Selling Beyond Price: Building Trust and Value in Commercial Sales

What does it take to lead a sales team in a competitive, relationship-driven industry? In this episode of On the Surface, Seth Stevens and Jordan Janet sit down with Bryan Spach, Director of Sales at Reeves Construction Company, to explore the art of selling on values—not just price.

Tune in to hear:
 ✅ Bryan’s journey from hospitality and telecom to 15 years at Vulcan and now Reeves
 ✅ Why relationships and trust matter more than discounts
 ✅ How tools like CRMs and cultural alignment drive long-term success
 ✅ The real difference between sales and marketing—and why both matter

If you’ve ever wondered how to create customer loyalty in a commodity-based business, this conversation is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.

🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you stream.
 🔗 deltacos.com | Follow @DeltaCompanies

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Transcript

*Transcript automatically created by AI*

Seth Stevens (00:05)
Welcome back to On the Surface, where we're talking all things heavy construction, material supply, and general business. I'm one of your hosts, Seth Stevens. This week, Jordan and I are welcoming our first guest, Bryan Spach. Bryan is the director of sales at Reeves and has a lengthy track record in the construction industry. During our conversation, we hit on what it's like to lead a sales team in a large organization.

selling on values rather than products or pricing, and much more. I hope you enjoy.

Seth Stevens (00:42)
What kind of degree did you get?

Bryan Spach (00:45)
So the first one was travel, tourism, commercial recreation. Yes. Which a lot of people know it as HRTA, hotel, restaurant.

Seth Stevens (00:44)
That's cool.

⁓ okay. Kind of like hospitality management is what it's called locally.

Bryan Spach (01:02)
Yeah, so that took a turn on my senior year because I was down at the Ritz Carlton and Amelia Island, Florida. I was working there as an internship. And during my time there, they came in and cut 30 of the leaders. So basically the whole staff that was in leadership, they went to self-directed work teams. And so I decided at that point, I better get my act together, go back to school.

Seth Stevens (01:30)
Yeah.

Bryan Spach (01:31)
and do something different. spent, got my last semester, finished that one, went to Texas where my parents were, hung out with them for a little while, worked at Enron. Yeah, yeah, so a lot of fun and some of my stories with where I was. This was before they, of course, Ken Lay was really charismatic, so you can kind of understand

Seth Stevens (01:45)
⁓ Crazy! Okay.

Yeah.

Bryan Spach (01:59)
me at least post all that mess that anytime he'd catch you in a hall or catch you ⁓ in rooms when he was speaking to crowds, very, very charismatic. Obviously know how that ended. Those guys are, some of them are deceased, but that was a mess. decided while I was there, I wanted to go back to school and get an MBA, but I also knew I needed to get a better

undergraduate degree, who came back to UNC, finance degree, and then rolled from there into Wake Forest.

Seth Stevens (02:31)
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Bryan Spach (02:42)
Tepehills.

No, no, I don't want them. They didn't want me. I didn't want them. I didn't need them.

Seth Stevens (02:49)
UNCG Wake Forest is in Wake Forest. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Spach (02:53)
Although sports, I don't get as much enjoyment out of wake as most people do with the...

Seth Stevens (02:59)
Yeah.

A little bit, a little bit better recently, but.

All right. So what do you, sorry, if you said this, what degree, what graduate degree did you get? Your MBA. MBA at Wake. Yeah.

Bryan Spach (03:10)
Yeah, it wasn't concentrated.

After finance. now I

can almost speak your language, but I wouldn't try.

Seth Stevens (03:20)
I don't know.

I bet you could. Nah. Okay.

Bryan Spach (03:23)
Nah, I got AI, can help.

Seth Stevens (03:26)
That's true. Okay, so then what did you, where'd you go work? Did you do any internships while you were doing that or?

Bryan Spach (03:32)
No, while I was in grad school, I was doing, I had moved away from telephone sales. was in telephone sales during that second degree. was working for a company called Altel, taking it a bigger name because it had been purchased a couple of times. Altel, which a fun story with that when I started, ⁓ I was at a Walmart. So way back when, and you guys might be too young to recognize this.

In the old days, you buy phones in little kiosks or on the side of a aisle in a Walmart. And so when I first started, that's what I had. had a little side and a little space, no bigger than this table in a Walmart.

Seth Stevens (04:24)
That's crazy.

Bryan Spach (04:25)
crazy.

Yeah, it was it was unique. And then we were able to get a kiosk and I worked with the ⁓ manager of that Walmart to give me a kiosk in the best place possible right outside the electronics department because the electronics department seemed to have the most traffic. Because you don't really want it up front where people are paying and leaving and and or running through to customer service to drop off their stuff. They're mad they're waiting.

