DSR of the Year - Learning To Excel By Ensuring The Success Of Others

Having forged his principles of honesty and integrity in a crucible of 30 years of experience, DSR of the Year Lance Appleton relies on encyclopedic product knowledge, a genuine willingness to serve and a constant desire to help his customers look good to achieve his own success.

By Mitchell Schechter, Editor-in-Chief -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 12/1/2004

In accounts, Appleton sells the way others breathe. Here, he discusses a new selection of steak knives with Manager Ed Conter of the Glen View CC.

Spending time out in the field with TriMark Marlinn’s Lance Appleton, FE&S’ 2004 DSR of the Year, as he calls on accounts is like being swept up in the world’s best-organized tornado. Appleton, 54, and a 32-year veteran in foodservice E&S sales, is a high-energy individual who moves quickly, speaks rapidly and evidences a still-vibrant enthusiasm for selling that is matched only by his concern for the success of those he serves.

“One of the things I’ve come to recognize over the years is that because my customers are mostly entrepreneurs, professional managers and executive chefs, a big part of my job is making them look good to the people they report to,” he commented. “I have to understand their programs, where they prepare what when and in which amounts, but it’s more important for me to get back to them responsively and consistently with the information they request. I come in prepared on every call,” Appleton added, “and though we may not always be the least expensive dealer in the Chicago metro area, most customers recognize the value of what I and our whole team can do for them, so we tend to form enduring relationships.”

Given Appleton’s range of skills and trust-building abilities, it is no surprise he has retained some of his approximately 70 active accounts for as long as 25 years. Described by TriMark Marlinn President Mike Siegel as “an old-fashioned ’70s-style street salesman who takes controlling his accounts very personally,” Appleton sells a complete range of equipment and supplies. He also takes inventory and places orders for (some) customers, assists with kitchen redesign and renovation plans, creates contract sales and participates in projects, does field measurements to assure proper fit and installation of walk-ins, provides price estimates on equipment replacement packages within hours, sources specialty products with near-universal success and extensively orders custom products with very few returns.

Appleton provides these extensive services to customers located throughout the “Chicagoland” area. His accounts include local multi-unit restaurants and caterers, urban clubs, resorts, O’Hare airport and a string of prospering country clubs whose current foodservice upgrade programs are now generating significant new business. Collectively, Appleton will sell these customers some $3.5 million in equipment and supplies this year and bring in sufficient new contract business to add another $1 million to his sales total.

“We’ve really seen strong growth in our bid work since [Contract Salesperson] Jeff Carlin joined Marlinn several years ago to take charge of that business,” he noted. “Jeff is a fabulous designer and project manager. I know how to get the doors open and have a proven record of service with many prospective new contract customers. As a result, we’ve done three kitchen renovations during the past two years at North Shore country clubs and will have five more completed by the end of the first quarter of ’05.”

Appleton stressed that his success has grown out of TriMark Marlinn’s culture, which emphasizes the importance of “team efforts” to ensure superior customer service. “We start with Mike’s leadership as president, which sets the example of how to keep our profitability and integrity in balance,” he explained. “I also receive a lot of input from my boss, [Sales V.P.] Alex Pignotti, who himself handles key accounts for us.” Appleton further credited Sales Support staffer Jennifer Costello (his primary office contact) with providing the follow-up and customer service that allows him to complete his tightly ordered daily schedule of customer calls. “Jennifer and I coordinate the tracking of orders’ status, invoices and stock-item availability through Marlinn’s new IT system,” he related. “Her skill at prioritizing and getting me information I need timely is critical to my ability to keep my promises to our customers.”

In addition to the support of his colleagues, Appleton has assembled an array of information processing and storage tools that allow him to respond more rapidly to customers’ product and price requests than most. To begin, he carries a library of his major factories’ catalogs, all alphabetized and neatly divided into equipment and supplies sections, in the trunk of his car. He also keeps a pocket notebook in his suit coat that contains hand-entered lists of phone numbers for parts dealers, service agents, installers and factory support personnel, along with his manufacturers’ discount structures. Most recently, Appleton has become adept at entering, reviewing and retrieving ordering information on his wireless laptop computer, which he also accesses for updates on invoices and product stocks in Marlinn’s warehouse.

Appleton “redeems” driving time by making and taking calls and retrieving voice mail while traveling to see customers.

After nearly 12 years as a DSR at his first dealership, TriBee, of Melrose Park, Ill., and more than 20 with Marlinn (which is headquartered in Bedford Park, Ill.), Appleton has formed firm convictions about the types of operators he can serve best, and the best ways to serve them. Take, for example, his weekly schedule, which varies hardly at all throughout the year. On Mondays, Appleton leaves his family’s home in rustic Wayne, Ill., before 6 a.m. and drives into the heart of Chicago to call on his city clubs, multi-unit restaurant accounts and noncommercial operations such as colleges. Tuesday finds this DSR in the western suburbs, where he’ll stop in at several units of an upscale sandwich chain, a multi-store ice cream concept, his two large resort accounts and several country club customers. Wednesdays Appleton devotes exclusively to his North Shore golf and dining clubs, where he’s recently been busy speccing equipment packages and planning remodelings for these venerated facilities’ often-antiquated kitchens. Every Thursday, Appleton covers his territory in the suburbs south of Chicago, stopping in at yet more clubs and a catering company. Most Fridays, by contrast, he either comes in to Marlinn headquarters for sales meetings and rep presentations or remains in his home office catching up on quotations and special orders.

