As Kurt Kroemer and his partners in CEP Sales Inc., Zionsville, Indiana, looked to the future, what they saw was a good deal of uncertainty. “Faced with the prospect of half the sales force anticipating retirement in the next couple of years, not even counting what plans I might have, we had to make some decisions. One of the decisions we could make was to simply do nothing and just let the agency peter out. Another path we might take would be to try to sell the agency to someone. The latter course obviously takes a great deal of planning and work. Ultimately, you might be able to get a year or two commissions out of the sale to sustain you, but neither decision seemed all that exciting.”

Kurt Kroemer

Rather than just standing pat, however, the four partners decided on a positive course of action. According to Kroemer, “We have spent three years developing the plan for the next generation for CEP Sales. We have begun implementing the plan and recently completed two hires.”

Admitting that “We’re fairly new at this,” Kroemer explains that the present ownership bought the agency — which was started in 1980 — from his father in 1995. Fast forward to the point where Kroemer and his partners are planning for the future and that plan had to materialize — and materialize it did. Ultimately, the decision was made to expand the agency’s territory and then hire new young salespeople that “we could develop into reps with the intent that they would stay and carry on after we’re gone.”

With a five-year plan in place, the goal was to hire two new people, pay them salaries while funding the buyout of the departing partners. “That’s why it was so critical to hire the right people to ensure that we could afford to pay them while compensating those who were leaving.”

Kroemer explains that the agency’s first successful hire came about as the result of the time-tested word of mouth. Following that “We tried to locate people through networking with our principals and our own customers. We asked that if they knew anyone to let us know. We worked on that basis for about two years and finally decided we weren’t getting the results we needed.

A Love for Sales

“One of our concerns was that we were looking for someone in Ohio where we never really had a presence. We were seeking someone to place in Columbus who loved sales and was energetic. We ran an ad for one month and wound up with a lot of reps responding that they wanted to merge with us. We ended that effort quickly. Next we did a trial run with Monster.com. We purchased an ad and put in the necessary filters for the territory and for the type of person we were looking for. The results were that we wound up with too many people responding — not the guys we wanted. Once again, after two or three months we decided that this just wasn’t working.”

Finally, last March, LinkedIn came in with a free trial offer that included a hiring application. According to Kroemer, users of the offer would stipulate the type of person they were looking for. For instance, you could specify the level of experience, industries that they work in. “Once you did that, LinkedIn would present you candidates who made it through your filters. You’re able to see where they’ve worked previously and what industries they specialize in. You get a feel immediately as to whether they’d be good fit or not. It really allowed you to zero in on the type of person you’re looking for.

“I went through about 500 of these LinkedIn resumes and wound up writing to about 75 of them alerting them to the fact I was looking to fill this positon in Columbus. Out of the 75, I got maybe 12 back and from that total I interviewed six. I drove to Columbus, set up appointments for every two hours and covered all of them.

CEP sales representatives, left to right: Bruno Cosentino, Josh Valentine, Case Roberts, Gary Coval, Kurt Kroemer, Darcey Elmore, Bill Kroemer and Wayne Kroemer.

MANA Research

“Even before we had anyone come in for an interview, I had them go to the MANA website and conduct some research to learn what a rep was. My feeling was that if they learned ahead of time what it took to be a rep, they could better determine whether it was for them or not. My feeling was that it made no sense to talk to them if they didn’t have a clue. As it was, the real key for me during the interview was whether the candidate could convince me that they could work independently managing their own territory. Out of those interviews, we hired one of the people and another one was slated to move to Chicago to handle that territory.”

As he looks back at his search/interview/hiring experience Kroemer notes, “I’m hardly an HR guy. When I meet an individual I’m not going to know all about their history. My job is to understand people — that’s what I do for a living. I have to have an understanding of what real people are when they’re in front of me. As a result, when I’m evaluating a candidate, I’m determining whether I like them or not.”

At the same time, he admits that perhaps more important than whether he likes someone or not is the fact that they can sell. “The person we wound up hiring had already had an immense amount of sales training. He was required to make calls each week and come back with quotes. That experience alone was more than I was looking for. Look, no one knows how to sell castings, but I can teach them how to do that. It’s the selling skills that are so important.”

Admitting that possession of sales skills is a real positive, Kroemer spoke for a moment about some of the negatives that could steer him away from a potential candidate. “It’s not always easy to pick up on negatives in the beginning, but certainly if someone has worked for four or five different companies in the first 10 years of their career, that shows me that they’re just moving around too much. On top of that, if they’re not selling to the industries that we’re involved with, then it’s not going to be a good fit.

“In addition, I pay close attention to the e-mails they might send to me. Did they sound professional and did they spend time in putting together a good e-mail? After the interview, did they follow up with me? Did they fail to make eye contact? Did they talk beyond their level of experience? These are all things I pay close attention to.”

Armed with his own experience, Kroemer says that if he’s got any advice to offer other reps faced with a future similar to CSP’s, have a plan in place and make sure the lines of communication remain open with principals. “One of the things I did was to speak with MANA’s President Charley Cohon to ask his thoughts about the future of reps in general. If anything, Charley let me know that reps and the value they bring will be here well into the future. They’re simply not going away.”

Armed with that encouragement, the agency decided to expand its territories into Michigan, Illinois, Georgia and Tennessee. “Then we moved ahead to hire these younger salespeople to work the territories themselves. In doing that, we naturally had to have a commitment from our larger principals, and they were absolutely thrilled with our plan. An important part of what we communicated to our principals was that we wanted these people in place to be in the territory for the next 30 years or more. That’s just something they have to know for their own future planning.”

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