Seth Stevens (04:52)
Yeah.

Bryan Spach (04:53)
You want them while they're in their experience shopping, right? So put that out there and it became a one, I was an information booth, but from the standpoint of selling sales went through the roof. ⁓

Seth Stevens (05:05)
You

are already slinging just wheeling and dealing back then with prime real estate

Bryan Spach (05:09)
feeling it. Prime real estate.

Now I also became, when I talk about the information booth, I was, I was it. You want to know where towels were? I knew where towels were. You wanted to know where all your ⁓ hardware was that you needed? They asked me. It was fun. It was really fun. And you know how people get on the intercom and do stuff at the Walmart? If you go there, maybe it's been a while, but

Seth Stevens (05:21)
yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah.

Bryan Spach (05:39)
That was me. Telling them about my phone, telling them about the... It was fun.

Seth Stevens (05:40)
Okay. Legit.

You were full bore customer service. Full bore. That's great. Okay.

Bryan Spach (05:48)
Walmart.

That was real good.

It was ended up winning some sales trips from that, know, going to St. Thomas, going to Phoenix, had some good. ⁓

Seth Stevens (06:05)
like ⁓ vacation-y sales trips, like go there for conferences or meetings or anything.

Bryan Spach (06:12)
This was thanks to for those of us that were capable of winning that trip from. ⁓

Seth Stevens (06:14)
and stuff. ⁓

cool. So did they line up stuff for you to do or? No. Yeah.

Bryan Spach (06:22)
yeah.

Yeah. You were, you felt like you did a good job and that they were, they were giving you thanks for.

Seth Stevens (06:28)
Yeah, yeah. That was fun. That's cool.

Jordan Janet (06:30)
That was your first role in sales as a job.

Bryan Spach (06:34)
Yes. Yeah. Outside of, mean, if you want to go back to the good old paper routes, I had some paper routes and during a paper route, the company wanted more, ⁓ more deliveries. So they said here, if you get X amount, I think it was like 10. If you hit 10 new households, you a nice, this is really fun because I don't drink sodas much anymore.

You get a case of soda and the soda that it was, I can't even tell you because it was some like off off name that you probably would not give your enemies nowadays. But I was I was. Yeah, probably. Yeah, something they just made in somebody's garage. But I went out and sold the living daylights out of some some newspapers for my soda. That's all. Yeah. Cases of soda lining up in the house, you know.

Seth Stevens (07:04)
Dude.

The newspaper's brand, probably.

Yeah.

Bryan Spach (07:33)
in the kitchen like couldn't even fit in the fridge.

Jordan Janet (07:35)
So now you were selling cell phones, was that while you were going for your MBA?

Bryan Spach (07:42)
Yes, was well actually for the second degree and then during ⁓ During that time frame. I went from the Walmart to an in-store in Winston Salem, North Carolina and then to business sales while in business sales ⁓ Things were really good so they put me in charge of some retail stores. I'm in the retail stores. I had three retail stores at that time and

It was required of management to spend Saturdays, three of your four Saturdays, ⁓ at the stores. Well, at that time I had switched over to or started my MBA. And so we had a lot of group work, MBA, tons of group work. And ⁓ I said, I can't do both. And what I want in my life is this MBA more than I want to

do this for all tell. moved over to ⁓ nothing for a few moments, moments being maybe 30 days or less. And I was a client of Scottrade. And so I went and said, Hey, you got anything that I can do while I'm finishing this MBA? And so they hired me to kind of work front desk and just intern, it was actually officially an intern that I did there. I

Seth Stevens (08:50)
Yeah

Okay.

Cool.

Bryan Spach (09:10)
was still working just not at a level that that I was in. So I did that while finishing an MBA and befriended a guy while I was in my MBA that when we got to graduation he was looking for he was getting a promotion in the construction business with Vulcan Materials. And so he asked if I wanted to go to Charlotte with him because we were in Winston Greensboro.

Seth Stevens (09:15)
Yeah.

Hmm, okay.

Bryan Spach (09:39)
was where we live, but at Winston for the school. it sounded great. Sounded like the kind of people that I wanted to be around because that's what he pretty much sold it on. It wasn't a sale of money. It was a sale of people in the industry. know, this is what it looks like. And that sounds like a great place to be. Let's go. So my wife and I that were recently moved to Charlotte. We had

Seth Stevens (09:57)
Yeah.

when married.

Bryan Spach (10:10)
little bit later had a baby on the way, our boy Keegan. And so we kind of hitting hitting all the buttons of stress right at the same time.

Seth Stevens (10:13)
Cool. Yeah.

