walt Sherbourne: 11:29

I mean I had a very tough as I want to call product manager in one of my companies and literally, you know, I'd call him cause I didn't know anything when I was starting out brand new, and still today I'm learning every day. But I mean this guy made me look it up. He said the answer's on page so-and-so I'm not going to give you the answer, look it up. And that made me stronger because you know, I went and looked it up first before I, you know, decided to tell the customer the right answer to make sure it was correct. But I mean this guy was very tough.

Walt Sherbourne: 11:59

I mean, yes, he'd give you an answer if you were on the fly and you had to have it right away. But to tell the customer, no, sometimes it's very difficult. I don't know that answer, but I think it's the best practice to to to make sure that, hey, if you really don't know, they know, they know when you're telling the non-truth, I mean they're going to find that out. But I'd rather say, look, I don't know, I will get back to you as soon as possible. But again, the follow up behind that it has to happen in order to make sure that the customer is going to respect you in the long run.

Jamie Irvine: 12:30

Will transcend any changes that we see because of technology. That being said, there are aspects of the job of sales and marketing that are shifting and changing because of technology and because of just the conditions and the climate that we live in today. So, Walt, how has sales and marketing changed since you started in the business?

Walt Sherbourne: 12:58

Well, I look back 30 years ago. I remember sitting on the highway, on the Long Island Expressway, with a cell phone through my car window. I mean, the first little minor change that happened, the simple change that we all live by every day now is a cell phone. You know, that's allowed us to be a lot more productive and it's also allowed us to, as I want to say, become a doctor in a sense, because you're always on call. I mean that phone is always going to ring, you're always going to be available for the customer. Before, with you know, the landline phones, that really didn't happen.

Walt Sherbourne: 13:34

But email also, I mean that was another thing that really has come you know over the course of my career, being able to respond and you know, like you said, if you didn't know the answer, you found out the answer later in the day. Now you could also email with a confirmation via email now and the customer has a written answer instead of communicating by phone. That's also changed in my career. When you look at the digital presence, that's out there.

Walt Sherbourne: 14:03

I mean, who would have thought that an end user or even my customers that I sell to today, would be ordering through websites or using social media, email marketing, to out there and communicate their brand and what their value proposition is in the market? That's become pretty pretty now. It's now, it's every day. Everybody uses that. But in my career, those platforms like LinkedIn, facebook to drive advertising and messages to our potential customers as well as our customers has become a significant imprint in our companies. Today we even use smartphones for, you know, mobile marketing. I mean, you know we send text messages to certain people that sign up for text messages to give them, hey, what's the new product of the week or the month? So those type of searchability technologies are becoming ever-present, and now we've got another one that's coming AI. Ai is going to change the world. The next, say, five to ten years, I think it's going to be even more significant. So I mean, technology is really the forefront.

Jamie Irvine: 15:10

Right. And when I think back to just the pre-cell phone era, you know when you were on the road selling, you would fax orders into the office and people often would call the office and leave messages for you. You might only call in in the morning and in the evening because the rest of the time you were on the road. And people might think that I'm describing the 1950s, but I started selling in the early 2000s and that's still what it was like. I mean, yes, there were cell phones by then, but not everybody was using them. They weren't that reliable in the rural settings. And so when in the first few years of my sales career, yeah, you'd phone into the office and get your messages and you'd be talking to a customer, you'd make a sale and you'd get them to fax that order in right then and there.

Jamie Irvine: 15:53

And what I noticed when we shifted to smart technology and cell phones and email, the ability to communicate dramatically increased. But then the quality of the communication also changed and it required some new skills to be able to use that technology effectively. And I think we're going to see that again as we transition out of Web 2.0 and into Web 3.0 technology, which includes augmented reality and artificial intelligence. So you know, you have to be adaptable, you have to keep up with the changes and you have to kind of meet your customers where they are at the time. David, you have completely transformed yourself from a brick and mortar distributor with 24 stores to an online marketplace. What would you say, from your perspective, are the real challenges now on the marketing side of business?

