Quick Clips | Ted Williams | EP 28

Quick Clips today with our amazing guest, Ted Williams, who has been loyal to Sherwin-Williams for almost 30 years.

Ted Williams has been the Global Director of Business Services of The Sherwin-Williams Company for almost 4years. He's assigned to design and deliver business solutions that provide unique, measurable value to customers. He has extensive experience in sales and operations management and improvement. Before he became a Global Director, he was an Area Sales Manager for more than 13years. Ted managed a sales and operations organization of 30+ branch stores, and 200+ employees tasked with growing market share for the Sherwin-Williams Automotive Finishes brand across six states in the Southeast United States.
 
He successfully implemented conversions with large collision shops and multiple shop operators and has—long history of building strong business partnerships with customers. Ted is a strong, creative, inspirational leader who focuses on continuous improvement. He believes that the best leaders lead by example and provide a clear vision of what can be.
 
Ted became a Member of the Global Paint for Charity Board of Directors from Dec 2015–May 2018 (2 years 6 months). Its mission is Changing Lives, Protecting the Environment One Gallon at a Time.

Click the link below to listen for the full episode 28:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1895628/11394884


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Transcript

 Hey guys, this is Adam from the podcast and you are listening to Quick Clips. Quick Clips are condensed versions from one of our previous podcast episodes featuring some of the interesting things our guests had to say. If you want to hear the full episode, we'll have it in the show notes below. And with that, let's start the show. 

What was that atmosphere or environment like where, you know, they have a young teenage kid coming in and painting these cars, and I'm assuming it's adults doing the work. , did they know about it? How did they feel about it? Did you have to prove yourself? What, what was that like? Back at that particular time, I don't think I had as much of an issue with it. 

Cause I, I think it was kind of a situation of, um, none of the people in the shop wanted to paint. So they were happy to pass it, pass it off to any, to anybody else. That was back in the days when a lot of shops had what we would call combination men. They did their own body work and painting.  and when they had an opportunity back then that somebody could just do the painting and frankly it wasn't cutting into their money because I wasn't being paid to do it, um, they didn't have a problem with it. 

So, um, I didn't really have an issue with it that time. But, you know, to the point of which you're making about acceptance and someone new coming into the industry, I did kind of face that a little bit when I first started with Sherwin Williams. Why was painting. Kind of like not the thing that people wanted to do back then versus now. 

It seems like, you know, if you're the painter back in that time period, I would say that the painting process was a lot more laborous than it is today. You know, when I first started off, we were still doing a lot of work with acrylic acer. So you were essentially adding a a lot of different coats. You were having to wait between coats for it, the flash correctly. 

You were having to later on sand and buff and polish everything. . So it was very, a lot of labor involved with actually doing stuff back then. You know, it's an entirely different process. Occasionally you would end up doing an overall paint job using, uh, acrylic enamel and acrylic urethane. But you know, in those situations, you know, when you're doing an overall job and you're doing say, a single stage, there's a lot more opportunity to mess something up as well. 

It is kind of an art of being able to get the metallic straight and everything in that time period. So, Uh, in that, in those particular cases with the technicians that we were dealing with, they didn't particularly want to do it because they were afraid if they messed something up, they would have to redo it and they didn't want to have to mess with it. 

So, um, got it. I was pretty comfortable of doing the work and, um, and I was very good at it, so I frankly had very few redos that I ever had to do, so I got very comfortable doing it. What were these competitions? Vic alike were, were they having any lay down pearls and metallics and everything like that, and they would check how even it was, or, you know, stuff like that or what the finish was like, what was, what were these competitions like? 

Well, the competition back then is a little bit different from what it is today. I just recently, uh, had the opportunity to go back for the, to the first national contest I'd been to since I compet.  and now they've kind of separated the contest out. So there's like a re refinish competition, there's an estimation competition and damage analysis, and then there's a, uh, collision body repair competition. 

Back in that day, we did it all and it was one probably the longest it that contest of all the contests they did in skills competition. And keep in mind, they did masonry electricity. , uh, everything, all these other skill competitions. Ours was the first one to start and the last one to end. Mm-hmm. . And we did, um, we had everything from doing frame set up and analysis to do writing an estimate to doing, uh, various welding and cutting with, uh, welding equipment to, uh, dent repair and also painting. 

So we did a little bit of all it. Wow. So, and it was all condensed in pretty much one day. So you were, when you left, at the end of the day, you were exhausted, uh, because it was a constant race cause you were timed the entire time you were doing it as well. Just outta curiosity, what was the thing that, when you're trying to become D R P D R P approved, what was the, what were the qualifications that these companies are looking for? 