Yeah,

but yeah worked out for sure. No, weren't auto hire at Vulcan because of Spach and there you go. Yeah, all our Star Trek fans out there really have to interview

Bryan Spach (10:31)
Spach at Vulcan. Yes. And I will tell you, I had so many customers that you'd sit there and watch because you like right now, if I'm in here, I'm not going to answer a phone and you see or you feel it and it just boom, boom, boom. And you'd look and watch the same number calling in. Well, finally, they'd leave a voicemail. Right. And then I get to the voicemail later. ⁓ my gosh. Just my God. Spach at Vulcan. Are you kidding me?

There's some weird people out

Seth Stevens (11:03)
But I love it. That's hilarious.

Bryan Spach (11:05)
Do

you want to buy? Because, know, Spike Evoken, I'm trying to sell you some stuff.

Seth Stevens (11:09)
Yeah.

Jordan Janet (11:10)
So your first role at Vulcan was in sales. What I'm trying to get to is, and then I want you to finish your story, was your sales role in cell phones. Was that kind of your first introduction to sales and what hooked you to that career path?

Bryan Spach (11:13)
Yes.

That yeah, you know outside of that the fun with selling selling newspapers, right? The the big piece and that was another one that was friends that talked about it and got me into ⁓ the cell phones. But and that was the miles per hour ⁓ was Ron the Audubon. Right. There was so much going on because I'm talking when we started or when I started there it was phones weren't smart.

And we weren't smart. We were learning. Like it was so bare bones. You're talking back at the backbone days for anybody that remembers that. There was a start tack that was cool, but we didn't even have caller ID yet. Like as I was there, the years I was there, we started getting caller ID, voicemail, all the things that today people cannot live without. We were...

We were just starting in that world. So it was so much fun. ⁓ And then, you know, as I was progressing through with that, it was just fun to be in a different role and contributing in different ways.

Seth Stevens (12:38)
Yeah. So how long were you at Vulcan?

Bryan Spach (12:42)
Vulcan, was 15 years with Vulcan.

Seth Stevens (12:44)
Okay.

And so you started as like a salesperson, entry salesperson. What did you, what was your last role there? And then you came straight to us, right?

Bryan Spach (12:57)
I did. started with Vulkan sales in the Charlotte market. And fun part of that is when interviewing with the area manager, that was my comment. You know, there's always that question of where do see yourself in three to five years? I said, I see myself in your seat in five years. So that happened only just not his specific, but his role. So his role was area manager. ⁓

Fortunately, in those five years, we did really well, had a phenomenal team that I was a part of, great leadership. ⁓ And Charlotte was booming. Charlotte continues to boom today, but everything was great. had ⁓ just the entire formula was spot on. So got to ⁓ get promoted to an area manager role in what we called North and ⁓

North and West North Carolina. Okay. So was up in the or central central and West. It was up in Greensboro, Winston-Salem all the way in through Asheville. Boom. North Carolina. That's why that sticker jumped out to me because it's been a lot of time up there, especially this time of year because it's so gorgeous up there. Leaves change and whatnot.

Seth Stevens (14:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah, it's very pretty.

Yeah. Yeah. So.

Bryan Spach (14:22)
Did

that for ⁓ three years. And then there was an opportunity to move to Texas ⁓ in a similar role. So it was more lateral, spent time in committees and training and over the years getting to know different people. so it was a great opportunity to go to the Dallas, which of course lent itself a whole different ballgame where the state of North Carolina

Seth Stevens (14:29)
Okay.

area.

Bryan Spach (14:52)
It doesn't do what just Dallas alone.

Seth Stevens (14:54)
Yeah, that's another booing area.

Bryan Spach (14:57)
60,

I think we had it at 62 million tons in that Dallas Fort Worth market. So yes, yes. So just mind boggling ⁓ what was going on with their growth. Just a lot of fun to be a part of. And then we also part of our team, we were out in West Texas, part of that. So was kind of North and West Texas, which got to learn a lot with them because also learning different modes of transportation.

Seth Stevens (15:04)
in tons of aggregate.

Okay.

Yeah.

Bryan Spach (15:27)
wasn't just trucked. ⁓ We had rail in that environment as well. got to learn that. Huge state and moving. You don't exactly have good solid construction aggregate everywhere in that state, right? Fault lines are apparent throughout the United States. So a little bit of rock, limestone that we had in certain areas and then other stuff had to be pulled in from other states. Oklahoma is what we at that time

Seth Stevens (15:33)
state.

Yeah.

others

Bryan Spach (15:56)
We being the old Vulcan. ⁓ Spent about two years there and an opportunity to become a area, a regional manager with a company in the Houston area, which was just call it all of the water touching parts of the state because it was really Beaumont all the way down to Brownsville. And that gets to the next transportation mode and that's blue water.