David Seewack: 16:43

Well, on the marketing, I mean, it's so much different now because everything marketing for us is digital, so we're meeting the customer any which way and wherever they are. To what Walt was saying, you know, obviously you want to be social marketing, you're doing email, you're doing text marketing. We do a lot with AI today, where we know the customer. We wanna have more personalization when the customer comes to our website. So we know who you are and what you've looked at and what you have a propensity to wanna shop for. So we're a lot smarter as it relates to interacting with our customer and we want our customer really understanding that we know who they are and we're trying to serve up what they need A lot of things Walt was talking about. As far as communicating, like as a salesperson, you know obviously, look at what we're doing right now. We're on a you know, a webcam. A lot of what I do now with suppliers is I'll set up a Zoom meeting or a webinar of any sort and you can communicate and you're able to get a lot done now much quicker and much more efficiently than you used to. So if I have to meet someone, I'll have two or three meetings on webcams like this, but then nothing beats a face-to-face. I mean, I think a face-to-face really changes the interactivity between business owners or manufacturers and people like myself.

David Seewack: 18:10

I think everyone should leverage technology to be more productive. So you know, you want to ping people and text them. I'm coming. You want to use your smartphone to take a picture of the part they're looking at. You may have a two-way video showing them their part. When you talk about augmented reality, I think we're going to use the glasses and we're going to have mechanics that are going to be teaching other folks how to do jobs, or there may be training manuals that are in your goggles that you're going to know how to do the job. So I say, harness technology and really think with an open mind about how you can apply it to make yourself more productive. And I think if we do that, these are tools that are just so helpful that we really it can put you a notch above the next salesperson, because you're really meeting the customer where they are. So you don't want to over-tech it, but when they're techie, you're on top of it.

Jamie Irvine: 19:01

Yeah, and there's this tendency that I find that people kind of think that it's an either or, right. Well, we either do it the way we used to or we adopt all this new technology, and I don't see it that way. So I'll give you an example. If we're all at a trade show and let's say, david, I'm introducing you to someone new, and you and I and Walt, we all know each other, we've met each other in person before but someone new comes up and if we're really comfortable with that person, they can stand within three feet of us and we don't feel uncomfortable at all. Right, and that's called the social zone. If you're not comfortable with someone, you meet a stranger and they're kind of intimidating or they look like they're dangerous, like you're not going to let them in that three feet of you, you're going to step back from them, right, that's just the way that we operate in the real world.

Jamie Irvine: 19:44

One of the things that people don't realize is our brains can't really distinguish the difference right now, as the three of us are on webcams that we're not in the social zone, like we're within that three feet of each other, despite being thousands of miles apart, and our brains can't tell the difference and I can prove that because I have spent a couple years sometimes working with clients strictly remotely and then we finally get to meet and the first thing they do they don't shake my hand to give me a hug.

Jamie Irvine: 20:13

And that shows that over time we've built up this trust and we've been inside that social zone virtually. When you get to meet in person, that relationship has been preloaded. So in the past we had to do a lot of work to build a relationship to a point where you would give another guy a hug at a trade show. But we can preload the relationship building part of our sales activities and the sales channels with these tools. So I don't see it as an either or I see it as very powerful tools. When deployed correctly, can be a fantastic advantage in sales.

David Seewack: 20:48

Yeah, I agree, and I think a lot of sales is body language. You know, when you're on a zoom call like this, you can't really get a total feel for someone, and when you're in person it really is different. So but mixing the two I find to be the best of all worlds.

Jamie Irvine: 21:05

Yeah, and proof of that is one time a guy walked up to me and he goes like it's the first time we've met, despite being on video calls for a long time. And he looked at me. He goes you're not five eight. Did I ever tell you I was five eight? He goes no, but you've always sitting at a desk, so I just thought you were five, eight, because you're over six feet tall.