Primary. To approve or not approve someone back at that period of time, they were looking at things like capacity. Do you have the capacity to take on the work? You know, we're, if we send it to you, can the work get processed and get processed in a, in a quick enough cycle time to be beneficial to us? Uh, they were looking at things like repair order accuracy. 

Are you gonna be able to, is, is there gonna be this honesty? And transparency in the way we're writing these tickets and, and giving 'em back and forth because that, keep in mind, that was also a time where we were transitioning from shops, writing things from manuals to go into computers to write it. And so there was a lot of, uh, distrust going on that people might not be writing things correctly. 

So those were two of the things in particular they were looking for at that time. What was probably the most d. Uh, job that you had, you know, out of all these different hats that you've worn, what was probably the more difficult one for you? Well, I think, uh, at one point probably being a sales director was probably one of the more difficult ones. 

And I think I say that because I had responsibility for an organization that was probably over 200 people, uh, working for me. And you were dealing everything from. Store staffing issues all the way up to sales reps and sales opportunities and customer issues. So it took a lot of balancing of that as you're trying to work through the day to be able to accomplish what you're trying to do. 

And, but one of the things I learned from that is that, um, if you're gonna be effective when you have a large organization like that, is you have to create culture. You have to, you have to have the right kind of training in place. You have to have the right kind of support in place. The right kind of encouragement in place with your people, and I think it helped me at that point, as I discovered that I needed to have a very open door policy with my people. 

I, I tried to be less hierarchal in the way I did stuff, so I would, you know, if a sales rep needed to talk to me. . I didn't wait for them. They didn't have to go through their manager to come to me to talk. And my management team also knew that if some, if some of those people came directly to me, that I wasn't going to penalize them or hold them accountable for their people coming direct. 

I just, I felt that if I've got to instill a culture that ha having that access was a, a key piece to, um, being successful. So that was, that was probably one of the, was, was. , uh, it was struggling, but it was a great learning opportunity as well. What were some of these things that you were doing back then that improved the environment and the culture of the, of the company? 

I th I think it goes back and I don't, I don't think it's any different now because it's all in, human nature is the most valuable thing you can give somebody. Somebody's your time. Mm-hmm.  and. , you know, you, you talk about things, you know, it's great to have a pizza party or recognition or thing, you know, different things like that. 

But what I find people most appreciate is when you're willing to give your own time to 'em, to sit down to 'em, to listen to 'em, to allow them to share with you where their thoughts are, to brainstorm with them around things to help them be better. And that's kind of what I focused on then. And that's, frankly, that's what I focus on today. 

You know, um, I, we found that. And, and through a lot of the training we do at Sherwin's, our most effective training is when we actually do one-on-one coaching. And that's the things that people get most appreciate. You know, if in the business of the day, you know, we're slammed with emails and phone calls and everything else. 

And it's easy that you can go out to work with a sales rep that you jump in, you pick 'em up, they pick you up at the airport, and you jump in the car, in the passenger seat and you immediately pick up your phone and start, refer, returning all the phone. That you missed when you were on the plane, but you forget that you had this great one-on-one windshield time right there with them, where you could be giving them some dedicated time and that's where they really get the most value out of it. 

So when I went back to the culture piece is I started, um, myself and with my management team is making sure that we actually set time aside with our people to actually talk to 'em. Understand. What challenges they were dealing with. Also understand, um, what their career objectives were and what they were trying to accomplish. 

Uh, and I'm, and I say this beyond just a normal performance appraisal timeline. You know, you had that once a year performance appraisal. If a sales rep or employee of years hears about something at the performance appraisal that they haven't heard all year, that's not a very good prostate. , um, you should be talking about things on a regular cadence, and when you get to a point of a performance appraisal, it's just essentially recapping what you've already been talking about all year. 

So that's where I thought the, I think the real piece is, is that given the time and the energy and the efforts to, to people, it's where the real value comes from. What leadership challenges did you experience in that, um, role Where I, I'm sorry, I forgot the title. Mm-hmm. , but the, where you were oversee. , um, director of Salesforce. 

That's correct. Sales Director. Mm-hmm. , um, where you were overseeing a team of people, what were, what were some leadership challenges that you encountered with that? Well, I think one of the biggest challenges, you got to have the right kind of people on the team. You know, it goes back to the, uh, old, uh, book, if you've read it years ago, good to Great. 

And it talks about having the right people in the right seat on the bus. . Yep. And that's a, that's a critical piece of this. Because here's the thing is if you're trying to build a certain culture and you put somebody into a management role in your team that doesn't align with that culture, it's going to be very difficult for you to be successful. 

So if you have somebody that's a very, um, strong top down manager and it's his way or the highway, and you're trying to create an engagement culture where people are involved in decisions and they are. Have ownership in what they're doing that may not gel correctly in the culture that you're doing. So probably the biggest challenge is just making sure you got the right people in the right seat as you get started. 

