Slattery Sales Group Helps Yocum Oil Refine Value Differentiation Strategy
 
Challenge
Stimulate organic revenue growth of commodity product by steering prospects away from price-only purchase decisions.

Solution
Slattery Sales Group (SSG) develops value differentiation strategy that translates service into quantitative value and executes this strategy into sales process. 

Results

Demonstration of how service helps customers generate revenue yields XX% success ratio of closed sales among prospects. Sales people’s ability to determine if a prospect is economically serious early in the sales cycle improves sales productivity.

ocum Oil CEO Tim Yocum has oil running through his veins.  It’s in his blood, with a great grandfather and grandfather who were agents for Standard Oil (since renamed Amoco, currently BP). His grandfather founded Yocum Oil in 1957, and under the co-leadership of Tim and his brothers Tom and John, the company has continued to grow its geographic territories.    

Yocum’s sales staff of nine has 5-25 years of industry experience a piece, and according to Tim, “They’re well educated, know our business, and are adept at preserving customer relationships.” 

Yet the Yocum brothers didn’t think they were doing what needed to be done to foster organic growth. “We didn’t have a sales process per se, and previous efforts to demand a specific quantity of calls had been unsuccessful. We believed the real issue was maximizing each prospect opportunity,” says Tim.

Since oil is a commodity with a high price, Yocum salespeople were having great difficulty steering prospects away from talking about price. Tim says, “We were growing by acquiring new territories, where we had no track record, finding ourselves with the challenge of touching new prospects for the first time. They wanted to discuss price, not the service that was our trademark. We couldn’t get our arms around how to translate the value we deliver into saving them money through exceptional service. Realizing that this competitive position was the key to a long-term relationship, we suspected that we needed help. When our sales manager recommended outside intervention, we moved on his suggestion.”

Yocum tapped Slattery Sales Group’s reputation for developing and articulating value differentiation strategies that help salespeople defend and enhance price and margin.  “Terry did a great job prompting questions that pointed us to the hot buttons. He demonstrated an amazing ability to understand our industry, customers and where problems can arise.”

The high price of fuel prompted prospects to close their eyes to the big picture and fixate on price. Terry helped Yocum develop a strategy for helping prospects focus on the costs associated with lack of service, including on-time and in-full delivery and emergency response capability. Tim explains, “The message he helped us with focuses on how late delivery prompts lost sales, eroding customer relations, and lost productivity due to internal resources having to get replacement fuel. Prospects who try to beat market pricing are risking their own prices and margins. Price swings of six to eight cents a day can add up to 50 cents per gallon per season. Our fixed-price program can be any length of time and is tied to the number of gallons purchased in a given month. This arrangement helps our customers such as excavation contractors bid out their work based on costs of labor, equipment and fuel. As long as they know what their flat-price fuel costs are, they can cover those costs and protect their margins.”

When a prospect asks, “How do I know I have the lowest price,” the Yocum response now focuses on success derived from the product, such as the number of jobs completed in less time at a low cost. Tim adds, “We talk about how our service impacts our customers’ sales. If delivery is delayed, their customer’s project is delayed, compromising future sales. They can’t afford downtime for the sake of the next job. In this sense, a supplier who doesn’t deliver actually works against you while our performance actually fuels (pardon the pun) uptime and cost-sharing.”
 
Yocum’s automated tank monitoring is a value-added service that ensures minimum fuel levels, so customers don’t have to worry about ordering. 

SSG was Yocum’s strategic planning arm. “We’re all operations and sales,” Tim explains. “Terry helped us realign our strategic focus with our market position — high price/high value commodity — and our execution.”

SSG is developing a training package that will help Yocum’s sales force integrate the value differentiation message into their sales process.