Crescent Electric Supply, East Dubuque, Ill., gathered 380 of its outside salespeople and personnel from 25 of its key suppliers at its annual sales training event on March 10-14 at the Q Center in St. Charles, Ill. Each year the company brings together either its inside salespeople or field sales personnel for several days of intensive product and sales training and nightly trade shows held by the electrical manufacturers that did the training seminars during the day.
Christopher Breslin, the company’s senior V.P. and COO, said Crescent Electric invests in the annual training event because it’s a competitive advantage. “We have been doing this for many years in good economies and even more in turbulent times,” he said. “We ask our sales team to take four days and dedicate themselves solely to training and self improvement. Three days are dedicated to supplier training and one day to sales skills and how to use our available tools and resources.”
In 2013, Crescent Electric is implementing a company-wide CRM (customer relationship management) system, and at the “Sales Revolution” training event, attendees got training on that system. Breslin said they were trained on uniform sales management processes to use the CRM system most effectively.
In addition to the scheduled training events, Crescent Electric Supply sales personnel had ample time to network with their peers from well over 100 branches across the United States.