“I like having a good variety of accounts, it makes each day at work different and interesting, but I always look to do business with people of integrity, individuals who value my product knowledge and suggestions, as well as my ability to get them what they need when they need it,” Appleton elaborated. “Country clubs are a good example: They have the ability to buy big and re-order regularly, they are run by professionally trained managers, they’re stable, which means you know they’re going to be around in the future, and they have special E&S needs such as logo’d merchandise, custom furnishings and bar equipment, and kitchen redesigns. That gives me a chance to distinguish myself from the other guys by filling those special needs.

“What I don’t like, and don’t go after, are the ‘flavor of the month’ hot new independents, the mom-and-pops and the marginal concepts,” Appleton remarked. “If I see a viable lead in my territory that I’m not well-suited to develop, I always pass it on to our other salespeople, but I’ve never enjoyed cold-calling or working with operators who don’t plan for the long-term or value loyalty and consistent service. That’s why just about all my new business has historically come from referrals.”

Appleton recalled that he had gained much of his early appreciation for honesty, hard work and faithfulness from his parents: Robert, a former blue-collar employee who worked his way up into department management for the Gillette razor company, and Betty, an equally industrious housewife. As the middle child of five (he has two older sisters and two younger brothers), Appleton was a conscientious student who recorded marks high enough to earn an invitation to apply to West Point after graduating from Forest View High School.

At the Michigan Shores CC, Appleton worked with Chef Ed Strzelecki to measure available space for a new walk-in.

“I went ahead and entered the application process, in part for the experience because I never thought that I would be selected,” he recounted. “Donald Rumsfeld was our congressman at that time and he had recommended me.” Much to Appleton’s surprise, he was chosen first to attend the Army’s “prep academy” and, ultimately, West Point itself in 1968. “When I arrived that June, a product of the late-’60s ‘peace and love’ culture, I was basically clueless about military routines, expectations and accepted behavior,” he added. Encountering, as all plebes then did, demands for regimented behavior, attempts at intimidation and hazing, Appleton soon realized that a military education and career were not for him. After several months, he transferred to the University of Illinois campus in Chicago, where he spent three years serving in the ROTC (at the height of protests against the Vietnam war) before graduating with a degree in marketing in 1972.

Before he left school, however, Appleton had taken a job at a singles bar near campus. After working there as a bartender and then as an assistant manager following graduation, Appleton was asked by the bar’s owner to become the manager of a new concept he was opening — a combination steakhouse and watering hole for young singles — that he recalled as a “monstrosity.” Appleton placed his opening order with dealer TriBee and built a relationship with the company’s DSR who invited him to apply for a job if he ever decided to leave the operations side. Several months later, after leaving his manager’s job and trying his hand at selling personal insurance, Appleton did just that, joining TriBee as a fledgling DSR in 1973.

“I started out cold-calling dives and greasy spoons with no catalogs, no price sheets and no product knowledge and, since I hated doing that, I worked hard to build myself up to a better class of accounts,” he recollected. Appleton’s big breakthrough occurred when he landed his first country club account. This success was soon jeopardized, however, when he was asked to participate in an unethical activity.

Chef Strzelecki, Appleton and Michigan Shores G.M./COO David Coughlin discuss an upcoming remodeling of the club’s main kitchen while meeting in its Parkview Grill, a casual-dining facility that Appleton helped to redesign.

This situation created Appleton’s first professional moral challenge and, after due consideration, he informed his TriBee managers that he could not do what had been asked. “I told my bosses, ‘I am a Christian and a man of integrity. This isn’t something I can do,’” he said.

Nonetheless, Appleton kept that club’s business and soon began selling to others, as well as to increasing numbers of high-end restaurant and foodservice accounts. Ironically, as his star was rising, TriBee’s was declining, as poor billing, uncompetitive purchasing and inconsistent order fulfillment began to cost this dealer its market share. By 1984, Appleton had become so frustrated by his inability to service customers properly that he was considering leaving foodservice E&S altogether. It was at this time, though, that Marlinn (not yet a part of the TriMark roll-up) began negotiating to buy TriBee and afforded Appleton a chance to begin again.

“When I met with Mike Siegel, I stipulated quite clearly what I needed from my life and work,” Appleton stated. “I was doing $700,000 a year then, so I thought I was a hot-shot and I told Mike that I’d give the firm everything I had during work hours, but that my personal time was my own. I also needed him to know that if he ever lied to me I’d leave. Mike understood the importance I put on integrity, trust and my track record, and we’ve had a positive relationship since day-one.”

