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ToolUp San Diego's Safety in Numbers

Safety drives sales for ToolUp San Diego

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Joey Krys (L) and Ryan Croudy drive a coordinated team effort to build safety sales for ToolUp San Diego.

By Tom Hammel, Contractor Supply Magazine

Just two short blocks from I-15 in eastern San Diego, ToolUp sits on a tree-shaded, elevated corner lot with views out its loading dock doors of the rolling hills to the east. The outside of the building is adorned with large logos of its leading brands. Behind its long sales counter, one warehouse wall is dedicated to safety equipment.

Most of this product wasn’t here just 12 months ago, before rock star safety salesman and trainer Joey Krys joined the firm, but we are getting ahead of our story. 

ToolUp San Diego, a proud member of the Evergreen Marketing Group,  is one of two California stores in the Fasteners Inc, Southwestern Supply family. Based out of Las Vegas, Fasteners Inc. is owned by industry icon Keith Mantis, who launched his career in tool sales here in San Diego. The other ToolUp branch serves the San Francisco market.

Ryan Croudy, the recently promoted manager of the San Diego store, is in some ways a newcomer at ToolUp, too. In just six years, he has worked his way from the warehouse to store manager. Named manager in May 2010, Croudy is quick to credit former manager Joel Smith’s restructuring of the sales organization for much of the store’s current efficiency. Among other changes, Smith helped Mantis set up an inside sales layer to support the outside sales force. This system improved order and fulfillment accuracy and responsiveness. 

“We can seat 40 students at a time in our classroom upstairs and we fill it once a month.” — Ryan Croudy, store manager

“We never had inside sales support before then,” Croudy says. “The outside sales guys called their orders in to the guys at the front counter. Well, when you’re working the counter and you have a customer standing there and the phone rings, then your cell phone rings, you just can’t handle all of that. When Smith brought in that first inside sales person, the change here was like from night to day.” 

But the biggest change to ToolUp came in the person of Joey Krys (pronounced “Chris”), who simply lists his title as “safety specialist.” In February 2010, after years of alternately competing with Krys for sales and courting him with job offers, Krys finally agreed to join ToolUp. In a unique arrangement, Krys was given unprecedented autonomy to run his safety sales operation inside ToolUp. “Keith and Ryan let me operate as my own kind of entity within the team concept,” Krys says. 

Mantis and Croudy worked to ensure Krys’ success within ToolUp by providing two critical elements: sales support and the right inventory.

“I’ve been in a lot of companies and when I really succeeded I always had a good inside person,” Krys states. “I don’t want to detract from other companies but the inside support I receive here is amazing. I’ve been doing this since 1981 but I have never had an inside sales guy like I have now. He just “gets” it. The customers like him and he always gets back to them. My voice mail message refers my customers to him if they need immediate service and they can’t reach me. I can’t tell you how good it feels to be part of a team that responds so well to customer needs.” 

“I’ve been in a lot of companies and when I really succeeded I always had a good inside person.” — Joey Krys, safety specialist

ToolUp’s 2,000-plus-square-foot Knaack display area looks like a bedroom superstore for robots. On the main showroom floor, products are stocked deep on the shelves as well. It’s no surprise that up to 30 percent of the store’s sales are generated by customers walking in to shop the bright, clean aisles.  In this economy, it is heartening to see such product depth in a single store.

Another key difference lies in the breadth of brands Krys is allowed to carry. Krys carries Fasteners Inc.’s preferred brands, plus several others, too. Here again Krys found his new employers highly accommodating. Having the latitude to choose between premier safety manufacturers allows Krys to tailor the best fit of products for a given customer’s needs — and maximize sales opportunities as well.

“Not everything we sell is the cheapest,” Krys says. “But we stay within the range and the customer knows we give the added value of ToolUp service. Our shipping is unbelievable, and customers know they can call me on a whim and I’ll answer the phone, or Ryan will.”
Being the only supplier capable of fulfilling orders, especially in emergency situations, has won ToolUp new customers more than once. And, as is often the case, the larger the emergency, the larger the sale.

“One of my largest customers had an accident and had to shut down their operations,” Krys says. “They sent me there to do some training. They then asked me to help provide the product they would need. I directed them to the correct products for their needs. It took some phone work but we got the product to them overnight.”  

As an aside, Croudy notes that being the only company capable of filling an order can also be beneficial to the bottom line.

TRAINING TO SELL
In the safety market, you don’t become a super star by just talking the talk. Joey Krys not only walks the walk; he teaches it.

“Joey is not only a great salesman, he’s a certified trainer; OSHA officers attend his classes,” Croudy says. “We can seat 40 students at a time in our classroom upstairs and we fill it once a month just for our Competent Person training (learn more at http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/competentperson/index.html). It’s an eight-hour class once a month and every month it is full. When they complete the class, they have eight hours’ training toward being a Competent Person. So now we’re making money on teaching classes, too.”

