Frequently Asked Questions

An Interview with Ken Edmundson
Founder, Chairman, & CEO of the Edmundson Northstar Companies

What do the Edmundson Northstar Companies do?

We are experts in SALES . . . the largest industry in the business world and HIRING AND RETENTION the best sales talent. . . the most important discipline in the business world.

Nine out of 10 people work in some area of sales. They may call it business development, customer service, client retention or professional services, but at the end of the day, the revenue comes from some sort of selling activity. How many business owners have you met who proudly proclaimed or wrote in their promotional material, "We are really in the business of delivering customer service," or the other great line we always hear, "Our people are the most valuable part of our business"? And yet how many of those business owners also say the most difficult part of their business is retaining clients or increasing sales, and the most troubling challenge is their people...specifically finding, hiring and keeping great salespeople?

Typically, when a company hires us, we are asked by the CEO or president to fix problems such as:

• Disappointment with low closing ratio and loss of market share.
• Inability to identify, hire, and retain good salespeople.
• Too much reliance on low price in sales presentations.
• Lack of revenue growth.

The Edmundson Northstar Companies are a family of training institutes. We change behavior, attitude and technique by teaching a selling system and using assessment tools that are the most powerful in the world.

What makes your training so different than any other training?

I am glad you asked; we get asked that question a lot. Most CEOs are skeptical about training. You have probably heard the Lee Trevino golf story. He was a great professional golfer who said, "When I find a coach who can beat me, I'll hire him." There is a lot of common sense in this and a lot of companies feel this way about sales trainers...when I was running companies, that was my thinking.

I spent more than 25 years building companies and, while I honestly attribute a lot of the success of those companies to good fortune and other people's hard work, the two areas that we were always very, very good at were selling, and hiring and retaining great salespeople. We spent years perfecting the best selling systems and finding the best tools to use for employee assessments. We formed a company using these tools to help companies improve. What makes our training truly different is that it simply works . . . we train for results. We do long-term reinforcement, results-oriented training.

Doesn't everybody say that their training works?

Sure they do, and everybody is familiar with Tony Robbins, Zig Ziegler, Dale Carnegie and all the other motivational, seminar-based speakers. People usually think of them when they think of sales training. Everyone knows these programs. Everyone knows the kind of motivation they provide. These types of programs typically don't accomplish the much needed reinforcement training, which is the only true way to get results. Changing someone's attitude is not enough and only works if that person sees results from their behavior. Seeing results requires developing better techniques, and that takes a lot more than just motivation.

Our training is systematic, reinforcement training. It takes place over many months. It is a gradual, but permanent behavioral change. Our clients say that within 90 days, they begin to feel the impact of our work together; in six months, they feel trained and begin to see the benefit of the training; in one year, we have modified their behavior and in effect changed their professional lives by significantly enhancing the results they achieve in the marketplace.

An old Chinese proverb goes like this, "I heard and I forgot. I saw and I remembered. I did and I understood." At Edmundson Northstar, we teach the "understanding" part better than anyone else.

How did you get into selling?

I jokingly say I was born into selling...most people really believe that good salespeople are born and not trained, but that is not true, especially when you realize that nine out of 10 people in business are in some form of selling. They might call it business development and a host of other things, and they might call their customers "patients" or "clients," but at the end of the day, every transaction requires some selling. I guess it was only natural that early in my career, I was attracted to selling because I like to talk. I really didn't realize that selling is a serious profession and like anything else, you can learn to do it better. In fact, if you are going to be successful, you must get better.

What is your background and why did you decide to form Edmundson Northstar?

Well, I started my career in sales working at a great, old, family-owned manufacturing company named Martin Industries of Alabama. It gave me a chance to travel the country and sell; I got a lot of sales training during this time. I was promoted to national sales manager, responsible for over 100 salespeople all over the U.S. In 1980, Dunavant Enterprises, Inc., hired me to run one of their many subsidiary companies, a large, struggling general aviation business. They hired me as the president, and I am still not sure what in the world made them do that, but in a few years, the aviation company really turned around and became very successful. Dunavant is one of the 100 largest privately held companies in the world, and they gave me a lot of help. It was here that I began to truly understand and focus on the fact that the key issue of success for any business was really knowing how to sell your product or service and hiring the right talent. Once we got it turned around and making good money, we sold the company to American Airlines to conclude this wonderful success story. Then I joined LEDIC Management Group. A great man by the name of Scott Ledbetter had started this little company in the multi-family real estate management business, and I joined him as partner, president, and CEO. We grew the company over the next nine years into the 12th largest fee-management company in the U.S. We had the opportunity to sell the company for a huge profit in the late '90s to a Wall Street investment firm.

