Why do we Sell Water Treatment Equipment?

When I was hectic bidding several projects the week before Christmas while trying to fit in a few out-of-state sales visits before the end of 2017 and barely finding time to get into the holiday spirit I thought to myself, “Why do we sell water treatment equipment”? I talk to a lot of people in sales in my industry at conferences and it seems like we all have a similar hectic life of travelling every other week, frantically catching up when we are in the office and nearly always in that reactive fire-fighting mode.

I think the only other profession that may travel as much as sales people are professional sportspeople. If we got paid as much as sports stars, maybe that would make the travel more worthwhile. But it isn’t just the travel… If you are selling process technology, you have to put in a lot of work educating the engineers and end users on how the technology works, how to design a process incorporating the technology and then helping to pull together specifications. Then after all of this work that may take place over a few years, the engineer lists all your competitors in the bid spec! Then it is just a race to the bottom to see who will bear the lowest margin….

All the sales consultants will tell you to sell on value provided and not the equipment price, but they should look at selling into the municipal capital equipment market where the government entity is required to have a number of bidders and select the lowest priced responsive bidder… In some cases you can get a bid evaluated on lifecycle cost and in some cases the engineer you have helped with the design will let you have input on the competitors listed in the specs, which is great, but if you work in the muni-marketplace, most projects don’t go this way, unless you want to be really selective and as a salesperson in this market, if you do that you may not be in a job too long…

So let me be more specific. "Why do we sell process equipment into the municipal water treatment market when we have to be travelling for most of the time, our life is in a continual frantic state and there is no money to be made"?

Here is my attempt to justify why I stay in this profession:        

• There are a lot of great people in the industry, sales reps, engineers, fellow manufacturers and operators who are a pleasure to work with. Some of these people I have known for almost 20 years and consider good friends.
• I started my career as a consultant and didn’t get a lot of satisfaction designing a small part of a project and not seeing the end result. Granted I was only a junior engineer, but I wanted to work for a manufacturer who makes a product that solves a problem. It is very satisfying to me to visit a water treatment plant where my company has provided a treatment system that is helping the end user to meet a water quality objective. At that point the installing contractor is gone and possibly the engineer is done with the project but our equipment is there treating the water for many years to come.
• I have this competitive instinct in me and I do get a rush from bidding and winning projects (and the opposite from losing them) which probably comes from my track days.

Being a Municipal Salesperson is like being an Amateur Athlete...
I ran track for years and I think selling in our industry is a bit like being an amateur athlete. Why do you do it when the financial gain is minimal compared to the effort you put in? As my dad used to say when I was training 2-3 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, “You can’t eat gold medals” (he thought I should put my efforts into playing Australia Rules football or another sport where I could get paid). But if you love running, you get your reward from improving your times, winning a race or two, comradery with fellow athletes (many who are still good friends), getting ranked, making national championships, etc, even if you don’t make it to the highest level and make any money. Over the years I trained with a number of Olympic athletes and got a lot of satisfaction thinking that in some way I helped them achieve their goals.

In sales we are proud of the projects we win, the size of the plants sold, the number of installations using our products, the introduction of a new technology to solve a new problem and we value the friendships made. The personal financial gain (or company’s financial gain for that matter) may not be great, but there is a lot of personal satisfaction from playing a part in the improvement in the infrastructure for a community.

So after all of that rambling, I think I have justified to myself why I have been selling water treatment equipment in the municipal market for over 20 years…heck, if I could be an amateur track athlete for almost 20 years, this is a piece of cake!