Page 90 - 914INC Q2 - 2016

914INC. Sales Roundtable
Metzger: I would say for my business, Westchester is a microcosm of what we do, because we are selling insurance to high-net-worth individuals, and Westchester is
a huge market. The way affluent individuals often want to buy is through referrals. We are taking market share year after year [from competitors] because of those relationships and those referrals.
Panarella: I’ve only been in Westchester for 18 months, so I’m
not an expert, but one advantage of be- ing here is that
we’re so close to
New York City. We get that melting pot of customers walking in the door. We get a lot of foot traffic, too. So, I haven’t seen any disadvantages yet to being in Westchester, but there are a lot of advantages.
Ryan: [Westchester’s] proximity to New York City means the resources are strong. The education base, the professionalism, the major compa- nies in the Westchester area are all fantastic. But, recruiting talent is a double-edged sword. We can recruit great talent, but the high cost of liv- ing that is associated with all the great benefits of Westchester [can be challenging].
Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors, we have just under 10,000 members who have access to all the properties on the market. I think there’s also a statistic that one in
nine Americans hold a real estate license... . It’s not always competent competition, but there is competition.
Ryan: I think the biggest challenge
in our industry is driving organic growth. There are only about three ways [to do that]. First is by pen- etration or population gain—as the population grows, there will be new consumers of legal drinking age avail- able to sell to. The second is growth from “shared stomach”; when we grow our market share of that little pie, it’s at the expense of someone else. So, that’s great for us, but the re- tailer doesn’t like that. The third thing is how do we grow organically from a revenue base and from a margin base in a market that has a fairly consistent level of food-and-beverage intake? No one is getting up tomorrow and say- ing, “My goal today is to drink more beer than I did yesterday.” That’s one of the challenges in the food-and- beverage industry that a lot of people don’t realize.
Metzger: Our customers don’t know what great looks like. Insur- ance is one of the products you pay for and hope you will never have
to use; when you do have to use it, you just kind of want to get through it. In our niche, where we are after that high-net-worth client, there is
a level of expectation that is raised. The result is a lot of misinformed perception that we have to struggle with, such as: “PURE is new; they can’t possibly be as good as Chubb
or AIG.” Or, because we are new, “PURE is small, so their balance sheet can’t possibly support a catastrophic event like [Superstorm] Sandy or [Hurricane] Irene.” It’s about fighting those misperceptions day after day.
Bagliebter: Our money is as green as every other bank’s money, so it really comes down to having certain unique selling propositions. [For
us, that proposition is] become very knowledgeable and network within those industries.•
“[Sales success is] a three- legged stool: one, talent and capability; two, work-ethic; and
three, competitiveness.”
—Anthony Panarella, President, NQissan of New Rochelle
Schork: What are the big- gest challenges or barriers to making a sale in your
respective industries?
Bagliebter: The competi- tion we face can be a signifi- cant barrier. If a client is an attractive client, and they are out looking for proposals, they are often going to mul- tiple banks. Right now, we are in a low-interest-rate envi- ronment, and there is always
some bank that is bidding really low, so we have to decide if it’s worth trying to go down to
meet that competition or not.
Panarella: In the car business, only 1 percent of the population in the Northeast region is in the market to buy a car each month. So for us, it’s a fight to capture that little piece of the pie. We’re also fighting against other Nissan dealers and the Internet.
Kennedy: The biggest challenge is the level of competition. In the
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