by Jake Ables, Director of Concrete Promotion, Silvi Materials

“Nothing happens until a sale is made”- Thomas Watson, Sr., IBM Chairman

The sales function is crucial to the success of any business, regardless of industry. The concrete industry is no exception, but the role is different than any other under the same classification. Across the United States there are thousands of people who work as sales professionals, whether entry or management level, in the ready-mix concrete industry.

Their experience ranges from rookies to 40-year veterans, and their skill sets vary just as widely. The role of sales professional is difficult in the good times and nearly impossible in the bad times. I was once told that in good times concrete sales is not selling, it’s order taking. The industry has been in the good times over the last decade. Anyone around in 2008-2009 remembers just how bad it can get. The latter is when the cream rises to the top.

In my career, I have encountered excellent sales professionals and those that leave something to be desired. What I’ve observed is that the excellent ones have consistently mastered these five areas: quality control, project management, logistics, maintenance/repair, and sales. I call these high-achievers five-tool players. Five-tool players thrive regardless of market conditions, while those without the five tools usually don’t make the cut.

Tool #1 – Quality Control

I’m a firm believer that anyone who aspires to be a sales professional in the ready-mix industry should begin their career in quality control. This was the starting point of my own career and I’m the better for it. This starting position gives you the best opportunity to learn not only the product itself, but the methods by which the product is judged in the field. I’m referring to the slump test, air test, temperature test, and the casting of concrete cylinders.

It is industry standard to have a third party handle the onsite concrete testing. Broadly speaking, the onsite technicians performing these tests have no skin in the game. They are hourly employees doing a job and when the job is done, they go home. The quality of the technician will vary widely. The sales professional needs to be able to discern the good from the bad; fail to do so at your own peril. Technicians have your success or failure in their hands, so you better know what they’re doing with your material.

The sales professional has an obligation to fight for their company and for the acceptability of their product. If you are unable to recognize (and call out) improper testing procedures, you can’t possibly put up a fight. The best way to learn the proper testing procedures is to do them, repeatedly. You must recognize if a slump test is done incorrectly and how the results are recorded. You must recognize if the air meter is not calibrated or is leaking, if the temperature reading seems farfetched, and most importantly, if the concrete cylinders are not cast and stored properly. Again, these are the metrics by which acceptance of the concrete is determined; there’s no room for error.

Slump, air, and temperature are tests used to verify the plastic properties of the concrete. These tests determine in-the-field acceptance. Concrete can be rejected if one or all these tests are failed. Cylinders are used to determine the hardened strength of the concrete. All tests are important, but the cylinders are what can make or break you. Improperly cast and stored cylinders can yield low concrete breaks which can lead to acceptable concrete potentially being torn out and replaced. This a very expensive proposition. I’ve delt with low concrete breaks due to poor cylinders more times than I care to remember. It’s a time-consuming burden which is often much ado about nothing.

While sales professionals can’t be everywhere at once, when they are on a job site, they need to be aware of what’s going on. If you can catch even a few instances of these testing errors it’ll save you time, money, and headache. Unfortunately, the knee jerk reaction is to blame the product and producer first. The cylinder integrity is often the last thing questioned because precious few understand what they’re looking at, assuming they’ve even looked at all. If you are well-positioned to catch these issues from the jump, you will put yourself ahead of the curve. You’ll save the time, money, and headache that would inevitably follow. Your company will thank you for this.

Final thought: Quality control is the gateway to a successful career as a concrete sales professional.

Tool #2 – Project Management

In many ways the role of sales professional is more project management-focused than sales-focused from a day-to-day perspective. This is due to the variable factors that are inherent in the concrete industry. Concrete pours rarely adhere to a firm schedule. Customers fail inspections, upstream work is delayed for one reason or another, equipment breaks down, weather changes, and so on. The result is that the sales professional manages many different projects, and all their associated problems, from the outside. Think of it as you are playing the role of outside project management consultant.