“I’m an instructor at the UCSD OSHA Institute, at the AGC (Associated General Contractors) and I help educate local ROICC officers (Resident/Regional Officer in Charge of Construction) for the military, which provides us with a lot of business out here,” Krys says. “Basically, a ROICC is a military base’s OSHA officer — but on steroids. They watch the jobs being done and if one thing doesn’t look right to them, they shut it down. The military mandates that training and we’re a recognized trainer for them. The training leads into the sales, which leads into everything else we do.”  

SYSTEM SELLING
Krys’ selling strategy is calculated to share information in such a way as to make customers want more.

ToolUp San Diego at a Glance

Ownership: Privately held Parent company: Fasteners Inc., Southwestern Supply Facility: 60,000 square feet, including 25,000 square-foot showroom Employees: 23 Sales Staff: four outside; two inside; three counter sales; three delivery drivers Markets: Construction, industrial, government and municipalities Sales territory: North to Orange County, south to Mexican border Web site: www.sdtoolstore.com

“When I get a little face time, I give them enough information so they realize that they don’t know everything that they think they do,” he explains. “If I’m giving someone an eight-hour instruction, then I give them everything.  But if I’m in front of a safety committee like the AGC, where once a month 60 members sit down and give me 15 minutes, I tell them, ‘Ok guys, there are some changes coming up. Did you know this, and did you know that?’  I can see in their eyes that they are thinking, ‘Oh oh, I thought I knew it all.’  Then they realize they need more training and that they should come to me because I know what’s going on.”

The constantly changing state of the art in safety regulations makes staying on top of it all a full time job, but it also offers an ever-new list of new information to share with customers. This in turn builds a salesperson’s reputation as an expert.

“You get a reputation and it drives sales,” Krys says. “That ROICC officer or a Competent Person on the job will say, ‘We need help.  We should call ToolUp — they have a guy who can help us.’ They call me and say, ‘We need training, we need the product and we need the product that’s approved.’ ”

Each salesperson at ToolUp has also taken the eight-hour course, which provides them the knowledge to ask intelligent questions on job sites and to see potential problem areas that need to be addressed. They can then work with the customer to place the proper products, recommend more training, or bring in Joey Krys.

“That’s the difference — our guys make an effort to learn,” Krys says. “And now Ryan Croudy has taken over the purchasing for our fall protection. That sounds like a very minor thing, but it’s not.”

The new system is working. Propelled by its strategic purchasing model, its new expertise in safety and in existing areas such as firestop and municipal sales, Croudy, Krys and the ToolUp team head into 2011 loaded for bear, whichever form it chooses to take. One might say they are tooled up for success. CS

 

ToolUp: A Customer's Perspective
If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, a customer’s testimonial is worth 10,000. David Cox is a superintendent for DPR Construction (www.dpr.com). Ranked in the top 50 general contractors in the United States for the last 10 years, DRP’s customers include major technology and life sciences firms, corporations and healthcare providers. Cox is currently working on the Palomar Medical Center West in San Diego, a $985 million hospital. 

“We’re one of the CMs (construction managers) on this job,” Cox explains. “We have over 200 guys on the drywall crew right now. We’ve been working on this two and a half years and we will be done in 2012.”

Cox has been working with Joey Krys for upwards of 15 years and respects both his knowledge and ability to connect with customers.

“We could buy safety equipment from anybody, but with Joey it’s the training. He
is usually out here every two weeks conducting training sessions, and not just
for our own people but for a lot of the other trade contractors as well. He has great presentation skills — he knows how to connect with our guys and that just puts him in a whole other league.

“He’s passionate about fall protection,” Cox continues. “He studies it; he’s been all over to see how these products are made and he’s not afraid to come out and put his finger in our chests if he thinks we’re not doing things right. He would rather lose a customer than see something go wrong.”

On a job this large, numerous brands are on site.

“We’ve got probably 700 contractors out there actually working on the site today and the brands are all over the place,” Cox observes. “We’re pretty heavy on DBI/Sala, but that’s one of Joey’s favorite brands, too, and he tends to like the best stuff.”

Have things changed since Krys joined ToolUp?

“I think he has a lot more behind him now,” Cox says. “I think the move has been good for him.  The thing about Joey is that he’s so passionate about fall protection, if you ever stood in one of his training sessions you would see he has a wonderful way of connecting with these guys. He can tell them not just how to put it on but why they should.  You’ve got to be able to connect with the people we’ve got working in the field these days — that’s just everything. To be honest, Joey sells us so much fall protection, he is the only guy we even think about.  If there’s ever an issue, we just say, ‘Call Joey.’  He’s the only guy we need to know.” CS