A Million Dollar Resolution!

In 2011, Duane Young set a New Year’s goal for himself to make Indoff’s Million Dollar Partner List. Well we would like to say, “Congratulations Duane you did it!”

Duane, a Material Handling Partner based in Dallas, TX joined Indoff in 2008. Since then it has been a goal of his to make the Million Dollar Partner List – so the real question is what did he do differently to ensure success? Well there are several factors that helped lead to this accomplishment.

Before joining Indoff in 2008 Duane worked as a manufacturer’s rep and was always focused on long cycle sales projects (6mos.-5yrs.), rather than the short cycle sales process (1-6wks.) that are more common in distribution sales. He decided to channel his previous mindset and focus on a few long-term projects that could help him achieve this goal.

Duane decided to approach this goal from a different angle than he has in previous years. He sat down and wrote out three major target projects, then worked backwards through his plan, first taking into consideration the desired ultimate result for each project, and finishing with the beginning details. In addition, he made sure to keep this goal in mind throughout the year and compare how each project was adding to the achievement of the main goal.

One of the long-term projects was with LabCorp, a clinical laboratory. Having a vision of what they wanted, LabCorp was looking to renovate their facility in the Dallas area. With the help of Jim Krakower, Kewaunee’s General Sales Manager – TFG, Duane received the project and was able to find a solution.

“Duane Young was well-respected enough within LabCorp that they allowed him to suggest an alternative product to what their Corporate office encourages them to use.” said Jim Krakower.

This is where Kewaunee came in, rather than telling LabCorp to work with the products that they had available, they asked them questions, such as “What are your processes?”, “What changes are you looking to make?”, and “What do you envision the finished project to look like?”. After gathering all of this information from LabCorp and their architect, Kewaunee was able to modify their current product to find a custom solution that fit LabCorp’s needs.

“Throughout the whole project Duane has gone above and beyond, becoming knowledgeable of Kewaunee’s products, sorting through a warehouse in the Texas heat to ensure the product inventory was in check, thinking outside the box to find solutions when we made a mistake, and overall just being there every step of the way.” said Jim.

Phase one of the LabCorp project is about to wrap-up and it was with the help of Kewaunee that Duane has been able to ensure that things have gone smoothly. With a project of this magnitude, things are bound to go wrong, but with everyone’s hard work and dedication there have been no major glitches.

There is also another 2011 long-term project that will carry over into 2012 with a primary government contractor for military aircraft that has enabled Duane to be a Million Dollar Partner in 2011. In this project it was again Duane’s tenacity and good salesman skills that allowed him to bid and gain the sale of 79 out of 144 items on the contract.

“Within my three years at Indoff, the support of other Partners, local and throughout the country, has helped me tremendously in reaching my goal of becoming a Million Dollar Partner. So I now am making it one of my goals in 2012 to give back and help my fellow Partners as much as I can.” said Duane.

Indoff is proud to have such a dedicated and hardworking Sales Partner and we look forward to seeing Duane on the Million Dollar Partner list in the future.