Jamie Irvine: 21:23

That's funny. So you're right. It's not a complete, it'll never be a replacement for in-person, but there's a time and a place for everything.

Walt Sherbourne: 21:31

I just wish I was 5'8".

David Seewack: 21:34

You mean, you're not even 5'8". Oh no, I'm not even close.

Jamie Irvine: 21:40

Okay. So, walt, you said something a little earlier that I put in the back of my memory and I wanted to kind of bring it back around to that. So you talked about the importance of like using all these tools to get your value proposition in front of your customers. So I'd like to know where do you think suppliers like not the distributors, but the suppliers are kind of failing right now at getting that message in front of the fleets who use their product and the distributors who sell their product.

Walt Sherbourne: 22:10

Well, I mean, I can only speak for. You know my career right of who I work for.

Walt Sherbourne: 22:15

We won't name names, but tell us what you really think Overall, if I look at the HD heavy duty, aftermarket right, I think we're behind when it comes to this digital presence and doing a lot of this stuff. We're catching up now as we speak, but it's really that you know, when that consumer and user that David goes out and tries to sell or we even try to get influenced right to purchase our brand or our value that we put in our products, we have or our value that we put in our products, we haven't done a lot of that. I mean, we haven't been reaching to the end user through a lot of these platforms and we're starting to do that now. But I think we're behind. I mean you look at the content marketing, for example, where there's a lot of data. We have a lot of data for our products. I mean a lot of that data is captured in our dimensional data, especially on the heavy duty side. A lot of year make model stuff, especially on the products that I represent. You really don't have the year make model for undercarriage products. Above the frame we do, but below the frame we don't. So when you're looking at that and when the consumer is looking up the product, we don't. So when you're looking at that then when the consumer is looking up the product, he needs to understand what the measurements are. We have them. But when we're trying to get that value out of our brand and bring him into our website or bring him somewhere where he can kind of look at the products and say, okay, they have this basket of products, this is what I'm looking for, this is the product I need, and then where can you go get it from our distribution base? We're slowly adapting to that type of platform. Right now we just don't have that there.

Walt Sherbourne: 23:55

I look at the automotive side, because I've been exposed to both sides of the businesses automotive and heavy duty and automotive seems to be about 10 years ahead of us with regards to this. So now we're trying to catch up and I think we will catch up. I mean we're catching up faster and faster because we realize the value behind bringing the customer to our distributors to help them sell our brand and our product. I mean that's really what we're trying to do. You know picture is a very simple thing. You know a picture of the product.

Walt Sherbourne: 24:28

David mentioned the mechanic. You know, looking at the training through goggles, putting training stuff together on our products, helps bring that value back to the consumer as well. But even taking a picture of the product, I'd like to see down the road where you can take a picture of the product that you want, upload that into the website and it gives him a couple choices, because when you're looking for a hanger there could be multiple hangers, but at least you get close. So we're adopting a lot of this, what I want to call the advances in technology, to get to that platform at some time in the future. I mean quicker than shorter.

Jamie Irvine: 25:07

Yeah, and field work with manufacturers, like when you're in the distribution game. Field work with manufacturers is invaluable for both the distributor and the manufacturer because it puts the manufacturer in contact with the end user of their product, helps them understand what's going on on the ground. For the distributor, that support from their suppliers is really critical. But for a long time that was kind of like one of the only ways that suppliers could really build any kind of relationship with those end user customers. But the opportunity there for suppliers to do pull through marketing and to build a brand where people start saying I want this product or part number, but I want it as a Dayton part, not someone else's, that's great for the distributor if they're a supplier or if they're a distributor of that supplier, right, that really greases the wheel and makes the sales so much easier. So I just think there's a big opportunity there that we still haven't fully taken advantage of. And I think that the suppliers do need to have those strong relationships and obviously if there's testing being done, they have relationship with fleets. But there is a big part of the market that in the past it was just impossible for suppliers to reach every one of those. That's why they had distributors. But I don't see it as a threat to the distributor. If a supplier does a good job of that, I see it actually as something that makes the sale happen easier.

