Fast Lane: Ben Russert, Sold on talent

When the digital revolution hit the office, Ben Russert knew that there were plenty of opportunities for his copier company to grow.

"Being a traditional copier company, we recognized with the advent of digital that we were going to be able to take advantage of the technological changes, we

Growth wasnt a problem for ProSource - it was averaging 16 percent a year for the past five years and more than doubling its revenue. The challenge, Russert says, was to find the best people and prepare them for selling to IT people instead of to purchasing agents, and to get them to view themselves as document management problem-solvers rather than simply as copier sales agents.

Smart Business spoke with Russert about how he finds the best people and gives them top-notch training and plenty of incentives to perform.

Q: What is the most critical factor in meeting the demands of fast growth at ProSource?

The No. 1 thing is hiring great people. That's something I've focused on forever. We look at hiring great people and then hiring great managers to help develop those people and meet our objectives.

First and foremost, we are a sales organization. We've never lost sight of that. We look at reinforcing processes. When we started ... there was very little in terms of processes. Now, with over 125 people, we have to have a lot of processes to communicate properly.

Q: How has the sales process changed?

It's not a very complicated sales process, but there's a lot of activity and it's-tough out there. There's a lot of competition. It's very transactional and you're talking to a lot of people.

People aren't going to do business with our company, they're going to do business with our folks, so it's about developing the right kinds of relationships. While we're very assertive and aggressive, we are not going to try to force a deal. What we will do is try to facilitate that deal to their needs.

So the skills we might develop are how do you get past the gatekeeper, how do you communicate effectively over the phone, how to close a deal.

Q: How do you find and recruit those people?

The best folks are working for somebody else, so recruiting is a big part of what we do. One of my main focuses is recruiting and hiring great people. The best folks we've brought on board were referrals.

The thing that's worked best for us is to bring people into our organization and grow them from within. We have hired a few folks from outside and, as we grow, as we get larger, were going to have to embrace that, because we're going to need to bring some talent on that we haven't had before.

When new folks are hired, they come in and interview with key people. The new hue does the interviewing of us, so they have access to everyone in the company that's a major influencer, and, of course, me, the owner.

Here's something I learned a long time ago, and it's a big part of our culture. Winners and successful people like to be measured ... so doing that allows them to grow. Those winners and successful people generally hang out with other winners and successful people. So through those relationships and contacts, we find other winners.

Q: Now do you motivate the sales support staff?

The biggest thing we do is we have everybody focused on our financial targets. We have quarterly meetings where I update every body on our financials departmentally as well as overall company objectives.

We keep track all year long on that and we inform everyone about it. They're all on a compensation plan for their departments but then they also have the ability to earn money above that. There's a portion that is set that's based on tenure, but there's another portion that can be a lot bigger based on the manager's discretion. It's important as we stay focused on the goals that people are participating, and we'll pay them for it.

Q: How do you retain talented people?

There are great rewards systems here. We have a lot of contests, and those go on monthly We also have annual ones. Twice a year, we have large sales blitzes, sales promotions, and everyone in the company's involved.

Everyone who is not a direct salesperson is teamed up with one, so that when that sales.person makes a sale and wins part of a contest or whatever promotion that's going on, the other individual who is teamed with them wins. So we try to create a team atmosphere in all aspects of sales and sales support as well. We take our sales representatives to a nice, sunny spot every February. HOW TO REACH: ProSource, www.totalprosource.com