Seth Stevens (15:58)
Yeah.

Sure.

Okay.

Okay.

Bryan Spach (16:26)
company

there had three Panama ships that were bringing aggregate in from ⁓ near Cozumel near Cancun. Whoa. Had a phenomenal facility there doing upwards of 12 million tons that one facility alone. So it's been about a year there and then an opportunity to come back into North Carolina back actually into Charlotte still with Vulcan.

Seth Stevens (16:55)
Okay.

Bryan Spach (16:55)
and took that opportunity because we had some family needs.

Perfect, ⁓ perfect opportunity.

Seth Stevens (17:03)
That's awesome. Yeah. And then after that, Dereave.

Bryan Spach (17:06)
Then

came to Reeves. ⁓

Seth Stevens (17:11)
gonna talk

because it's a good story. hope you do.

Bryan Spach (17:14)
So when I started with Vulcan back in 2006, ⁓ one of my customers was Todd Quigg. To spend some time with him back in those early days. And then when I went to the central and western part of the state, he became a customer again. So we, even when I moved to Texas, we stayed in contact, we were friends, right? And that's really...

Seth Stevens (17:22)
Okay. ⁓

Bryan Spach (17:41)
part of what I try to do and what I try and instill in anybody that's in a sales role is you're building the relationship to make friends that just happen to be customers. And that's him. So he was a friend that just happened to be a customer back then, then just became ultimately a friend because he was no longer a customer. Reeves was looking to do something different, looking to put more of a structure in place for sales. And so he and I connected.

Seth Stevens (17:52)
That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bryan Spach (18:11)
called me in and we met and over the course of about six months ⁓ kept highlighting the opportunity. It sounded phenomenal from the word go really, but it was a process process that we as Reeves were going through. thankfully, after meeting the boss, the president, Zach ⁓ and Andrew, our director of HR and Rob Lohr, VP and

Seth Stevens (18:21)
Yeah

Bryan Spach (18:40)
believe that might have been it at that time. It was, I could tell there was a fit. There was a with me and those gentlemen ⁓ as well as what I knew the new role would entail. It was perfect and it's been perfect for closing in on five years.

Seth Stevens (18:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. So the role is director of sales. Director sales, yes sir. So what is that? So that was a new role to Reeves because we didn't really have that structure, right? Correct. So how?

Did, were you looked to to structure that role and decide what it looked like or was there a idea there?

Bryan Spach (19:24)
So I think there was a foundation. ⁓ But the idea and part of that process was, you know, I'd spent 15 years with a company that has that so structured. It's down to, they've got a playbook that you pretty much know what you're going to do in every meeting. You know what you're going to do most of your days. To me, almost too much. The sales professional enjoys having a little ⁓

Seth Stevens (19:26)
Okay.

Right.

Bryan Spach (19:53)
leeway or ⁓ creativity and what they do to their own little style, which you know, you don't want them having too much style, but you do want some style approaches to adapt and do their job in the manner that's best for the company. ⁓ there was the foundation and then lots of opportunity to bring in what I knew was good, what I knew was too much or

Seth Stevens (20:10)
test.

and now.

Yeah.

Bryan Spach (20:23)
not effective is probably a better way look at

Seth Stevens (20:25)
Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. Yes.

Bryan Spach (20:28)
was part of the appeal to me is, use what you've been learning for all these years to come in and make an impact and help develop us as an organization, help develop people that, know, the majority of, not the majority, all of our team members, the sales professionals were reporting to operations managers at that time. you know, they've got a lot on their plate.

Seth Stevens (20:35)
Yeah.

So just.

Bryan Spach (20:53)
sit there

and try and develop sales as well as develop all the operations team members and worry about equipment, worry about the P &L. It's a lot. And this gave one facet of the business an opportunity to peel off and go focused, right? More functional focus.

Seth Stevens (21:09)
Yeah.

So a lot of our areas already had sales professionals. I you were kind of saying that. Yeah. We just kind of restructured it to report up through a sales support arm. Put them in a focused environment. That's cool.

Bryan Spach (21:26)
Yeah, I think it's been really helpful for not just the professionals that are in place, but also for the organization.

Seth Stevens (21:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a big feat too. So like what did you find as one of the most useful things coming in, setting that up, like creating buy-in for that team? You know, because that's all new. All new.

Bryan Spach (21:51)
It was

all new. Yeah, especially considering if back to my style thing, if you had your style, how you did your day, you did your standard 50 I'll use. ⁓ Now somebody's telling you, hey, this is probably a better way to do it. It's going to be more helpful. It's going to be should lead to better results. ⁓ I think the benefit of listening to what was going on and listening to some of the needs led to

the opportunity for buy in. Because I do think there was a need in their mind to have some things different, right? That there were times when they needed support and maybe it just couldn't happen because somebody was drawn in 15 directions. You get somebody that's, again, focused, that's it. There is no 15 directions. They should be 100 % in support of their need.