Having a well-developed skill set around broader project management and a more precise understanding of the upstream contributors that impact concrete placement is crucial for success. It makes for a smoother workflow if you can foresee these issues and understand which questions to ask. If a contractor’s scope of work is being delayed, which will directly impact the concrete contractor’s scope of work, you can reasonably interpret that the downstream work will be delayed, thus delaying concrete placement. Recognizing this will allow you to make real-time adjustments to raw materials forecasts, specialty product delivery, trucking needs on a day-to-day basis, and so on. This is crucial because producers do not have a bottomless supply of raw materials, storage space, or manpower; all of which translate to real dollar impacts to the bottom line. Producers don’t want to buy and carry materials they don’t need as it drives up cost of goods sold. They don’t want to carry unproductive labor as that will further drive-up cost of goods sold.

An isolated incident on one project likely won’t be that impactful, depending on size, but these issues are not one-offs. They happen multiple times a day across many different projects. It’s likely a 10x increase in the problems due to scale. This has a real effect on quarterly earnings and yearly earnings, which impact the broader financial health of the company. The devil is in the details. Everything is relevant.

In that same vein, understanding critical path scheduling, and how to read a Gantt chart, are important skills to develop. Relying solely on the information given to you by a third party puts you at a disadvantage. If you have the skills necessary to speak their language, read their documents, and make real time interpretations, you’ll be significantly more effective. You need the soft skills developed through on-the-job learning and the hard skills of navigating project documents. Both are critical.

Final thought: Learn their language and processes. Interpret the impacts and be proactive.

Tool #3 – Logistics (Dispatch)

Dispatch. That word alone could necessitate an entirely separate article. A well-oiled and refined logistics department will make or break you. The sales professional can sell the perfect job at the perfect price, hit every point from a project management perspective, and the quality of the material can be outstanding, but if you can’t deliver the product, everything else is moot.

The sales professional must know, without a doubt, what is obtainable from a logistical point of view. This necessitates a multi-tiered approach. The first tier of this component is knowing what you can deliver from an internal perspective. You can’t overpromise and underdeliver; that’s death by a thousand cuts.

If your internal shipping capabilities from a given plant are 100-110 yds per hour and you promise 140-150 yds per hour, you’ve hobbled yourself from the outset. The customer’s budget is based on productivity. From productivity goals, they can ascertain costs around labor and non-concrete materials. A 20,000 yd concrete job done in twenty pours, as opposed to fifteen pours, is the difference between night and day.

Five extra pours may not seem like a lot on the surface, but factor in five extra days’ worth of labor hours associated with prep, forming, placement, and finally the increases associated with non-concrete materials such as dowel bars, expansion joint, grade pins, nails, etc. These costs add up quickly and can put the customer underwater on the job.

Not to mention the downstream consequences of not being able to demobilize as originally anticipated. Which may have ripple effects that push back starting dates on other projects. The ripples continue from there. The costs to your customer increase exponentially if you cannot meet production goals.

Additionally, assuming logistical capabilities are dialed in, the sales professional must understand that you win or lose the day based on how quickly you turn trucks to and from the job site. They must recognize that job site flow is paramount. You can ship a perfect schedule, but if you can’t unload them fast enough, you’re lost.

This means having a wash out area that avoids bottlenecks at all costs. You must also have a clearly defined entrance and exit route (they should be separate from each other when possible). The sales professional should drive the route to and from the plant prior to the start of the project to advise the dispatcher on what they don’t know. Everything looks good on a map, but road conditions change from week to week. This last step should be done frequently. There may be months where the same route is available every day, until it’s not. Throw in confusion amongst the drivers and things spiral from there.

The sales professional must know his customer better than the customer (the concrete contractor) knows himself. Everyone thinks they can “lay it down,” but few can. Never, not once, in my ten years in this business have I heard a customer undersell their production capabilities. Contractors always shoot for the moon and most end up floating in space. You quickly spot the ones that can produce as advertised, as they are a rare breed.

You must study the customer and their capabilities and interject to save them from themselves when necessary. Customers tend to want to stack trucks up on a job site, so they have an unbroken stream of trucks. It makes sense: they don’t want to wait for material. They see this as efficient, but it rarely is. The reason for this is that concrete is time sensitive. Every moment that concrete is spinning in the barrel it is working against you. The workability is decreasing by the minute and thus the quality of the finished product is decreasing. Concrete is best delivered on the “just in time” model.

