Spring Break BTA Southeast hosts event in Orlando

by: Elizabeth Marvel, Office Technology Magazine

BTA Southeast hosted its Spring Break event March 13-14 at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resort in Orlando, Florida. The event featured a keynote address, “Lead Your Evolution,” presented by Judson Laipply, a motivational speaker and dancer who created “The Evolution of Dance” viral video that has more than one billion views on YouTube. The schedule also included six additional educational sessions, time to network with peers and exhibitors, a welcoming reception, and an afternoon and evening at a Disney theme park.

The additional sessions: “Selling From the Heart — How Your Authentic Self Sells You,” Larry Levine, Selling From the Heart; “Business Social Media in 2020: What’s Changing How You Can Use It to Grow Your Dealership,” Darrell Amy, Convergo; “Purposeful Prospecting & Your Sales Legacy,” Dale Dupree, The Sales Rebellion; “Preparing for the Future,” Ken Edmonds, Kedmonds.biz; “Things to Consider When Creating a Flat-Rate Billing Program,” Kim Louden, GreatAmerica Financial Services Corp.; and “Recruitment & Selection,” Larry Coco, Coco Training & Coaching LLC.

The exhibiting sponsors: ACDI, AgentDealer, ARLINGTON, Brother (lunch sponsor), Clover Imaging Group, Compass Sales Solutions, ConnectWise, CRANEL, Crexendo, Digitech Systems, Epson, ESP AMETEK, FORZA, FP, GreatAmerica, Green Project, Hytec, Laserfiche, Lexmark (keynote sponsor), Mars International, Miramar Copies, Muratec, NA Trading and Technology, OKI, OPEX, Polek & Polek, RingByName (breaks sponsor), Sentry File, Static Control, Supplies Network, Technology Assurance Group (breakfast sponsor), TonerCycle/InkCycle, Toshiba, Troy, Upland, WatchGuard, Wells Fargo and Zultys. BTA’s next event, Capture the Magic, will be held Aug. 26-27, 2020, in Coronado, California. Visit www.bta.org/BTACoronado for more information or to register. n Elizabeth Marvel is associate editor of Office Technology magazine. She can be reached at elizabeth@bta.org or (816) 303-4060.

Clockwise from top: The Spring Break event featured a keynote address, six additional educational sessions, time to network with peers and exhibitors, a reception, and a trip to a Disney theme park; 2019-20 BTA Southeast President Adam Gregory serves as the event’s emcee; (left to right) Ken Edmonds of Kedmonds.biz visits with DJ Hastings of Hogland Office Equipment, Lubbock, Texas, and Juan Maldonado of UBEO Business Services, San Antonio, Texas, during the event; (left to right) Warner Yang and Shawn Brown of Green Project Inc. visit with Adam Gregory II, Advanced Business Solutions LLC, St. Augustine, Florida, during a break; and Laipply performs his “Evolution of Dance” during the keynote.

The additional educational session presenters were (clockwise from top left): Levine; Amy; Dupree; Edmonds; Louden; and Coco.

Above photo (left to right): Michele and Vince McHenry of Laser Lab Inc., Ephrata, Pennsylvania, visit with Jason Troupe and Brad Roderick of TonerCycle/InkCycle during a break between sessions. Left top photo (left to right): Brennan Downs and Kevin Wingfield of Advanced Document Solutions, Louisville, Kentucky, visit with Kelly Munro and Kathy Powers of ARLINGTON during a break. Left bottom photo (left to right): Corey Clark and Jim Clark of MOS/McCrimon’s Office Systems, Gainesville, Florida, visit with Christopher Clark of ConnectWise during a break between sessions.

Sales Recruitment

During his Spring Break educational session, “Recruitment & Selection,” Larry Coco, president of Coco Training & Coaching LLC, discussed one of the most important parts of the “three-legged stool” of management: recruiting. “The truth is, as a good dealer, you may have amazing training programs in place,” Coco said. “You may be a rock star coach and be there for your people every day, but if you don’t recruit the right people, that stool is going to fall down.”

He urged dealers to have a recruitment plan in place that all company employees should take an active role in, and to ensure the plan has the right processes and a repeatable structure. He also encouraged dealers to find a passion for recruiting.

“You have a passion for what you do,” Coco said. “Your people have a passion to convert a prospect into a client. Do you have that same passion to take a ... candidate and make them an employee of yours?”

This passion should extend to your interviews with potential new hires. “You have a responsibility to inspire people to want your job — to attract quality people,” he said, giving an example of a sales rep who has come in for an interview. “You interview a candidate. You like that person. You want them to come back. When they leave your office after that interview for the hour or whatever it might be, what’s your wow factor? What makes you special and different? Do they go home and tell their family and friends about an amazing company and the people they met in your organization, or do they jump right back to the computer and LinkedIn or Indeed and look for more jobs?”

Coco also stressed the importance of having a full staff, suggesting that a business may lose its competitive edge without one. “When you don’t have a full team — I’ve noticed this over the years — reps tend to come in late, leave early, try and skip out of your sales meetings, and don’t have reports ready on time,” he said. “Why? They know they probably won’t get fired or written up because you don’t have as many people as you need. You’re not at manpower level. So, our new mantra today is ‘I must have a full staff.’ Anything less is unacceptable.”

During his session, Coco stressed the importance of three specific tools and resources for dealers looking to hire:

(1) Written job descriptions that are used to recruit and attract quality talent.

(2) Conduct standards that show interviewees how your employees should interact with their fellow employees.

(3) A daily activities/50-point system that shows an interviewee what a good day looks like at your company. The number of points earned are based on the value of each activity completed. Coco also discussed his five key values of successful people: a willingness to follow direction; being highly self-disciplined with good organizational and time-management skills, and having a desire to provide a high level of customer service; the ability to multitask and work under pressure; a strong emotional commitment to succeed for oneself, the team and the company; and strong comprehension abilities (i.e., the skill of reading people). “You need to ask behavioral questions [during your interviews] with these values in mind,” he said. “For example: ‘What do you know about our company? ... Give me an example of a goal you set for yourself. How did you reach it? ... Why do you think you would make a good salesperson?’ ... If they’re good, if they’re comfortable, they will give you a solid response.” n — Elizabeth Marvel