Seth Stevens (22:43)
or sh-

Bryan Spach (22:50)
at that particular moment, here, wait, I've got to go do this, I've got to, you know, whatever the case may be. But I think that helped there on the front end. And then having all of these pieces in place that with the right delivery was good for them to see, well, that does make sense. That's certainly going to help me see what I've been doing or help me see what I need to do. I haven't had that.

Right. Some of the tools that were made available pretty quick were tools that you'd heard about like a CRM. We'll just use that. A CRM, 91 % of anybody that's selling something is using a CRM. We didn't really have a ⁓ value added CRM at that time. We had one, but it wasn't, it was antiquated to some degree and not being utilized the way it could or a new one could.

Seth Stevens (23:29)
Right, yeah.

Yeah. Which CRM stands for? Manage. Yeah. Basically track visits, notes, ⁓ all that kind of stuff.

Bryan Spach (23:51)
customer relationship management.

That's

helping memorialize what you've been doing, what's been said, what will be helpful later. Give it to you in one.

Seth Stevens (24:04)
Yeah.

So that you or anybody else could come back to it when you meet again or whatever and you say, I have all these touch points, all these notes. You know, here's the history.

Bryan Spach (24:19)
Yeah, that in when you have overlap across regional boundaries or market areas, whatever business you're in, you now give the entire team a tool to look and see what's been going on with that particular customer.

Seth Stevens (24:36)
Yeah.

Jordan Janet (24:36)
think too, what's interesting about a CRM is that ⁓ it's just another mode of measurement against performance, right? So as we've talked about in other culture change ⁓ environments, what gets measured gets done. And so your activities in that CRM, you can directly correlate those to the performance of your...

sales team and their goals and then that can be another measurement piece of it, you know, because obviously the end result and again, like what we talk about with safety culture change, you can measure the end result, but the end results already happened. What are you doing to obtain that end result? What are your, what are your performance indicators that you're after to get there? And I think the absence of a CRM highlights, and I know it at Delta to a degree and maybe it sounds like with Reeves as well,

⁓ you know, to the outsider looking in having this big focus on a sales team and a sales specific drive seems foreign to people for our type of business or industry. Right. Now to somebody like you, they came from a Vulcan that's not foreign, but like I was meeting with a friend, ⁓ yesterday evening and he thought it was like, he, he, he could just tell by the look on his face. He's like, you guys have like a.

You have like a sales department and a sales manager and a sales director for selling rocks and asphalt. I was like, yeah, we do. Right. So I don't know. I kind of wanted to bring that up and just have you talk a little bit about, you know, ⁓ what is the purpose of a sales team? Why is that such a focus for Zach and other leaders in this industry? What is the importance of that? ⁓ And, you know, how do we drive that?

Bryan Spach (26:29)
think the joy and all good points, I think the joy in having a sales team is you're developing the relationships that matter and give you the capability to, ⁓ people like to buy from people, right? There is a ⁓ trust that happens when you ⁓ know somebody, you know the person that you're ordering from or ⁓ that you give your money to. ⁓

That is why you want a structured sales team to build the back to my point earlier to build the the buddy, the friend, lifelong friend. It just happens to be that customer that you that you transact with. I think where your competition comes into play, if if you're a better person and you're providing more value through just maybe

the friendship that you're going to see an opportunity to sell more of your product, your service. And we see this in our business and I think it's seen in plenty of others that when there's a lack of respect, there's a lack of trust, there's just that person that you have, well this is that guy or gal and they don't want to buy from them.

Even when it's cheaper, there's this desire to go to the person that they know, that they care for, that they know cares about them. Oh, I just had an anniversary and I got a thank you card for my anniversary from my Reeves or Delta sales professional. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Oh, and we just had a baby and I got a gift from...

my Reeves or Delta sales professional, because that's stuff that we do, is we pay attention. And back to the CRM, the CRM gives us that capability to memorialize it so that you don't, especially as a 52-year-old man, I don't have to remember that, because I barely remember mine, remember theirs. So I have the opportunity through that system to get a reminder. Get a reminder, we've got a 71-year-old on our team that he's the best one at making sure that everybody's

birthday is touched. That's another touch point to show that he cares or we care about who the person is, not just about what their transaction is. And I tell you this, it's not about, okay, well, they buy the most. He doesn't care that they buy the most. It's anybody and everybody that he feels this attachment to. And I think they see that, they feel that, and they recognize it's just as genuine as he is to them, they are to him. And then

we get those opportunities to provide solutions to them when they want them.

