Reporting on the business and technologies
driving today's global industrial gas industry

The Art of Selling
Professional Sales Planning Fosters Accidents
By Art Waskey
2008.03
Recently I reviewed my regular two-week cycle of daily call reports from ten account managers. These reports covered activities for early December, the end of another business tax year for most customers. To my delight, several of the managers received unanticipated large orders, but equally to my concern, there were several comments on how "fortunate they were" to have "just happened to stop by at the right time." Do you effectively communicate on a regular basis with your key accounts, your best clients? Be honest with yourself. Do your best clients feel as important as they should?

Here are some suggestions to help ensure that your clients KNOW they are appreciated:

1. Know your Top 25 Accounts. Create a 12-month rolling spreadsheet that profiles your top sales and margin customers.

2. Set a Call Frequency. Apply the Pareto, Principle: 20 percent of your customers will generate 80 percent of your sales results. Divide your clients into three groups; then set a call frequency for each group.

3. Create a Monthly Planner. Before the beginning of each month, plan the next 30 days of call activities. Software such as Microsoft Outlook is an excellent tool for recording and interacting with your monthly planner.

4. Record Daily Call History. At the end of each call, set appointments with your customer according to your established call frequency; place new appointments on your calendar. At the end of each day, log your call results. If unexpected events prevented face-to-face contact, re-call your customers.

5. Maintain Decision-Maker Profiles. Ask, listen, and learn all you can about the decision-maker's family, job responsibilities, and recreational activities. Log the information in client relationship management software. During each contact, acknowledge important events that are happening in their lives.

Ponder how much more potential business could have been closed this past year IF your focus had been on maximizing call implementation. In his book, Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play, Mahan Khalsa advises, "A client at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. If all we do is wait for customers to come to us, we are reactive rather than proactive agents of success. We need to be the outside force that gets them moving."

Implementing regular call frequency and using appropriately acquired information fosters trust and rapport with your best clients and prospects. How you treat existing customers has everything to do with how many new referrals are willingly forwarded to you. Sales success doesn't JUST happen; professional planning ensures that it WILL happen!

Art Waskey is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for General Air Services and Supply Company in Denver, Colorado, and author of The Art of Sales in One Month. He can be reached via e-mail at awaskey@generalair.com.

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The Saf-T-Corner
Plan Every Day
By Jim Herring
2008.03
Here's a little safety tip I "borrowed" from my days as a UPS driver.

UPS, as you all know, is a huge company, with multiple locations across the country, yet it has one of the best safety records in the world. So, if it works for them, there's no good reason it can't work for you and me.

It's a simple idea, plan every work day, from beginning to end. Most employees come to work with the same thing on their minds, how soon will I be able to get out of here." With that kind of thinking, it's no wonder we see as many accidents as we do throughout the workday. Everyone seems to focus on day's end without ever looking at, or paying attention to what goes on earlier in the day.

Planning for the end of the workday does not mean just seeing the end, it means focusing on the entire day, all of the nuances and breaks that make up the basic workday.

• Where will I be at 9:30?
• What will I have accomplished?
• What about lunchtime?
• How many deliveries will I make?
• What about 2:30? And so on.

Plan the day as if it were segmented into four distinctive parts, early and late morning, and early and late afternoon. Each segment should have its own set of goals, which keep employees motivated. Employee goals should be set at standards that ensure your company is reaching its financial goals, but they should also be realistic so that employees do not have to rush to achieve them. Realistic goals ensure that employees can obtain them safely.

If an employee makes ten widgets in the course of an hour but at the expense of a cut forearm, then his or her productivity suffers. For the company, this can translate to reduced productivity, increased insurance and workmen, compensation premiums and possible overtime payments to fill in for injured workers. Whereas, if that same employee made only eight and a half widgets in the same hour, but did it without injuring himself, then the employee and the company are both ahead of the game.

Productivity goals should always be on par with the company's expectationsthe production of quality products with zero lost time. I cannot think of a better scenario than that. As managers and supervisors, we have an obligation to our organizations to motivate all personnel with the same mantrawork hard but work safe. If we practice what we preach, then the rest falls into place.

Until next time, be safe.

Jim Herring is Vice President of Marketing and Procurement at Saf-T-Cart in Clarksdale, Miss. He can be reached via email at jim@saftcart.com.

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Energy Initiatives
Trucking Industry Gets HIP
2008.03
Alternate Energy Corporation (AEC), an emerging leader in the commercialization of economically viable and environmentally responsible hydrogen solutions headquartered in Burlington, Ontario, recently announced its initiative to develop an innovative Hydrogen Injection Process (named ‘HIP’) for diesel engines. AEC intends to target sales of this product to the North American heavy transport/trucking industry. AEC’s proprietary discovery in metallurgy and process technology permits the generation of hydrogen through a “green” process at a competitive level to the fossil fuel Kwh cost of energy. AEC believes its systems can have a revolutionary impact on the energy industry.


