Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast, brought to you by Mitre Brands University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sheri Conner and I am your host.
So, good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast, and we are capturing some conversations while we are in Tacoma, Washington, this week. And we're out here primarily for some sales training. And so before we get started on day two, I'm sitting with Sean Martin and Benji Hershberger. Welcome back.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: It's good to be here, Sherry.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Thanks. Yeah, thanks for making a few minutes. So we're just gonna kind of talk about. You guys have already been on the podcast, so we don't need to do a big, long introduction. But one of the things that I'm working on is tying everything into the MITER acronym, so the M I, T E R. And so based on your current role and responsibilities, and you can kind of recap that, what letter would you think your role is best supporting? And it doesn't have to be a single letter. Right. It can be multiple. So, Sean, we'll start with you.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: So, you know, I think for me, the one that resonates the most is relationship, because I am a relationship guy at heart. Right. It's at my core. So getting with people, training with people, building the relationships with them, being able to support them, have them come to me with questions afterwards is like, I love it when that happens. Right. So. And it's great, too, because it's not just internally with team members, it's also externally with customers. And getting around the company meeting all new people with all the different brands is just really exciting time right now to be a part of the new Mitre Brands University team.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And you've been facilitating this specific type of sales training for, what did you say, like, 14 years now?
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I got certified in 2011, and I teach probably two to four classes a year. It depends on how we're bringing people in and what that is. And my average class size is somewhere between six and 12 people. So. Yeah, I don't know the exact count. That's something I took as a challenge coming out of this, is to get a count of how many classes and how many people, both team members, and we've taken even some customers through this course.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah. So it'll be pretty interesting to see where that number is. I think I'm nearing 200 is my guess on people, but we'll see what it is.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah. But this is your best class so far.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Okay. And so, Benji, maybe just a quick recap. Of your role and responsibilities and then which letter you think best describes your space here? Sure.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: So just a quick recap. My title is customer success and so I do a little bit of inside sales. A little bit of sales, and then I also have the opportunity to work with the Mitre Brands University. So as I think about which one fits what I do best, it's so hard to pick one. And I feel like it's a little bit of all of them from manufacturing through the relationships. Right. Like inside sales, we gotta get the orders in correctly and deliver those in a way to manufacturing that they can produce them efficiently. We gotta work with customers on the relationships. We're innovating new ways to work with customers. And so it's a little bit of everything. I think it's tough to pick just one.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And the trust, right?
[00:03:23] Speaker C: Oh yeah, for sure.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: You've gotta know that things are gonna get done the way they're supposed to get done and that there's gonna be the proper follow up and that our customers are in good hands when they work with us.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: Yeah. As I talk to customers, one of the things that they need to know is that they've got a partner kind of on the inside who's gonna take their request, take their need and just run it through and find a solution to solve it.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. I think it is hard to just pick one. Right. Unless you're like leading operations and even then you're still probably dabbling in the others.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: I think about the trust piece too, as Ben talking about that, you know, part of pss, one of the core terms we use is trusted advisor, you know, and it's a level of commitment with your customer and, you know, trying to get there is no small task. It takes a lot of work. And we are investing in our sales teams, both, you know, inside and outside to really work and understand what that means and what it would take to do that. But we also work with the customers to build that trust. And I think we've heard it before, from the Legacy PGT University to the Milgard University and what we're doing at MI and across all the brands that we're kind of setting a bar and, you know, we're doing things that other people aren't doing and other people being other manufacturers and, you know, that builds that trusted relationship with the customers that gets us the relationships that we have and the partnerships that we have in business.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Right. And there's a lot of legacy here on all sides. So it's a good bar to strive for and Then to keep raising it. And so the other question, and I love to ask this one, and this can be professional or personal, it can be silly or serious.
What is something that you're learning and let's not talk about today, let's not talk about the PSS training, something that you're learning about lately. And it can be cool or weird or interesting or whatever. So, Sean, what do you. I already know what yours is going to be.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: We talked about it last night a little bit at dinner. So my wife Amber and I recently bought a new home, a brand new home in December. And it's a blank slate backyard. So we have endeavored into a project that we're probably 90% done of doing. A full backyard, pool, patio, lawns, you know, artificial lawn area, outdoor kitchen, gazebo, the whole thing. We're trying to create our own little oasis, our own little piece of paradise in our backyard.
So learning. I've never owned a pool. Right. So watching that process. And I am a kinesthetic learner, so I learn by doing. So I like to watch. I like to see how things are happening and understand that. And I'm kind of excited for the next two weeks because we have this intellisenter for our pool system that completely monitors everything and you have an app and it tells you how the chemical mix is and all of that stuff. So our training with that is going to be happening over the course of probably a couple of weeks out, but we're almost there. So I'm pretty excited for that.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Oh, nice.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: And then I bet in six months you'll be like, how much does a pool guy cost?
[00:06:22] Speaker A: We talked about just because Amber, you know, I have a pretty good travel schedule and so does Amber. So we'll probably maintain a pool guy just because it's the first time. And that's a big monster to take care of. Right. Is keeping the chemicals balanced so you don't mess up the pool.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah. If it goes wrong, then you can't swim for a while. So you'll have bullfrogs in there.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: We're living that right now because we filled it up out of the hoses and it's taking about two weeks to get the chemicals balanced. So we've stuck our toes in the pool, but we haven't been in the pool.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, gosh. Okay. And how about you, Benji? What's something that you're learning about these days?
[00:07:00] Speaker C: So there's probably lots of people learning this stuff, but I am really trying to figure out how to best use AI in My life in general. And there's some things that are just blowing my mind and there's other things that I'm like, this is not so intelligent, but it's been fun to learn. There's a lot of cool things it can do. So we are using it to help book travel and look at things to do. We're doing some trips later this year that we're using it to help make suggestions and stuff. But overall, what I'm finding is that it's trained on the garbage that is the Internet.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: And so you gotta just know that when you're asking it questions. But overall, it's been fun to learn and lots of cool tools to use to help us just do things more efficiently.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't even know if I told you this. So we're working on Milgard content, and I plugged in the PDF of the whole Tuscany line and said, Please generate 10 assessment questions around each of the products for this line. And it gave me a ton of questions. And I was like, okay. It didn't give me the answers, though, so I've got to go back and find the answers for all of them.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Or just ask it again and say, give me the questions with the correct.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Answer, but double check when it does that, because.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Right, yeah. So I've been tinkering with it a little bit as well. I haven't asked it to book travel. I haven't played with that, but that's a great idea. I think I may tack that on for my next adventure.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: I just think when Benji said it, it's garbage in, garbage out. You gotta know what you're looking at. And I love that piece of it gets you 70% of the way there. But the human interaction still needs to happen. Right?
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: You can't take it and run with it.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah. There was something that I read about making a good pizza crust, and then the suggestion was add glue. If it wasn't the right texture, like, I don't think you would actually want to do that. So, yeah, you do have to bring your brain.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Nice. All right, well, thanks, guys. We'll get going in a little bit. I appreciate your time.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. Thanks for having us.
[00:08:59] Speaker C: Thanks, Sherry.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: All right, take care.
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