Seth Stevens (29:26)
Yeah, man, that's fantastic. You hit a couple questions that I was wanting to ask right in that. Like what type of value do we bring to customers as a larger company? And it sounds like a lot of it is relationships. what you said, people want to buy from people. They want to know who they're buying from. And when you sell or provide a very good experience where somebody trusts and

knows the person that they're going to call for material. They love that. Do you think that's solely the value we're providing or the majority of it? Or do you think that there's anything else that goes along with it? Like to be better than competitors because in this industry specifically in our markets and stuff that we operate in across the southeast and Midwest is we're competing against a lot of mom and pops.

Like there are other large competitors sprinkled in there, but a lot of them are mom and pop. like how, what kind of value do we bring?

Bryan Spach (30:33)
I think what I talked about right there, the relationships, the people, I know it's, it seems like the buzz when you talk to anybody, why do you work for who you work for? It's people. It is the people we hire and whether we're just gifted and fortunate and blessed to get the people we get, ⁓ or we do a great job equally as well. We have the best people that are out there and showing that genuine care because just a

Seth Stevens (30:57)
Yeah.

Bryan Spach (31:03)
something for the listener. We're not commissioned. Our people don't make more because they sell you more. So they're not there with a selfish intent to line their pockets because you buy more. They're there because they care about them. They care about you as the purchaser and the friend to do what you're doing with us. They care and they feel let down when unfortunately we have a plant go down or something that darn it, I can't.

That's one of the hardest things for our team members is when they can't provide that solution. Again, not because they've now lost money. They haven't lost a thing that hurts them financially. They have lost the opportunity to take care of their friends. So I think that's number one. Number one is just our value and our genuine people caring about it is that the people that they're dealing with.

Seth Stevens (31:35)
out of their control.

Bryan Spach (32:00)
fortunate to talk to every day or however often they get to talk to them and be in front of them as often as they get to be in front of them. Sure. The other pieces that I think are next in line, of course, quality. We provide a phenomenal quality. get kudos all the time. Our accolades coming from folks that we get to hear about, man, that's the best mix I've ever seen. Or let's just assume the occasional time that something happens, the plant did something wrong. ⁓

or the mix, something weird happened. we fix it. We take it we've got 32 quality control offices or

Seth Stevens (32:44)
personnel that are

Bryan Spach (32:46)
Yeah,

labs that are able to on a moment's notice get out there and help ⁓ provide again in a genuine fashion, ⁓ the fix or the solution or just the assessment. Tell them, hey, this isn't us, it's them or it doesn't really matter. We'll get it fixed however we need to get it fixed. ⁓ And then our opportunity to be there when they want us to be there. More times than not, we're asked for ⁓

Seth Stevens (32:58)
Yeah.

Bryan Spach (33:15)
little extra and where it's out of the standard, I'm going back to the 50s outside of the standard 50 we try to do our best to rise that level of expectation and be there and be available. So back to that, just the answering the telephone. It's mind boggling to think that we can beat against folks that don't answer a telephone. Our folks are either going to answer when you call or they're going to get back to you in a very, very timely fashion to ensure.

that your needs are taken care of.

Seth Stevens (33:47)
Yeah, that's good. You brought up something interesting that I didn't have on my radar, but what's your opinion on commission-based?

Jordan Janet (33:56)
Hey.

Seth Stevens (33:58)
related to sales professionals and whether it incentivize it. Do you think it really incentivizes them and is it a good tool or?

Bryan Spach (34:07)
Did somebody pay you to ask this question?

This is a loaded question, but I will tell you that when I walk through why we're great at being the people people and caring and showing genuine genuineness. I've been in a commission environment, you lose some of that lose some of that capability because then you get people to do things that that might not be in the best interest of the customer in order to line their pockets and we have a great group. I don't

Seth Stevens (34:30)
Yeah.

Bryan Spach (34:42)
I don't see that happening with this group, but you know, you never know. They may move on to something different and we hire somebody else in and they see, okay, I can maximize by doing this. And next thing you know, the this is detrimental to the company, but beneficial to them. that's where it's really hard. We've kind of thought about it over the years is, you know, is there something we can do? ⁓ But there's nothing that lines up perfectly well. Stay true to the customer.

Seth Stevens (34:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Bryan Spach (35:12)
And then...

Seth Stevens (35:13)
Well that makes sense.

Jordan Janet (35:14)
Again,

I think you're ⁓ back to what my point was with the CRM and your leading indicators. If you're commission-based pay, you're putting the sticks and carrots out in front of the end result, not the proactive result. And the proactive are the proactive measures to get to that end result. And the proactive measures to get to that is what you're talking about. That's building the relationships, making the connections. The commission-based pay kind of swivels your focus.

somewhere totally different that as you just said, may not be, you know, actually motivating the, the healthy thing that we're trying to do. And that's build these relationships with our, with our customers. might start sacrificing some of the good stuff just to try to get to that commission based pay, right? Yeah.

