I started here about five years ago, started out here in Morgan town as an outside Sales Representative. After about two years, I got promoted to a General Manager position, moved up to Cannisberg, Pennysavania, ran that store for about a year and a half, and then I got the opportunity to come back to Morgan town and be the Manager here. I'm the manager here, obviously. I've got six or seven guys who work underneath me, both full time and part time. So, I've got sales staff that work underneath me, and I've got the support staff that supports the sales and deliveries and stuff like that. In this market, we did about three and a half to four million dollars in revenue per year. So, it's pretty large, pretty substantial market. The customers I deal with here, we've got about 200 that I deal with on monthly basis, anywhere from MRO which is Maintenance Repair and Operations, OEM which is more Manufacturing construction, and then also government as well. A typical day is, we're open from 7:30 to 5:00. So by the time we are here in the morning, our truck from our distribution center has arrived, and we kind of plan our day off of our deliveries, what's going out. So, we received a truck in and we kind of allocate what deliveries are going to go out, and then we'll process on orders daily. Whether it's through email, walk-in customers, phone calls, we'll process, or doing quotes daily, kind of just managing the sales force. There is a schedule that I try to stick by but it just seems like it's different every day and that's why I enjoy it so much, I think. I think hardworking, dedication, being able to talk to people. I think those are the three main, problem solving as well. I just think those are kind of tied into every job that anybody goes into. I'm interacting with them throughout the whole day, whether it's through phone calls, text messages, emails, or face-to-face. So, typically in the morning, they'll come in, figure out what needs to go where, and then they hit the road, the sales force does. They try to be out from 8:30 in the morning, they're usually back about 3:00, 3:30, 4:00 o'clock. So, they're out pretty much 6-7 hours a day, and they are just in the field selling. Oh, we do monthly meetings. If we need to increase that, there's a big project coming up or something, we can do weekly. But formally, we do monthly meetings usually at the beginning of every month. I see. Just kind of recap the previous month and see where our focus is going to be for the next month. Typically with Fastenal, we start people out part time to make sure that they are a good fit for us and we're a good fit for them. So, the qualities that I'm looking for are the ones I mentioned earlier. Are they hardworking? Are they able to easily talk to people? Are they dedicated to what they're doing? We try to hire college students, that are in college still, part-time and then upon graduation, we look to transition them into full-time outside sales. So, we recruit employees in a couple different ways. Fastenal.com is one of them, just on our website. We also have District Manager that's got a good connection with the university, so we're part of all the career fairs and competition and stuff like that, and then we're just word of mouth. We have a pretty good reputation here in Morgantown, so if someone comes with an opportunity, I'm usually open to it. I would say about five different people just for one position and that can be part-time, that's usually part-time. But even when there's full-time opportunities available, we still try to pick the cream of the crop, I guess you could say. The reason why we typically start people out part-time is because there is a large learning curve with Fastenal in general. We found that it works out better for us when we can bring people in part-time, and make sure that they're a good fit for us, and we're good fit for them. Things that I look for when there does come time for promotion into full time is hard working. Are they hard working? Are they dedicated? Did they show up to work on time? Do they retain information well? Things like that. I would say it's open-ended. Well, over a million and continue to add daily. We have a very vigorous training program within Fastenal, both virtual and hands-on. So, typically, when someone starts out, they go through, it's about a six-week training process and its virtual and hands-on. So, they'll do the trainings online, and that teaches them everything from a to z, pretty much everything. But then, I'll go back and kind of come through it a little bit and say, "All right, what did you learn? Let's go through it and let's learn it hands-on as well." Then it just keeps going up the line from that. When you get into full-time, the training gets a little more in depth. When you get into sales, it gets a little more in depth as well, where we actually go to our corporate office and do a week-long training and then also, a week-long virtual training. So, there is a very vigorous training process. Yes. Just for their employees? Yes, it's called Fastenal School of Business and we call it FSB. But it's, like I said, everything from how to receive a truck in to how to deliver products, to how to do sales calls, it's kind of all in there. It starts at the bottom and just works the way up. The first phase, I would say there's at least 30-40. They can range from a 10-minute training to an hour-long training. But then as you go up, it just keeps getting, like I said, there's week-long trainings that we hold in our corporate office and it just keeps stacking up from there as far as the training and the responsibilities. A new salesperson, I would say, until you're developed, 10 hours a week. There's trainings that are done virtually and hands-on as well, leadership trainings, management trainings, that anybody can do whenever they want. So, that's something that we offer as well. I would say, everyone's different. We just kind of have to read the situation and you learn that as you go. Every person is different, they learn differently. But the best thing that I've found is just to be there to answer any questions they have. If they need your help on something, just make sure that you're giving them the support that they need, and that they understand how to do it so they don't have that question next time. They just know how to do it. Something that I do is I try to lead by example. So, whenever I show, I take the initiative. I show the fast-paced, the hard work that I put in, that kind of seems like trickles down to my people and that's one thing that I do to motivate. I would say I evaluate them monthly formally, but if it needs to be on a weekly basis, I have those discussions. It's not a formal evaluation. But I do it monthly and also annually, whether it be by sales goals, whether it be by volume, or whatever it is. Whenever I'm evaluating my sales force, about 50 percent of it is numbers, data, volume, and then about another 50 percent of it is just judgment. If there's changes that need to be made, or suggestions that I have, that's when I'll throw them in. They're compensated. They have their base salary that they have, and then they're compensated on the sales that they bring in. So, the more you sell, the more you make. That's just the easy way to put it. Right. Both. The sales are to both existing customers as well as new potential customers. Every salesperson knows their existing number that they need to hit or to grow over. Every month, they know that. So, going into it, they know where their numbers need to be. If they have a spike, what that's going to look like as far as when they're compensated. Some of them do, but I'll be quite honest with you, probably about 90 percent of our sales are done outside of the store. In all the aspects of management that I'm responsible for, the thing I enjoy the most is working with people, my people that work under me, and also the customers as well. Here in Morgantown, we all have a goal and we all work together to try to capture that goal. As the General Manager, Fastenal in general is a very decentralized company, which means we're able to make a lot of decisions on our own. But as far as from the corporate side, my District Manager's as corporate as it gets for me, and that's great because he's about 45 minutes away. I talk to him three, four times a week on the phone. He's usually here once a week as well. So, when we're talking about sales goals and stuff like that, he's very adamant about getting that information to us as seamlessly as possible, emails, text messages, phone calls, and all that.