Jamie Irvine: 26:28

We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back. Are you deferring maintenance because of filter cost or availability? Or, worse yet, are you trading down to no-name filters to try to save a few bucks? Either way, you're rolling the dice. The good news there's a new premium filter option for fleets Hanks Filtration. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hanks filters will save you. But you've got to go to heavydutypartsreportcom slash Hanks to find out more. That's heavydutypartsreportcom slash H-E-N-G-S-T. Head there. Now this episode of the Heavy Duty Parts Report is brought to you by Find it Parts, your ultimate destination for heavy duty truck and trailer parts. Discover a vast range of parts at finditpartscom. Don't spend hours a day looking for parts. Instead, visit finditpartscom and get them right away. David, from your perspective, you know, walt talked about us being a little behind. Where do you see us going with the technology and how could a distributor today, and maybe a supplier, challenge that status quo that we've had for the last few decades and really do things different.

David Seewack: 27:40

Well, I can look at it from two different aspects. One on the brick and mortar world. You know it's a push and a pull. So some of the challenges from the manufacturer's perspective is they may do field work. They spend a lot of time building their brand with the customer and the customer may want that Dayton part and then the customer takes their part in their local distributor and that distributor will sell whatever part they have on their shelf. They may or may not sell the product that Walt and his team have pushed in the marketplace. So I mean that's a challenge. Walt can speak for himself, but I know that's a challenge in the marketplace.

David Seewack: 28:19

For us it's different because we offer all types of brands. We have preferred brands. So if someone's looking for a date in part number one, two, three we'll always give them exactly what they asked for. So we might show alternatives, that cross-reference. So the customer always has the choice. But for us it really works well when we work hand in glove with the suppliers, that when they in fact call on customers or build brand loyalty with that end user and if they're buying it online they know they can get it immediately they may not know that their particular distributor has it.

David Seewack: 28:55

So I just think that everything is changing. I think that I always suggest that you try to reinvent yourself every year. So I always say don't do things like you've always done them. You need to keep adapting. So, brick and mortar, you'll start texting to your customers, you'll email to them, you'll find other ways to communicate with them, and I think you have to change with the time. So my advice is you want to make sure that you talk to the younger folks because, remember, old guys like us ingest data one way and younger kids are looking at it completely different. So you know, walt may not be on TikTok or he may not be on the cool app, but our customers are because they're younger. So I think we have to meet the customers where they are and we have to adapt to the way that they're changing as well.

Walt Sherbourne: 29:49

Well, I would echo those statements.

Walt Sherbourne: 29:50

I mean we've got to go where the customer is. I mean you look, you look today. I mean the guy use before. I mean they're communicating. You know a product. They're doing an impromptu video and just sending it to their customers because they had. You know, if a guy had a problem with a part, he's bringing it back to our product team. They're doing a quick video and sending out you know the answer right away.

Walt Sherbourne: 30:21

I would have never done that. I mean now I'm starting to adapt to that because I think it's a very good solution to the problem. Number one the customer is seeing your part. He had an issue installing it, for example. You showed him how to install that part and you've won on both sides. The customer sees it visually. He sees you took a really good I want to say customer experience because you heard what he said, you researched what happened, you solved the issue and then you sent it back to the customer with a training type video of how you install the part. I never did that. I would always do it verbally because I didn't have the resources I had before. Now I have those resources that I can quickly do it by a cell phone, take a quick video and send things there. So you know, adapting to the technology, I think, is, you know, one of the best things we can do as the older guys on the call here, because we've got to be where the customers are we got to?

Walt Sherbourne: 31:23

create that personalization between me and the customer because, I'm like him. If I was on the other side, I would like to see how it's done, because I'm a visual person. If I see it being installed, I can pretty much do it. Reading a manual sometimes gets a little difficult.