THE AEC HYDROGEN INJECTION PROCESS 'HIP'
Blaine Froats, AEC’s Chairman and CEO, says, “While the production of industrial hydrogen for bulk users (such as hydrogenation) remains a lucrative business opportunity, we always felt that our quality hydrogen could be sold at a much higher price given the right application. I therefore tasked our R&D team with the objective of increasing the ‘per unit value’ of the hydrogen by researching applications that would support it. What they found was momentous for AEC and its shareholders.”

Based on well-documented research conducted by a plethora of scientific sources, it has become a known scientific fact since the 1970s that the addition of hydrogen to internal combustion engines (ICE) offers a number of significant benefits to the operator, namely, increased fuel efficiency and horsepower alongside reduced greenhouse gases and emissions. These benefits can be attributed to the more complete combustion of the fuel when hydrogen is injected into the air/fuel mixture and include:


• An increase in fuel efficiency and resultant fuel savings of up to 40 percent in certain applications (i.e. stationary gensets). Typically, the introduction of hydrogen into an ICE will realize fuel savings from 10 to 25 percent dependant on several factors that influence fuel economy, including driving habits and the condition and make of the engine.


• A significant increase in horsepower. While some consider this to be a side benefit, truck drivers interviewed have expressed that the increase in horsepower warrants enough benefit on its own to justify the purchase of the unit, irrespective of fuel savings.


• Reduced overall emissions (virtually eliminating the customary black smoke that is typical of diesel powered trucks and buses) including 8 to 25 percent reduction in CO₂ emissions; up to 98 percent reduction in particulate matter; up to 98 percent reduction in carbon monoxide; up to 75 percent reduction in hydrocarbons; up to 51 percent reduction of nitrous oxides.


In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to phase in its emission standards legislation, based on the “Clean Air Act Amendments” of 1990, which forces the trucking and other industries to reduce emissions, alongside refiners mandated to minimize sulfur (to 15ppm) in the production of diesel by 2010. Analogous to when unleaded fuel made its debut, when these new laws begin to take effect, the price of diesel fuel will likely become more costly to the end-user.


Diesel fuel represents approximately a third of a trucking company’s operating cost, and in the context of rising oil prices, AEC believes that the trucking industry could benefit most from fuel savings.


Currently, AEC is actively testing its hydrogen injection process ‘HIP’ technology on diesel generators and trucks, quickly moving to ‘patent protect’ its unique solution. AEC projects excellent ROI for truckers (less than 6 months @ 15 percent savings). According to the company, every trucking company owner interviewed expressed an overwhelming interest in the AEC solution. Next steps will include completion of product design for commercial release, patenting, certification, construction and sales.



A HIP EXAMPLE

Assumptions
The average transport truck will travel about 120,000 miles per year and burn diesel fuel at the rate of one gallon per 6 miles traveled. Therefore, the average truck will consume 20,000 gallons per year of diesel fuel, and based on current prices of $3.00 per gallon, with an annual cost of approximately $60,000 per truck. Assuming AEC’s hydrogen injection system attains a conservative average of 15 percent savings (ranging up to 26 percent, and 40 percent or more in special instances) on fuel, this would result in a $9,000 reduction in fuel expense to the trucking company.


In the case of a known fleet operation, the company spends $200,000 in fuel purchases per month or $2,400,000 per year. A 15 percent increase in fuel efficiency would save $360,000 annually.


The Market
With 700,000 trucks on the road in Canada and over 20,000,000 in the US, the trucking industry consumes $120 billion of fuel each year. A conservative 15 percent estimated savings would amount to approximately $18 billion of savings each year. If the AEC hydrogen injection process attracted only five percent of this market, it would be able to save its trucking customers about $1 billion per year.


In addition to the above, AEC is also exploring the existing on-board truck generator market with its system. With emissions regulations becoming increasingly enforced by more and more states and provinces, on-board generators are replacing the driver’s need to keep the truck’s diesel engine running to provide electricity when not driving. AEC is now looking to improve the combined fuel efficiency of the truck’s engine and on-board generator for overall greater fuel savings.


Blaine Froats summarizes, “We see this new use of hydrogen as the ideal complement to AEC’s overall business as a provider of hydrogen and valuable commodity chemical products. I want to be clear by saying that both businesses will be developed together, in unison. We will therefore continue to move forward toward building process plants that will produce hydrogen that can supply the trucking/heavy transport market, while also working towards becoming a major supplier of valuable commodity chemicals to a world market that exceeds $10 billion per year.”


For more information go to: www.cleanwatts.com


 

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