Ideally, you want the next truck arriving on site as soon as the previous truck is discharging the last drop of concrete. This ensures that the customer is getting the freshest and highest quality material without having gaps in material flow. That is a hard needle to thread, and it often doesn’t work out as such, but it must be the goal. This is the mode of thinking that should drive the sales professional, as it pertains to the logistical component.

Final thought: The sales professional must honestly assess their own production capabilities and the production capabilities (the real capabilities) of the customer. You need both to be effective. Neglect this at your own peril.

Tool #4 – Repair/Maintenance

Concrete cracks. Period. Never in the history of concrete has it been crack free. If anyone tells you otherwise, they’re naive at best, and a liar at worst. This is not a unique problem, nor is it isolated to one producer, climate, or geographic region. The question then becomes what you do about it.

Thankfully, there exists an extensive library of information the sales professional can access to prepare to deal with these inevitable issues. NRMCA’S Concrete in Practice is a wonderful quick reference guide to help diagnose and resolve cracking and other issues. I’ll briefly touch on a few types of cracks and issues, their causes, their significance, and an action plan.

A quick note for the aspiring sales professional: these are finishing issues and are not a reflection of the quality of the material. It is the responsibility of the sales professional to arm themselves with this knowledge and rebuff any insinuation that the material is to blame. Failure to do so will result in potentially severe financial harm to the producer.

Plastic Shrinkage Cracking

Cause: Rapid loss of moisture from the surface of the concrete before the substrate concrete has achieved initial set. Causes of rapid evaporation are high wind velocity, low humidity, high ambient temperatures, and placement on a dry, absorptive subbase.

Significance: These are insignificant cracks and do not negatively affect the structural performance of the concrete, though they are unsightly.

Action Plan: Discuss prevention methods with the customer prior to placement. If you are in hot weather conditions, make sure that the customer is planning to properly cure the concrete. Preparation best practices (when necessary) include erecting wind breaks, applying a curing compound to the surface of the concrete, using vapor barriers under the slab, and taking measures to avoid large temperature differences between the concrete and ambient temperatures. There is little to be done about these cracks once they form.

Dusting Concrete Surfaces

Cause: Dusting of the surface results from bleed water being forced back into the surface of the concrete due to finishing errors, environmental conditions (excess water via rain or snow), or inadequate ventilation where carbon dioxide reacts with the cement paste thus weakening it.

Significance: This is a significant issue. Dusting results in weakened concrete surface that will impact the appearance and performance of the slab. Depending on the extent of the dusting, significant repair could be required.

Action Plan: Provide educational resources to the customer to get ahead of future issues. As for repair of existing issues, sand blasting or pressure washing the surface to expose the hardened surface below is a viable option. Additionally, applying a chemical hardened or sealer could resolve the issue. In severe cases, wet grinding of the surface will expose the durable substrate concrete below.

Scaling Concrete Surfaces

Cause: Scaling occurs when the surface is flaking or peeling from the underlying concrete. Non-air-entrained concrete exposed to freezing, thawing, or deicing salts can result in scaling. Additionally, when bleed water is worked back into the surface it can cause scaling.

Significance: The severity of scaling can range from an isolated area to a broad area. It can be prevented from occurring by using air-entrained concrete in applicable applications and educating customers about the risks of early finishing. Also, taking care to avoid deicing salts on the concrete will reduce the risk of scaling.

Action Plan: If you are in a situation where you are experiencing scaling on a project, the first step is to diagnose the extent of the problem and the probable causes. The extent of the problem will frame your next step. If the problem is widespread, and you’re in a cold climate, you can assume that deicing salts are the most plausible explanation. If you are in a hot climate, or have proof of no deicing salts being used, then you need to lean towards improper finishing procedures. Regardless, these are finishing issues and not the fault of the supplier. Educating the customer and owner about these issues prior to placement is the best way to preempt issues.

Tool #5 – Sales

Now that we have established the four tools you need to form your foundations as a ready-mix sales professional, it’s time to talk about the fifth and final tool, the sales process itself.

When people think about sales professionals, they probably think about Don Draper from the TV show Mad Men. Bourbon for breakfast, martini lunches, golf, and generally the good life. If that’s what you’re looking for, you won’t find it here. Shocking, I know. I was disappointed myself. To sum up the role of sales professional in the ready-mix industry, in a word: adversarial. Your customer is the friendly adversary on the other side of the table.