By this time, I had firmly ingrained in my thinking that the two most important aspects of any successful business were learning to sell better (which you can do only if you have a selling system that is taught and ingrained in your people) and learning how to identify, hire and retain the very best talent. It seemed so simple, but I was amazed at how so many companies could not do this consistently. So, Willard and Robert Sparks, two of the most successful business entrepreneurs in the country, and I formed a firm called Sparks-Edmundson Business Investment Group. Our purpose was to acquire interest in small to medium-size operating companies under $50M in revenue. We selected companies that had at least a 5-year history of success and a desire to grow, but needed to enhance their management team and its strengths. We invested in several good firms, but we quickly noticed that in almost every company acquisition evaluation we performed, that the firms really did not need to be acquired or sold - they simply needed to be fixed. We would look at 100 companies to find 20 that met our criteria, and usually only one of those resulted in serious discussions. They all had sales and employee problems that, if resolved, could really impact the growth of the company in such a positive way. When we would tell a company president or owner of our findings and that we did not want to pursue the opportunity, it would always result in a call from them several weeks later. They would ask, "Can you tell us how to fix our problem?" or "Can you help us fix our problem?" I started to really focus on what I had learned through all my years in running companies. I began to carefully study how to help these companies make the necessary and needed improvements. It became so obvious that if we focus on improving sales and hiring better people, we could do things other companies could not do. So after much research and study for over a year, we took those two critical disciplines and built Edmundson Northstar Companies using professional tools and programs that are the best I have ever seen. Coupled with my personal experience, we formed a unique training and employee evaluation company to help others do what I have spent the past 27 years studying and learning.

If you do not consider what you do as a motivational training, then how would you describe it?

Although, it is not considered motivational training, we sure think there is a lot of motivation in it, but it is not teaching how to sell features and benefits. Everybody knows how to do that. When you get real good at selling features and benefits, it is a great way to get yourself kicked out of every prospect's office. We teach an executional selling methodology and system. The difference between our system and others is that every other training system is generally based on either changes in behavior, attitude or technique. When it comes to sales training, we train in all of these areas, but from an executional standpoint...getting results...and that happens only with long-term reinforcement training.

So you would describe Edmundson Northstar as a sales training company?

I certainly don't mind that label, and I don't mind being called a sales trainer, because I think once people understand what selling really is, it takes on a whole different meaning. We might better be described as a sales development company. You see, I don't believe you can sell anyone anything. That might sound strange coming from a sales trainer. We know people make decisions intellectually, but they buy emotionally. A good example of that is the type of car you drive. If you bought based on intellect, you would buy a black car with the speedometer on the dash, four tires, heat and air and maybe an AM/FM radio. But look at the cars we buy. It is an emotional decision. Our job as salespeople is not to sell someone something. It is to find out where our client or prospect is hurting and solve their pain. If you can solve their pain, you can have a blank check.

It takes us only about a year to get people to understand that whole concept and change their behavior accordingly. That is what Edmundson Northstar Companies does.

How does the training take place?

Our training takes place in a variety of ways. We do specialized, tailored, in-house programs for many companies... designed to their unique needs. We work with them to structure a program that meets their individual and industry-specific needs. Additionally, we do training in classes of 10 to 20 salespeople in our public training forum conducted weekly. We meet weekly at our institute and take our clients through a curriculum that in some cases can take up to a year. Obviously, we are developing and working on new ideas and techniques all the time, so once you become a client of ours, you can have access to our material and training for life. We like to say that we take professionals and turn them into experts.

In our Employee Assessment Institute, we typically work with a company at their location, even though much can be done electronically. Our primary work is to assist the client to assess the hidden strengths and weaknesses of their existing sales team. We can also set up a Web page for them so they can have prospective employees take an assessment to determine if they even qualify to be interviewed. The qualifications are based on a very detailed, company-specific profile and priorities of what the company is looking for and what the candidate should look like from the company's perspective.

How does a company decide they need to hire you?

I am not sure they can decide. I think it is a process where we should decide together because we are interested in having only people who are very serious about change and about becoming better. Frankly, no amount of teaching or training can help someone who doesn't want to improve.

Are you saying that the conventional 2-day seminars cannot do the job?

No, they can be a great starting point, but you cannot modify behavior and the results you want with seminars. With the right material and the right understanding, you can certainly accomplish a wonderful starting point in a seminar, but don't expect to send your salespeople to a seminar and then wonder weeks later why something hasn't drastically changed. You use seminars only as a starting point, not the end of the training.

After attending seminars all my life, I learned that people remember a couple of one-liners and then they go back to doing what they have always done. Usually they had a good time and were entertained, but nothing changed. There is a fundamental difference between knowing and owning.

Do people just forget the information?

Exactly. Taking ownership is a long-term process. It takes time, it takes reinforcement, and it takes competent training. People can do it only with ongoing support and training. It takes a minimum of 500 hours in front of a client to learn to sell, and that is if you are trained properly in the first place.

I know you don't like one-liners or quick fixes, but what brief advice would you give?

You're right - I don't like one-liners that sound like quick fixes, but there are some things we are adamant about.

1. The selling process should not be between a buyer and a seller. It should be between two professionals who are trying to help each other. The salesperson has to learn how that process takes place in order for it to be fair and productive.
2. If salespeople have a need for approval, then they are dead before they start.
3. There is absolutely no acceptable reason to continually hire the wrong people and to keep the wrong people in a job because you do not know how to fix it...there are ways to correct that problem.
4. There is a difference between knowing and owning.
5. In today's business climate, you are required to eliminate that which is incapable of adapting.