David Seewack: 31:38

I can actually speak to Walt's company. Dorman has done a terrific job of modernizing their business. They have really a great website. They have instructional videos. So I think, as manufacturers evolve, I think Dormant is a great example of a company that is modern, that delivers content in the way that people can ingest it any which way they need to. So I think that's a really good example of a company that's staying ahead of the times or at the bleeding edge of the times.

Walt Sherbourne: 32:11

And we're looking to and that's one of the things, jamie and we're looking to take the Dorman mythology that they've done on the light duty side and transform that on the heavy duty side. So we're already starting with all the attributes and content data and all that stuff for the heavy duty parts. So we're already starting with all the attributes and content data and all that stuff for the heavy duty parts that we had before and getting the pictures. And I mean I spent a lot of time during our as I want to call it, our two year break in a sense, with the illness that went around the country of taking pictures and getting our stuff up to date so that we can continue to give as much content and show visually the part that the customer is looking for.

Jamie Irvine: 32:49

Yeah, and as we continue to adapt, it's really I think we're going to see some big shifts. And I think we're going to see shifts in brand loyalty. I think we're going to see shifts in the way that we interact with our customers and I think, in the long run, this next generation coming up. You know, the millennials are different because they kind of grew up in the old world and then they matured and became adults in the new world.

Jamie Irvine: 33:14

But this next generation, like my daughter's age she's 20 now these kids are really really smart and they're really good at using technology and I'm really excited to see what this next generation brings to the industry. Their way of looking at things will be different. They'll embrace technology in ways we can't even imagine and that's all going to be really interesting to see unfold. So let's shift in our conversation a little bit and talk about that younger generation. If they want to have a long career in this industry, david, what advice would you have for someone who wants that long career, specifically in selling heavy duty parts? Because it's going to be a completely different environment moving forward than it was when you and I were coming up through the ranks?

David Seewack: 34:01

You know it's funny, a long career is kind of old school. I mean that sounds crazy in and of itself because it used to be like once you get a job with IBM, you're at IBM for life. And I'm now learning. When you look at a resume you see people bouncing around. They'll spend two years here, three years there.

David Seewack: 34:20

I think this is a great business for a multitude of reasons. One, the customers that we do business with are cool. I mean, they're just like regular folks. So if you treat them with respect, it's just old school. You do a good job, you take care of the customers, you treat them well and they'll reciprocate. So I think with salespeople it's a really good training ground. So I think with salespeople it's a really good training ground.

David Seewack: 34:47

To Walt's point, you have to be able to accept no and for me, I always say no is just an opportunity for you to say yes. And I just never give up. I mean my friends call me a honey badger I just never give up, I never quit and I just I keep calling on that person. So it teaches you great skills that you can use anywhere that you go. So I think that this is a great training ground for anyone that's selling anything, and I just think that we're in a great industry, but selling is different and selling will become different. Some people may not want to see salespeople as frequently, so you have to be more creative as a salesperson, as we're talking about all these other means by which to communicate. So I think this is a great business.

David Seewack: 35:36

I love the people in our business the owners, the counter guys, the customers, the salespeople, all the way around. I think it's a great industry. It's not as political other than dealing with the really big fleets Pretty much when you're on the ground. They're just really great folks and I just love everyone I interact with. I find that they're superhuman, they're really cool, they're very understanding of young people and as long as you do what you say you're going to do, I mean, if you're flaky, they're not going to take to you, so it doesn't matter if you're a guy or a gal. I find that that our customers are receptive if you do a good job and if you follow up. So I think if you just do a, if you work hard and you work for a good company, you'll be successful.