I choose the word adversarial because it’s accurate. Most industries have customers that want their products; we have well intentioned adversaries that need our product. What’s the difference? When you are in a position where you want something, say a new car, that’s a low stakes transaction. When you are in a position where you need something, say insulin, that’s a high stakes transaction. Both are technically products; both can be purchased with money and both solve a problem for you. However, the mentality with which you approach these purchases will be vastly different.

We manufacture a product that people need. They need it for hospitals, housing, ports, infrastructure, etc. It’s a product that is treated like a commodity while the customers expect the experience of dealing with a service company. Customers want fast-food burger chain prices and Michelin Star restaurant experiences.

So, where does this leave us? We have a product that people need. They need our product as cheaply as possible, and they need it at their leisure with all the trimmings. Ergo, adversarial. The sales professional in this industry should absorb this lock, stock, and barrel. Once you’ve accepted this, craft your strategy. I’ll offer a few thoughts as to where to start forming your strategy.

Positioning Yourself in The Market

To quote B.J. Armstrong of the Chicago Bulls, “Winning covers a multitude of sins.”. The same can be said for concrete; just replace winning with volume. Volume covers a multitude of sins on the sales side. Given that we operate in an industry that consumes thousands of tons of material you’d think more is better, right? Wrong, less is more. Or, should I say, less is more from the perspective of the producer. The goal is to sell one yard of concrete for a million dollars, not a million yards of concrete for a dollar a yard. The closer you get to the former, the better. The ready-mix sales professional should strive to sell their product for the highest price possible.

How do you accomplish this? You move the conversation off price. You move the conversation towards service. The ready-mix sales professional is in the business of providing services, not commodities. The benefits reaped of a cheap price, and any good will engendered, will long be forgotten if your friendly adversary is bleeding as it relates to service. Position yourself as the service leader, not the price leader.

Additionally, the opportunity cost is too high to be the price leader. Given that we’ve established the adversarial nature of these purchasing relationships, you must realize that your friendly adversary will not bail you out at their own expense in the future. Take the money up front, sell your company, and yourself, as the high quality, high service provider. Such should be your strategy. Any intelligent, high-quality operators on the other side of the table know that service trumps price any day, and they will pay for it. The others will not, and that’s ok. Let them go.

Be the Expert

We are not selling packaged goods or consumer electronics. This isn’t a retail transaction. The four pervious tools in your toolbelt have made you the product expert. Setting this as a key part of your sales strategy is crucial to success. Sales professionals in this industry are expected to know their product inside and out. There is too much money at stake for you to not know what you’re talking about. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, your adversary will smell it from the parking lot then promptly eat you alive.

While the soft skills around sales are important, nothing is more important, from a ready-mix sales perspective, than being the product expert. I’ve found myself in many situations where I’m the expert on the subject. For better or worse, if there are any issues or questions that arise, and there will be plenty of both, the sales professional is the one the customer is looking to. An important thing to remember is that a seemingly small and insignificant detail can cost everyone dearly. If you can save them from themselves, you’re ahead of the curve.

Pick Up the Phone

This refers to the strategy of positing yourself in the market as the high-quality service provider. Answering your phone is the tactic by which this strategy is executed. The quickest way to make an adversary an enemy is to not answer your phone.

It’s not a matter of if, but when, things go sideways. If you can’t be relied upon to answer your phone when things are going bad, they’ll stop answering the phone when things are going well. Then you are lost. Your friendly adversary will find someone to answer their phone call and resolve their problem, that much is certain. And you’ll only have yourself to blame. The sales professional answers the call day or night, good or bad.

Final thought: Developing these sales strategies, and the tactics that allow you to implement them, will put the sales tool in your belt. These are just a few examples, and there are many more considerations to be aware of, but this gives you a start. Doing this will limit, but not eliminate, the adversarial nature of the purchasing relationship. It will turn a need to buy from you into a want to buy from you. That is the position you should aspire to be in.

The Final, Final Thought

The best way to look at this industry is to imagine it as a watch or clock. There are many gears and springs that make up the greater whole. Each part is just as important as the next. With the five tools we just examined, you’ll have the best opportunity to be successful in your endeavors.