As noted, one of the qualities that causes bosses and customers to esteem Lance Appleton is his commitment to anticipating needs at his accounts and making those he serves look good. On a typical Wednesday in October, for instance, while FE&S rode along, Appleton exhibited his abilities at a series of North Shore country club accounts. At the Evanston Golf Club (located confusingly enough in Skokie, Ill.), Appleton met with Chef Jimmy Christensen in a production kitchen this DSR had recently re-equipped with new ovens, steamers and refrigeration to discuss the performance of the new pieces and the chef’s interest in purchasing new signature china. Appleton then took himself off into the foodservice’s storage areas and began reviewing the on-hand inventory and creating a re-order of such items as bin liners, film wrap, foil and paper goods. “I don’t do this for every customer, but where I do I maintain their inventories over time and keep up the appropriate par stocks according to the season of the year,” he related.

Chef Christensen, who has done business with Appleton for 10 years, commented, “I depend on him for every product we use. Lance is the only salesperson I’ve ever allowed to do his own inventory and write his own orders during the 17 years I’ve worked in this country. Once I got to know him, I realized that he could make my job easier, give me expert guidance on equipment selection and provide timely, honest answers to my information needs.”

Further out along the North Shore, at the Glen View Club in appropriately named Golf, Ill., Appleton had recently worked with G.M. (and culinary school graduate) Douglas Stewart on a complete renovation of foodservice’s main kitchen, which serves three à la carte dining rooms and a banqueting hall. Stewart noted, “My twenty-some years of experience in this business have taught me that, unfortunately, many salespeople just can’t be trusted. Lance, though, is by far the number-one salesperson I have ever worked with. I trust him completely, so he goes into our storerooms and re-orders what we need. He’s never taken advantage of us, his prices are very competitive, but Lance’s strongest point is that when he promises to get back to you or that something will be done, not only does that happen, it usually happens more quickly than was expected. Lance always delivers,” Stewart continued, “which is why, if you looked in a dictionary for a definition of a perfect E&S DSR, you’d see his picture.”

That same day, Appleton stopped at the Michigan Shores Club in Wilmette, Ill., which was built in 1929 in Spanish Renaissance-style and contains a swimming pool in which the original movie Tarzan, Johnny Weismuller, used to train. Here, he worked with Chef Ed Strzelecki, measuring available space in a storeroom to ensure proper installation and fit of a new walk-in and noting the proper panel sizes, shelf heights, door swings and insulation requirements. Appleton then met with the chef and club G.M./COO David Coughlin in the facility’s Parkview Grill (which he and Jeff Carlin helped to redesign) to discuss a renovation of the main kitchen that is scheduled to begin next month.

“We can undertake this project because of the support we receive from Lance and TriMark Marlinn, which doesn’t come cheap. Still, as Lance likes to say, ‘if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys,’” Coughlin said with a laugh. He added that based on his experience, “Lance is the best DSR we’ve ever had because his product knowledge, attention to detail and follow-through are legendary. Lance, Jeff Carlin and TriMark Marlinn as a whole have proven themselves to be exceptional business partners not only here, but throughout the local club market. Lance, for instance, has taken us out to see other club projects his company has completed and really opened our eyes to what can be done to update and add efficiencies in our kitchens.”

At the Lake Shore CC, Executive Chef Scott Roberts and Appleton review the progress of an ongoing kitchen renovation project.

Appleton’s last call that day was at the Lake Shore Country Club in tony Glencoe, Ill., where a major construction project that includes the relocation and expansion of the main production kitchen was in full swing, leaving only a small à la carte facility serving a golfers’ grill in current operation. Sous Chef Todd Lever, who places weekly orders with Appleton, said of his DSR, “Lance knows what we need; he’s sold us everything from paper goods and bar supplies to custom seating and we’ve always been satisfied. He’s been instrumental in our major kitchen renovation project, but we can also ask him to source unusual items, such as the miniature plastic batting helmets we wanted to use to serve sundaes, and he’s always come through.”

TriMark Marlinn’s Siegel professed himself unsurprised by the accolades customers use to describe their relationships with Appleton. “Lance has always been a producer, he knows how to work with support people, he adapts to customers’ changing needs and he has an innate drive to get things done,” he affirmed. “That’s why we look to him to set a work standard for our newer DSRs and to provide an example of the success they can achieve in our business. Lance just has the skills and temperament to achieve results in every area in which we want to grow.”

When Appleton returns home after his days in the field, he diligently checks any potential back orders and writes up his specials on the computer in his home office before logging off for the evening. He assiduously protects his personal time, preferring to spend weeknights, weekends and vacations with his wife of 20 years, Deanne, and their three children: Laurel, a 17-year-old high school senior now preparing to enroll in Northern Michigan University; Luke, 15, a football player and student at Bartlett High School who built his own PC from parts last summer; and Philip, a seventh-grader now heavily involved in music and the Boy Scouts. The children’s various activities, as well as church and community involvements, keep the Appletons on the go, leaving Lance little time for his beloved house and garden work.

While still in the prime of his career, Appleton is close enough to the end of his working days (and clear enough in his convictions) to know how he wants to be remembered. “I hope that I will be recalled as someone who worked hard, took pride in what he did and made a difference to the people he worked with by helping them be more successful,” he stated. “I also like to think that my customers will respect the way I took care of them and compare me to their future DSRs as someone who set the bar for service and performance.”