Jamie Irvine: 36:27

Yeah, I had someone talk to me about that, about how male dominated our industry was, and I started thinking about like all the way back to 1998, every heavy duty parts company I've been involved in, both manufacturing and distribution, and I started listing off all the women who worked at those companies and the person stopped and said maybe it's not as male dominated as I think it is. And I said no, I said like we have always been very accepting. I mean, obviously times have changed and and we have gotten better over time with that. But yeah, some of the some of the top tier people in our industry are women and it is really interesting to see how. You know, the trucking industry is the backbone of society. Like you said, david is a salt of the earth kind of people and if you just are real with them and you work hard and you try to help them, it is amazing how quickly they will embrace new people to the industry and you know, as a Canadian kid coming down to the States and doing what I do now.

Jamie Irvine: 37:20

it's amazing the way that people have just opened up their arms and said, hey, if you're here trying to help us, then we want you here, right? So I don't think anybody should hold back from trying to join the industry just because maybe they don't come from a background that they think is the you know kind of the traditional background, specific skills could a young person let's say they're in their early 20s, what kinds of skills could they work on that would help them transcend, you know, things like technological change, but just make them successful?

Walt Sherbourne: 37:54

I think you're going to see. You know basically the basics that we talked about earlier. You know they've got to have the sales skills right. I mean they've got to be able to prospect, they've got to go out and negotiate, because you're always going to have that negotiation between you and the customer, handle objectives. And the one thing that I definitely see that doesn't happen all the time is ask for the order or ask for the sale. You know you'll give your great speech Right and you'll make that great presentation.

Walt Sherbourne: 38:20

And I've had this happen with training some folks in my career and they don't ask for the order. And it's like you get out there and you critique them. I said what is the one thing you didn't do? And oh, I didn't ask for the order. So it's kind of you know those type of things, just the basic sales skills. But you know, be responsive to the customer. You know, provide the information he's looking for. If you don't know the answer, as we've talked about, make sure you get in the answer, get back to him in a timely manner. But you know, when I look at the, you know the organization of the younger generation today. You know their technology that they're using today with Salesforce and a few other things. A little hard for me to learn in the beginning, but now that I know it and I'm understanding it, it's making my job a lot easier to track leads and staying organized where.

Jamie Irvine: 39:08

I didn't have that before.

Walt Sherbourne: 39:09

It was all by hand and paper, but now, with technology being able to be adaptive to me, I look at change as an opportunity for me to learn something new.

Walt Sherbourne: 39:20

I'm sitting here watching data that's coming in and giving me predictability, more than I had before, where I can actually, you know, go to a customer and say, hey, you've bought this product before. You haven't bought it three months. What's going on? And then what happens in that conversation, when you're presenting that to the customer, it's either he's moved the business he didn't realize it or he's lost a customer. You know that, he didn't realize. So I've had that ability to go in and say, hey, there's certain parts that you're not buying anymore. Why? And being able to use that analytics, as I want to call it, or the data analytics that we're using today and having that at your fingertips has been a great great thing for me that we're using it today, you know, continue to be resilient. I mean, there's, as David said, take the answer no as an opportunity to get motivated to get back in there for some other opportunity that comes along.

David Seewack: 40:13

You know another thing Walt just said. That reminds me of a story. You know, like the military, you know when you're in the military, which I wasn't, but you got to make your bed right. You got to make your bed perfectly. And the philosophy behind that is, if you make your bed perfectly, you've already succeeded in that day. You know, you started the day with the success and I remember I worked with an old school sales guy and he said that if I don't get an order from every customer, I fail.

David Seewack: 40:44

And because there's probably not a call that you make on a customer that they don't need something that you could sell them. And I think the idea of really a trying to make it so that you ask for the sale and try to leave with an order, that makes all the difference in the world and it makes you feel more successful in the day. So I think that's another thing that no one, no one, should discount that. Yeah, you know, if you're a salesperson, you have to ask for the order and you can teach any salesperson our business, but if you know our business, it's hard to teach them to be a salesperson. So if you don't, if you don't have that makeup, it's a, it's a struggle.

