By: Davies Hood, Induron President
Back in July, the Induron Sales Team met at our Corporate Offices in Birmingham, Alabama for a rare mid-year sales meeting to make sure that we were all on-track to meet our individual and corporate goals as well as to re-energize the team during challenging economic times.
Our traditional new-year sales meeting was a bit more focused on fun and team-building, plus we have added several new team members and introduced exciting new products, so we decided a mid-year meeting was needed.
We met to discuss and share successes, introduce the new team members in-person and to learn about our exciting new products firsthand, by not only discussing their features, benefits and their chemical “backbones,” but to also mix, apply and become comfortable with these items. You see, if we don’t know more about our products and how they apply than our customers do, then what value do we provide?
We started our meeting with an informal dinner in the back-room of my favorite local barbeque joint, Saws. Not only did we consume some of the best pork, smoked chicken thighs and sweet potato fries around, but we also honed our engineering skills with a collectively built empty can pyramid.
The next day we talked through current economic conditions within the niche markets we serve, sales strategies and especially the details of the newer products that we are rolling out. Without going into too much detail, we talked about the advantages for our customers–both paint contractors and asset owners that our new products are going to bring. There was some chemistry involved, as well as historical context related to some of the technology that we utilize… It was almost like school! Later, we traveled a few short blocks to the local TopGolf for dinner, a few libations and some good ol’ fashioned competition!
The next day was all about hands-on application training and demo. This was my favorite part of the meeting because I am a firm believer that you learn best by doing! Each of our team members was given the opportunity to open pails, mix, blend and apply by both spray and roller several of our materials–both new and old. These products were for both the potable water market, where we unveiled a single-leg applied version of our PermaClean 100 Ceramic Epoxy and innovative new materials for the Power Transmission & Distribution Market. We believe that these products will be “game changers” in their respective market because of their incredible user-friendly application characteristics. It’s a fact that things that are easier to do are easier to do correctly!
We closed out our sales meeting with an intimate catered dinner in my home. Members of our Research & Development team as well as office support staff were able to join. It’s a unique advantage of a family business when employees can be treated as family. It’s also a great way to encourage true teamwork throughout an organization to have people break bread together. It’s humanizing, and I have found that people will work harder for a teammate that they know and respect–especially on a true personal level. I like to take advantage of this as much as possible because I genuinely enjoy this part of business. In closing, this meeting was a success in every way that I can imagine because of the people involved. We’re ready for the second half of 2024!