Paul Fleck, Account Manager 

In this Spotlight, we talk to Paul Fleck about the role of an Industrial Account Manager and the importance of the customer relationship. 

An Account Manager is a sales professional that is responsible for the development, management and growth of sales and relationships with a set of customer accounts. 

Q: WHAT DO YOU DO AS AN ACCOUNT MANAGER? 

I educate myself on the industry, products and services so I can offer the best solutions to my customers. Being an Account Manager is about more than sales. It’s important to build relationships with the customer. You really need to know the customer — know their pain points, know what keeps them up at night and know how to make them more money so they are profitable. I work for my customer, so I am always trying to find the best solution for them and not just a sale.


Q: WHAT TYPES OF CUSTOMERS DO YOU WORK WITH?

I am an Industrial Account Manager, so my customers are in the production and manufacturing sector. They are usually in plants and warehouses. I do have a few contractor and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers. 

Q: CAN YOU SHARE A CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY WITH US?

I had a customer that did not have a good handle on the automation products that they had in their facility. As a result, downtime was costing them a lot because they didn’t have the right product on the shelf, and they had to call me after hours to find the right product and get a courier to send it over as soon as possible. 

There was one product that had a four-week lead time if it wasn’t in stock when the customer needed it. The customer couldn’t afford that amount of downtime. I saw the problem and talked to the customer about a parts management process and worked through finding the right solution to alleviate unnecessary downtime.

It took a year and a half to create the process and put a parts management program in place for the material. Within three weeks of having the process in place, a 600HP drive went down but the part was available in the customer’s warehouse. It was a Saturday, but the customer had themselves up and running in four hours. Without that parts management process in place, the customer would have to call me to source the part, then get a courier to deliver the part. That four hours would have cost the customer more than 12 hours of downtime. The parts management program saved what it would have cost in downtime. That savings paid for the entire parts management program for five years.

Now that they have a parts management process, despite the supply chain crisis, they have the critical spare parts onsite so they don’t have to worry about them being readily available.