Walt Sherbourne: 41:26

And you and David, I mean I'll just echo that statement a little bit, jamie, you can. You know, when I interview a lot of folks for you know sales positions, you know I asked them, of course, the product questions. You know, what products do you know? What have you sold before? But it's really I'm trying to get an understanding of their sales skills first I can teach the product side. It's the sales skills that you know, that that really you gotta have that in you, for you know, whatever it is, you gotta have that being able to be easy and talk easily with somebody you don't even know, and it's, it's there. There's a lot of folks out there that are sales guys that have been taught the product now because they didn't have any product knowledge before. I mean, I'm one of them. I had that sales in me. I didn't know a leaf spring, uh, when I came out of college, but I know enough about leaf springs to be dangerous.

Walt Sherbourne: 42:18

in my 30 years now, yeah.

Jamie Irvine: 42:22

So, um, there, oh you, you guys have my brain going in like 18 different directions. I'm so. So many things I want to talk about I I want to focus in. Well, first of all, how do you know if you've got what it takes to be in sales? There actually is tools out there.

Jamie Irvine: 42:36

So, um, in my consulting business we work with a psychometric assessment tool called traits. It's not one like myers-briggs or disc, where it just puts people into buckets. It's a tool that actually allows someone like me, if I was evaluating a young person, to really understand their personality composition and the behaviors that they as an individual would be most likely to exhibit. And, to your point, if you've got high assertiveness, if you've got good, appropriate levels of sociability, if you have that high pace kind of personality, and if you're a little less detail oriented, you're going to be more and you're more assertive, you're going to be more likely to ask for the order and go for a result than you are to be like a technical salesperson where you're highly detail oriented, which, of course, there's a place for that as well. So I think, taking one of those tests, and if anybody listening right now wants to and they want to be in sales and they want to be in heavy duty and you've never taken one of them. Just reach out to us. I will set you up with it. It will cost you nothing and we will. We will give you the feedback you need for your career, because we're really committed to helping heavy duty people flourish.

Jamie Irvine: 43:39

But while you talked about negotiation skills and I wanted to go a little deeper on that so there's a game theory that was developed in the 1920s with a mathematician and a economist a German economist and they came up with this game theory and they basically broke down negotiations into three categories. So there's win-win, zero-sum that's one winner, one loser and no-win, where everybody loses. And probably, if you've been in sales long enough, you've run into somebody who's actually pretty committed to no win and you don't want to do business with them. Obviously you're pushing for win-win, but there are people out there that will challenge you and right at the last moment, will ask for concessions. What advice would you have for a young person, if they want to develop their negotiation skills, to move somebody, maybe with a zero sum mentality, to a win win? How do you, how do you learn those skills? Like kind of hard to just take a course on that. So how would you learn those skills over time?

Walt Sherbourne: 44:38

Yeah, I mean I've had a lot of young sales guys in my career that have come to me with. You know those type of situations where they're negotiating, you know deals and you know they bring the deal to me. And my thought process behind it is you can never make a bad deal, because if you do make a bad deal that's not favorable to the company or favorable as a win-win for everybody. We can talk about how we would do it differently. You've got to do it by trial and error.

Walt Sherbourne: 45:13

It's very difficult to not do it by trial and error. You're going to lose some, you're going to be on the bad end of some deals, but you're also going to be on the good deals From a customer's perspective. And the way I try to treat the customers is I have to make money, they have to make money. So let's try to compromise somewhere in the middle. So we're both going to survive and we're both going to win the battle Because they've got to ultimately sell that product to the end user that I'd like them to sell my product. So I think from a negotiation standpoint.

Walt Sherbourne: 45:44

It is a lot by trial by error and experience of just going out there and having those conversations and you know, like I said, you're going to win some, you're going to lose some, but ultimately you want to get to that where both parties are able to make a living per se so that they can go sell that product. A living per se so that they can go sell that product and I can still create revenue for my company because ultimately I have to stay in business for my customer to sell my products.