Bryan Spach (36:05)
So you hear me say sales professional, hear most of our vernacular around here is sales professional. We don't use sales representative because that's to me, that's the designation is there, they're a professional in a professional environment acting as a, for the benefit of the whole, not, not for what a typical sales representative is. And that's out there running hard to do everything they can to maximize their, I did.

Seth Stevens (36:27)
Just...

That's a conscious cultural decision. Yeah, to it as that. Yeah, that makes sense. I got a couple other things on my mind. I know you got to get on the road. So we'll, I'll try to get to them, but I'm curious what like our typical customer base looks like. Like there's different customers out there, obviously different customers for asphalt versus aggregate.

Bryan Spach (36:39)
Yes, sir.

Seth Stevens (37:03)
And then I imagine that there's different customers even within those products, right? Like we have large customers that are doing state work. We medium-sized customers that are maybe subcontractors or have a lot of private contracts, especially paving or ⁓ laying out aggregate for, you know, maybe loves, truck stops or solar farms right now are hot or whatever. And then we have little customers that

are buying loads here and there for residential stuff. What's, is that accurate? Like, do you see the same thing? Like as far as customer segmentation, I guess, and are they handled differently? Their approach is the same. Does make sense?

Bryan Spach (37:49)
makes sense. And yeah, you're hitting about on all of them, I could probably add to it. But I think the important part of your question is that the treatment does not need to change based on size of volume, right? You use the term a little bit. at least what I hope I instill on with us is and I get in return is we don't look at somebody as different because of their volume, ⁓ that we look at them back to the

the relationship. Look at them as an important friend that happens to be a customer. And the treatment isn't necessarily different. So when they show up, we don't, and I'll use the asphalt, they show up with their truck. We don't put their truck behind our truck or anybody else. If they got there first, guess what? I don't care that you buy one load today, one load this year. Your truck is right there at number one.

Seth Stevens (38:35)
Yeah.

Bryan Spach (38:44)
Just from the respect standpoint, you can't build trust if you start changing how you treat folks based on an economic value, right? We don't play games with you're a number, right? We don't do that as an internal company. I've never felt that way in almost five years. So why in the world would we look at that as to the people that really pay our paychecks, right? The company, it shows the company's name on it, but our customers are the ones that pay our paychecks.

Seth Stevens (39:14)
Yeah. Are there any? Go ahead.

Jordan Janet (39:16)
was just going to say another example of that that I've seen play out here at Delta at our asphalt plants is some of those lower volume customers when they need something that might be difficult for us to meet, right? When they have a request that might be difficult for us to meet. I've seen our asphalt plant team come together and say, let's figure this out for a lower volume customer. We do bigger volumes internally and there's bigger volume external customers, but let's figure this out for this guy.

Seth Stevens (39:45)
Yeah, that's delivering top quality. You know, that's delivering top quality service at every turn, right? Yeah.

Bryan Spach (39:54)
to the culture you know you have that culture running rampant throughout that it's all important.

Seth Stevens (39:58)
Yeah.

it ⁓ the same approach for asphalt as aggregates or do you have to take a slightly different approach because the business is slightly different?

Bryan Spach (40:11)
When talking about the customer, no, I'd say that the approach is exactly the same. ⁓ What might be different is one is a perishable product versus the other that can sit for years. ⁓ Maybe the communication is a little different. You're certainly wanting to communicate ⁓ more often with your asphalt customers because you've got to ensure the plant

Seth Stevens (40:18)
care.

Okay.

Bryan Spach (40:38)
has the capability to put what they need up in the air in the time that they need it because everything is on a tight schedule in asphalt where aggregate yes there's probably a tight schedule but that's the number one before asphalt gets done right you're putting that rock down before asphalt goes on top of it so it's not not as important they show up more times than not our our stockpiles are prepared and ready for sure

Seth Stevens (41:05)
Yeah.

Bryan Spach (41:06)
That'd probably be the only difference is the communication. ⁓ More prevalent and more equally more.

Seth Stevens (41:09)
Okay.

Yeah, I kind of wanted to go back to something that you that we were talking about earlier like kind of related to CRMs and that kind of stuff. What do you? Think are the best metrics to look at for sales?

Bryan Spach (41:28)
Number one, face to face ⁓ things you don't build the trust, you don't build the respect, you don't build the friendship without being in front of folks. I know we're in a different world. There's this teams thing, there's this Google meets and all that stuff. I promise the probably 90 % of those people that are pretending to get to know you through that they're they're sitting there with a different screen and they're doing something else.

