Untangled sales

by Richard Vurva

What do you see in the picture at right?

If you see a bunch of tangled hoses, award yourself two points for having a firm grasp of the obvious. Heres a better answer that earns you 100 points: Its an opportunity to sell hose reels.

Any time you go into a plant, you can suggest, Hey, you should get these hoses and cables off the floor. It will make it safer, a lot neater and easier to move around a plant, says Dave Guilzon, national sales manager for Hannay Reels of Westerlo, N.Y.

Hose reels are used in a variety of markets, including plants and factories, service stations, airports, fire/rescue stations and utility companies. Thats both good news and bad news.

Because reels are used in so many industries, its a challenge to penetrate several different markets with limited time and people resources, says Brad Cox, vice president of Coxreels in Tempe, Ariz. The good news is that when any one of the markets hits on hard times, that represents just one part of the potential.

So selling hose reels can be a hedge against bad economic times.

Coxs advice to distributor salespeople is to go where the hose goes.

Anywhere youre dealing with 15 feet of hose or more turns into an application for a hose reel, he says. Wherever hose is used, we provide a more efficient way of using hose and a way of maintaining it for a longer life.

Getting hoses off the floor and onto reels accomplishes three things, according to reel manufacturers. It makes plants safer, more efficient and can impact a companys bottom line. Distributor salespeople who are on their toes can use those points to their advantage.

1) Reels make plants safer.

Hoses and cables crisscrossing a plant floor are safety hazards. Slips, trips and falls constitute a majority of general industry accidents and cause 15 percent of all accidental deaths, according to OSHA. Installing reels can go a long way toward improving plant safety.

2) Reels are time savers.

When a worker is finished doing a wash job or a grease job, all he has to do is give a tug on the hose and it goes back in the reel, says Guilzon. The next time, when he needs the hose, he just pulls it out. He doesnt worry about tangles or knots.

3) Reels can impact a companys bottom line.

Hoses that are stepped on, driven over by forklifts and knotted or kinked are susceptible to damage. A crushed or kinked hose that exhibits an outside dimension reduction of less than 20 percent indicates internal damage.

Years ago, people werent as concerned about managing hose, says Cox. That seems to be changing quite a bit with the cost of hose going up. A hose reel can help end-users manage hose from a cost savings standpoint.

Quantify the reel value
Simply talking about the value of hose reels may not be enough. Many customers now require distributors to document savings and prove cost-cutting efforts.

Reelcraft developed a chart (above) that salespeople can use to demonstrate the cost of a leak in an air hose commonly found in industrial facilities. A hole as small as 1/16th of an inch in an air hose operating at 100 psi pressure loses 4.25 cubic feet of air per minute. That works out to 255 cubic feet per hour and 6,120 cubic feet per day. At an average cost of 41 cents per kilowatt hour of power, it amounts to more than $620 per year in energy loss.

Bill Martin, marketing manager for Reelcraft in Columbia City, Ind., says most distributor salespeople dont take the time to document how a hose reel can cut costs. Doing so, however, can demonstrate your point of differentiation.

If you take the time to do this, it sets you apart from the competition, he says. Even if you dont go through the entire exercise, identifying problem areas at least gets them thinking. You need a program to accomplish that, otherwise the only thing the customer can evaluate you on is price.

Prepare for the sale
Before beginning a sales presentation, arm yourself with as much information as you can about how and where your customer uses hoses.

First, do they use hose? If they use hose, how much? How often is it replaced? When it is replaced, what are problems associated with the hose? Are there handling problems? Sanitation issues? Leaks? General handling inefficiencies? Sort through hose handling issues, then define the costs. For example, if a maintenance employee earns $20 an hour and spends 15 minutes hauling hoses around the plant, it costs a company $5 every time he touches the hose.

Before recommending a hose reel, an obvious fact you need to know is the length and weight of the hose. But you also need to know where the reel will be installed and what product moves through the hose.

If the material is grease or a heavy fluid, for example, its important to know the combined weight of the hose and the product in the hose. That is especially true with spring-retractable hoses.

A reel mounted to the ceiling requires a spring capable of not only pulling in, say, a 50-foot hose, but it also has to be able to pick up the weight of the hose, the product in the hose and maybe a nozzle on the end, says Guilzon.

He adds that a reel designed to pull a hose across the floor wont be capable of pulling the same load up vertically. So its important to know the intended application.

We also want to make sure the seals in our swivel joints are compatible with the product the end-user is trying to move through the hose, he says. Whats the working pressure? Is this going to be manually pulled or hooked to a machine with constant tension? There are a lot of things we need to know before we can provide a reel suitable for the application.

This article originally appeared in the July/August '99 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 1999.

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