David Seewack: 46:11

David, what's your thoughts on that? So for me, I've been both. I've been a salesman. I've negotiated with suppliers. A couple of lessons that I've learned as it relates to negotiating with suppliers. Lessons that I've learned as it relates to negotiating with suppliers I think I was.

David Seewack: 46:27

And it doesn't matter who you're dealing with. I never want to get the last penny out of a deal. I never want the person that I'm negotiating with to feel like, man, that was such a tough deal and I hate dealing with that person. You know, it's just, it's terrible. I might get a deal with Walt and I'm like well, you got to do this deal, you got to give it to me as price, or else I always want to do it with a velvet glove. I'm like come on, walt, you know I need to buy a little bit better. How do we make this great for both of us? You know I'll give you more volume. I need a better price and everyone's got to give. And if you give and they give, everyone's happy and then that really lays the foundation for future negotiations.

David Seewack: 47:11

Because if you negotiate a deal, you follow through with what you said you're going to do, then it makes it easier negotiating again. And as it relates to being like a salesman in the field. You know I really I sell on a personal level and I just say to the customer I'm like if you grind me on price every single time, all you're buying from me is price and and you know there's people you say you know you can sell on price, you can sell on quality, you can sell on service, pick two. You can't get them all, you know, because everyone's got a cost of doing business. So if you deal fairly, I think everyone basically wants a fair price and if you treat them fairly and you treat them well, there's a balance, right. But if you want to get, if every customer, if he's grinding on every deal, really not the kind of customer that I want, because it just beats you up and it just like I'm not valuable to you unless I give you the very best price and it just it doesn't seem like a good relationship.

Jamie Irvine: 48:08

You know, my strategy has always been with those types of customers that grind you every time, send them to my competition, let my competition deal with that guy. I'll go find somebody who wants to actually have a win win. You know, walt, you talked about the role that you've played as a mentor over the years and I think you know if I was mentoring a young salesperson and we were talking about negotiation skills, there's a couple of things that I would talk about pushing for that win-win, of course, but also knowing when to walk away. And I also think it's very important to have little catchphrases that you memorize, that you know when to use them at the right time.

Jamie Irvine: 48:43

One of my favorites in negotiations is, right at the outset, saying look, before we even start negotiating, I want to get something clear. I am going to sell it to you for less than I want to charge and you're going to pay more than you want to pay. I like that. And then they laugh and then you know you both have a good chuckle and then it puts you on a nice level playing field where, okay, this guy's here for a win-win right. So you know, that mentorship component, I think, is really, really important. You know we're just coming to the end of our time together. Gentlemen, it's been wonderful talking to both of you. Walt, if you want listeners to remember one thing from this conversation, what's that one thing?

Walt Sherbourne: 49:19

Well, I think, if you know, I'm sitting there thinking back on my career and then the conversation that we've had, you know, I think the one thing I would I would sit back and look at a change is here, it's coming. It's going to come at a faster pace in the next five to 10 years. Be willing to adapt to that change. Don't get set in your ways so that you know you. You continue to try to fit the new technology into your old ways. Learn about the new technology and how it can help you, even improve your position in your sale for the future.

Jamie Irvine: 49:53

You've been listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and today we have been speaking with Walt Sherborn, the VP of Canada and Group Sales at Dayton Parts. To learn more about Dayton Parts, visit daytonpartscom. Walt, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And we've also been talking to David Siwak, the CEO and founder of Find it Parts. To buy your Dayton Parts through the Find it Parts marketplace, go to finditpartscom today. David, thank you so much for your ongoing support of the Heavy Duty Parts Report and for being on today's episode.

David Seewack: 50:29

Right back at you and Walt, it was great being on the call with you and I look forward to seeing you soon. And Jamie, keep up the good work. I love your broadcasts and you're a real. You're the mentor in the market, to be honest with you, because people learn. You've built a whole new way of communicating with people and I tip my hat to you. You really have blazed the trail here and I commend you for what you're doing.

Jamie Irvine: 50:53

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And thank you listeners for tuning in. We'll talk to you next week.