Seth Stevens (41:43)
Yeah.

Bryan Spach (41:57)
at the same time. you don't get divided, undivided attention, you get divided attention where you're face to face with somebody, you've got it, you got their time. Hopefully you're doing it ⁓ in an environment that they're not looking around watching their teams out on a job site, which happens, but still face to face is the number one.

Seth Stevens (42:16)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah. Yeah. That's your top metric. You can throw all the other stuff out. Face-to-face meetings. Yeah. There's a lot of research, especially post-COVID, I think, of, you know, physical human relationships and how important they are.

Bryan Spach (42:25)
face to face meeting

Jordan Janet (42:38)
COVID was a wild experiment to prove that very point. There was a lot of struggles with people just in general, mental health and not being able to make those connections. So I think, I mean, that's a, it was a war.

Seth Stevens (42:54)
wired to need to connect that way.

Bryan Spach (42:58)
a

social society, right? No matter what is happening, I think at the end of the day, we're still a social society. Why do companies want everybody back in the office? Because they know people need to be around each other. It's very important. So why, if we're trying to build relationships, would we not be in front of people?

Seth Stevens (43:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's why I didn't want to talk to you about this over team. Yeah, there you go. possible. So ⁓ I it. What? I think oftentimes sales and marketing get lumped together like in a lot of terminology and organizations. What do you think's the difference?

Bryan Spach (43:24)
I'll fly in the town and boom.

⁓ I'm at the same ⁓ recognition you are. It goes together. So you need both working together. ⁓ So I wouldn't, there is no difference. There's a different ⁓ approach maybe, but that approach really, ⁓ if it's working the way it's supposed to from a marketing standpoint, it's with sales as the ultimate goal. You know, lot of what we do with our marketing efforts, we've got great

Seth Stevens (43:46)
Okay.

Bryan Spach (44:10)
professionals that we work with ⁓ in our office at Duncan to ensure that we're trying to, as a village, as a team, get to the ultimate goal of taking care of customers and highlighting to them what we have available, highlighting to them what's going on in our environments, different ⁓ hours or new products. But that is a big help because of what they're doing. We can't

Seth Stevens (44:23)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Bryan Spach (44:39)
We can't get face to face with everybody as fast as we need to to ⁓ employ what we're trying to get to them information wise. A marketing department knows how to do it, knows how to do it creatively, knows how to do it in a much better ⁓ approach than we would on just the sales side.

Seth Stevens (44:47)
Yeah.

Okay, that's great. Man, this has been not surprising, but fantastic for sure. One thing I do wanna kinda, I think is cool, I've listened to this diary of a CEO podcast and every episode when they interview somebody at the end, he asks somebody to leave a question for the next person. And the question, know, then we would, unfortunately you're the first one.

So don't have a question to answer. ⁓ man. But you can leave one and don't worry, we'll have you back. So you get looped back in. But if you could ask a question to the next person, you don't know who it is. You don't know what the what the topic is or anything.

Bryan Spach (45:41)
Well, first, can I ask you two a question? What would a turkey say to the president if he got to meet him?

Seth Stevens (45:43)
Okay.

Uh, you know, I had a feeling that we wouldn't get out of this without a death joke. I don't know. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy.

Bryan Spach (45:57)
Good f- Pardon me.

I got more, but I know you don't want that. So to your next guest, if you were in this, I'm using this from a recent leader that is helping a lot of us in our company. ⁓ If you were back at age 25, what would you tell yourself?

Seth Stevens (46:28)
Wow.

Bryan Spach (46:31)
really

great introspective look, self-reflection, and think it'd be great to put that on whoever you next get

Seth Stevens (46:37)
No doubt. All right. You set the bar high right out the gate. I love it. But yeah, I mean, I did too with the question or the idea, I guess. All right. Great, man. Yeah, it's I mean, you're fantastic at what you do. Love connecting with you all the time. Anytime you're in town, let us know. Yeah. We'll for sure hook up for a whole fashion or a dinner and podcast if you're available.

Bryan Spach (46:42)
I shamelessly.

And this was awesome.

Thank you.

some

places I need to try around here and wherever you're DJing.

Seth Stevens (47:08)
For sure. Alright.

Seth Stevens (47:15)
I always enjoy talking to Bryan and I typically learn something new every time we talk. A point that stuck out to me in this conversation is that he is so confident in our products and quality, allowing him to be laser focused on creating a relationship with a customer and providing values. And that speaks volumes for our teams as a whole. Please rate our show and leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

and check out Delta on all social media platforms at Delta Companies and our website at deltaCOS.com. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.