Michael Webb:                 Some people talk about selling to senior-level decision-makers, making calls, and selling based on value. Other people talk about process tools and measurement of data, systems thinking, and analyzing causes and effects. But not very many people talk about how these things can be brought together to motivate people and create wealth for everyone.

This is Michael Webb, and welcome to the Sales Process Excellence Podcast. I'm delighted today to introduce you to Greg Helfrich. Greg is the national operations manager at ELRUS Aggregate Systems, and he's the operations manager not just for Canada, but also for the U.S. Welcome, here, Greg.

Greg Helfrich:                    Thank you. Glad to be here.

Michael Webb:                 Yes. I wanted to invite you here because ... I wanted to invite Greg here. He has a story that I know a lot of the audience are going to be interested in. Greg had purchased my book, Sales Process Excellence, and as I chatted with him on the phone, he started describing a way that ELRUS has sort of a sales process, a method of selling value, and it's very well thought out. I knew that a lot of people would like to hear about this, so Greg, give us a little 30 or 45 seconds here of your background, how you got to be where you are.

Greg Helfrich:                    Sure. I got into consulting on an operations and lean perspective after leaving the food industry back in the late 90s. I was trained in Six Sigma and SERD Consulting, and I was doing some supply chain consulting for ELRUS. They just said, "Well, we'd really rather have you just work with us." I joined as national operations manager in 2008, and the position has evolved from being really strictly working in manufacturing and process supply chain and engineering to now being responsible for sales and marketing. My education is in marketing.

But, as we expanded into the United States and grew, my role just basically evolved with it, and so, I wasn't necessarily in charge of marketing all that time, but just got more and more involved. And because I was a buyer, I just had insights into how our customers were thinking, and I could bring something to the table. This is where it just basically evolved from.

Michael Webb:                 Okay. In your role here as national operations manager slash sales VP, I guess, right?

Greg Helfrich:                    Pretty much. I'm essentially chief operating officer, is really, if you had to give it a conventional title. We're not huge on titles here, and so we just haven't changed much.

Michael Webb:                 Okay. You serve the mining, rock quarrying, road construction industries up there?

Greg Helfrich:                    It's primarily, yeah. We like to say that everybody needs to make big rocks into small rocks in mining, everything, like concrete, they surround us everywhere and all that rock has to be quarried or mined out of a sand and gravel operation process and it looks simple but the specifications for rock for say, asphalt or concrete are really quite tight. The shape of the rock, how it has to hold together within that mix is really quite defined and it's getting harder and harder to make those specifications. The equipment evolves over time to make the product that's required to make the roads and the houses and what have you that we live in. The consumables or the parts of the machine are also very complex in terms of how they sort the rock into different sizes and what have you. Everybody, when they look at somebody else's industry always thinks, "Well that's kind of simple" but there's usually a lot more to it then we think. This industry is one of those. On the outside it looks simple but rock is not just rock.

Michael Webb:                 I really like your opening there, making big rocks turn into little rocks because I learned a ton from a fellow a long time ago who is an expert in continuous improvement and he would say that's what we're doing in continuous improvement companies. We're helping people take the big rocks, big problems that they have and break them down into little, manageable problems so that it all adds up.

Greg Helfrich:                    I listened to a fellow the other day who set the world's treadmill record for 12 hours and I can't imagine running on a treadmill for 12 hours. I think he ran 80 some miles in 12 hours on a treadmill. One of the people said, "How can you do that?" At 3 seconds in I'm thinking to myself, "I've got 11 hours, 59 minutes and 57 seconds left." He said, "Anybody can do anything for 5 minutes."

Michael Webb:                 There you go.

Greg Helfrich:                    "That's how I did it." The rock analogy, I'll have to use that because that does make sense. Anybody can do anything for 5 minutes or when you break big rocks into small rocks, anybody can figure out how to do it.

Michael Webb:                 Right. Looking at sales, trying to figure out how to get your customers to buy and pay enough to be able to make money off of them, that can be a big rock also. That's kind of the problem we are trying to solve here. Tell us what you faced when you started into this part of the business there at ELRUS. What did it look like to you as the operating executive that lead you to develop this program?

Greg Helfrich:                    Let's go back to what triggered it. In Canada, we're an incumbent in Canada. We basically were part of the founding of the industry back in 1975 portable crushing equipment was a very undeveloped industry and Roland, the fellow that founded the company was that typical entrepreneur. He saw a problem because he was a crushing contractor and he was really unhappy with what he was dealing with and he solved the problem. He went and built, he built equipment or had it built for him and wound up selling it before he could get to use it. He never really got to use his own equipment. He built some equipment, showed it to a friend, the friend said, "I want that" and then after three or four episodes he's like, "Well, hang on a second here. I might as well get into the equipment business here because I'm building something people want." This business got started. It never really needed a serious marketing and value proposition work or marketing work because Roland sold it and he knew everybody in the industry and life went on. We expanded in the United States, after Roland's death in 2013 and we probably underestimated or overestimated our reputation and brand equity and things that people automatically do when they enter a new marketplace, they assume it's underserved and they assume that people know about them.

We had some difficulties in getting going and people to understand who we were and the differences we made. That was our big rock. How do we get people to see us as different or see us as a viable alternative to who they use now and I always come back to a process. If you're having a failure of results, it's your process. Sometimes it's your people but yo...