And I think that's where a lot of people struggle. And this, this is a big struggle today in particular because we're in the middle of a labor shortage. We're. We're trying our best just to get bodies to go into roles just so we can get things done. And so in some situations we may be making decisions and putting wrong people in roles because we're trying to patch a hole rather than looking at things strategically. 

But we have to think about that as we're doing some of these things. Is it going to hurt the rest of the business? Cause put, you may be plugging this hole in. Create a crack in the dam somewhere else because people don't like the culture that's that person's bringing. Hey guys. Adam from the podcast. I hope you are enjoying today's episode. 

Just wanted to ask you a quick favor. If the show has brought you value in some way, would you mind giving us a review and sharing the show? It really helps the show get out there. Also, if you are looking to expand the services that your shop offers and you want to do more than collision work, you should really check out our company Clarity. 

Clarity Coat is a peelable paint that allows body shops to offer color changes cheaper than a repaint, while still looking like real paint. You can also offer clear protection that has no edges and is sprayed instead of laid. Unlike vinyl and ppf, clarity coat can be sanded and polished so you can give your customer the exact look that they are wanting. 

If you are looking to expand your shop services, go to clarity coat.com and fill out our Become an Installer form. All right, let's get back to.  having an apprenticeship type program where you have a, a younger tech working with an older tech mm-hmm. , and you had brought up, you know, maybe there's a compensation model that needs to change there. 

In your mind. Let, let's just throw out all politics and everything like that. If, if you were, if, if you had a shop mm-hmm. , and it was an ideal fairytale. , um, how would you, how would you see that playing out? Well, it's, it, I think you have to kinda look at how do you, it's that whole bench development piece is you need to have a strategic plan as far as how you're going to onboard and bring people through the organization. 

Now, there are some good shops out there that are very good at doing this. They, they bring in, um, they bring in junior techs, they apprentice and train 'em. They learn the culture. There's a lot more of a, uh, alignment to the goals and missions of that business because of the fact that they grew up in the business. 

Mm-hmm. , um, this is, it's very similar to something we do at Sherwin-Williams. We have a program, uh, called a ABM program or a, um, MTP program, so a management trainee program. And it's worked so well for us that our CEO actually came through that program when he was first started in the, in. . But what we do is we bring, we recruit kids. 

I say kids, that's why, you know, I used the terminology, but we recruit young people, usually college-aged people. We bring 'em into the organization, we train 'em in one of our stores and the way the stores operate and they then we, after a period of time through their training, they're promoted into an assistant store manager. 

Mm-hmm. . Then they continue to develop as far as the training matrix, and then ultimately they apply and they move up into other roles, sales reps or o or store manager roles. And that's how we kind of feed the organization. But what happens is, is you have people that since they start right in the organization and groom and come up through it, they, uh, they're completely aligned to the culture, which is different from going out and rec and building your bench by just hiring people from your competi. 

Um, you may go hire the hot shot from a competitor, but do, are they the right fit for the way your business operates? And, you know, uh, they may or may not be, they may not do business the same way your company does business. So, um, part of it is actually building a program in place where you can actually instill that. 

Now when you talk about the compensation piece, you kind of have to look and measure out what the impact is on the compensation that the technician's going to have to do it. . Um, and you gotta make sure it goes back to having the right people in the right seat. You know, just because somebody's a senior tech doesn't mean they're gonna be a great teacher. 

So, global Director of Business Services, what role or things does that, um, entail for your yourself? What are you doing for Sherwin Williams on, you know, on a global scale with that? So, the best way I can say it is that I work with all of our organizations across the. . So I deal with, uh, I deal with all the different markets, so it gives me some insight into what's happening in other parts of the world, which you can kinda look and see some of the things that we're dealing with today. 

And you can look back at Europe and you can say, well, that's something, they chat the bridge they crossed five years ago, and you can just see the changes coming. So I get the great opportunity of that, but I focus on the internal development of our employees around how do they actually deliver value to our customer. 

I actually work with our customers to help them develop and grow their business and to be, become, be the survivors in the industry, the ones that not only survive but thrive. Mm-hmm. . And then I work on our added value programs and I work with strategic partners to make sure that we're able to help them achieve the goals they're trying to do. 

So that's what, that's a lot of what, that's a, a lot of. , but what it really comes down to is, is people and helping the people be successful in delivering value to our customers and helping our customers Deva deliver value to their customers. Alright, that does it for today's Quick Clips. If this episode has brought you value, would you mind giving us a review? 

Also, if you would like to learn more about Clarity Coat and what it can do for your business, please visit us@claritycoat.com. See you on the next one.