The Transcript from the interview
with Steve Day
of State Line Tack in Plaistow, New Hampshire and
Ron Willingham, sales trainer

HATTIE: Plaistow, New Hampshire, is the setting for a company that has achieved world-class status. This is the story about someone who does what he loves.

Steve Day is owner of Stateline Tack. If you're one of the 27 million people involved with horses in this country, you probably already know about Stateline. When I heard about this company, as a city girl, I had to ask... What is tack?

STEVE DAY (Owner, Stateline Tack Shop): Well, tack is all of the equipment that you use to ride the horse: the saddle, the bridle, the girth, the stirrup leathers.

(Voiceover) Most people think of it as a leather type of equipment, but also, oftentimes people will include the things around the barn that are necessary to take care of the horses. But that's probably more aptly called stable equipment.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Stateline is the largest retailer of equestrian equipment in the world. They handle 9,000 items. Even though they still operate the original retail store, which opened in 1975, the bulk of their $40 million in sales comes from customers who select items from their catalogs and call an 800 number to order. Here's how it works.

LELA (Employee): (On telephone) Good morning. Stateline Tack. Lela speaking.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) One of the 50 operators enters the order, the credit is checked, the order is sent to the warehouse, where it is pulled by one of the 45 pickers, who then turns it over to shipping, where it is packed and sent out.

STEVE: The majority of the packages go out UPS. We also have a Federal Express service, both the same day and second-day air.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Steve Day did not start the company. He bought it in 1991 when it had $8 million in sales and he has led the business through explosive growth.

STEVE: 1991 and '90, which is really when I started, was a very tough year to raise capital. So rather than being able to go to your local bank and put in some money of your own and borrow most of the money, I had to bring in a group of venture capitalists to finance the deal.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) At the core of incredible success lies a computer named Ernie.

Unidentified Man #5: Bottlenecks before were 200, 300, 400 orders a day. Now we could easily do 4,000 or 5,000.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Yes. Everything at Stateline is top line. The warehouse, which Steve has expanded three times in 36 months, was planned by an engineer for efficiency. The phone system is so sophisticated it could probably cook breakfast. And the people, the people are bright.

How many customers do you have?

Unidentified Woman #2: Probably around 200,000.

HATTIE: This person says, `I've been buying from you for years now and I would just like to say thanks for keeping your prices down and your quality up.'

Woman #2: Right.

HATTIE: That is so great.

Woman #2: Yeah.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Paula Moriarity manages 45 of the warehouse employees on roller skates so she can get around the large facility very quickly. This, I might add, was all her idea and Steve happily supplies the skates. I asked Steve if he felt his business degree from Purdue and his MBA from Harvard were important to his success.

STEVE: A good friend of mine, I think, puts it in perspective. He keeps saying, `Steve, you know, it took you 10 years after you got out of Harvard to forget what you learned there so you could really start making money.'

HATTIE: Well, when you bought this business, it was $8 million in sales. Now it's over $30 million. Could you pinpoint some of the decisions you made that enabled this to happen?

STEVE: I think the most important decision I made was to recognize what I didn't know. I didn't know anything about the mail-order business. I didn't know anything, really, about the tack business other than being a customer and using tack. So the first thing I did was go out and start to build a management team of people who would be very good in their specialized area and then try and encourage them to do a good job, but also to stay out of their way and allow them to do a good job.

A small business needs to have good tools for its people. If you're going to ask people to cover this wide span of responsibility, then it's important to give them the best tools possible so they can do that effectively. So we've poured all sorts of money into technology. We've put in two new computer systems since we bought the business. We outgrew the first and went on to a second system. We've brought in an entirely new phone system. We brought in a computerized management system for that phone system so Leslie De Gramason, our customer service manager, knows the exact productivity of every person on the phone at every instant during the day.

And it's a pretty sophisticated system. We've built the new high-bay warehouse. We use the best equipment in terms of picking and packing and moving the products around the warehouse. We have the best high-bay lifts and narrow-aisle lifts. Anyplace where we see an opportunity to lower our actual operating costs by investing in equipment or technology, we do it.

We need people that have a big range of capability. We want them to be very professional and to be able to look forward and plan and do all the things that you need for a large company. But we also want them to be able to work and get their hands right into the work.

HATTIE: What skills do you think an entrepreneur really needs?

STEVE: Well, you have to be crazy.

HATTIE: To go and borrow all that money?

STEVE: Right.

HATTIE: Put your neck on the line on April Fools' Day.

STEVE: Right. I think the most important thing for a entrepreneur to do is to be able to set a goal for himself and have faith that he can achieve that goal and then work no matter how hard or how long to, in fact, complete his goal.

HATTIE: Well, I've heard it said that work is when you'd rather be doing something else.

STEVE: Well, then I guess I don't work very hard.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) What does a guy who has already quadrupled the business do for an encore? Expand the western line of products, open more retail stores, then go for a ride.

Here's what I learned today. Hire people with a wide range of skills, stay on top of technology, and keep dreaming.

A phrase you should know...

Burn Rate: The speed at which a company is using up its cash en route to developing a product.

HATTIE: Once again, you'll hear from the chairman of Integrity Selling, Ron Willingham. There's certainly a lot we can learn from Ron, since he's been teaching selling skills for over 30 years.

Ron, you say consumers are more sophisticated than ever. Tell us what you believe consumers are looking for in a salesperson.

RON WILLINGHAM (Integrity Selling): Well, I think consumers today are looking for something totally different in salespeople than perhaps they ever have before. What is that something different? It seems to me that people do not want to be sold today, but they want to do business with people who will understand their needs and will partner with them and help them create some value for themselves. I think businesses, as an example, are looking for vendors to come in and to partner with them, to understand their business, understand what their objectives are, understand what their uniqueness is, and to say to them, `Here's how I can help you march along to reach some of your goals. Here's how I can help you increase your profitability, your productivity.'

And I think we, as individuals, are looking for the same thing. We're looking for people who are not just there to try to sell us something, but people who are there to understand our needs, to be sensitive to these needs, and to say to us, `We want to help you reach your objectives. We want to help you reach goals that you have.'

Let me give you an example. I recently worked with a life insurance company, and we helped them change their whole mission statement. And their mission statement had been, kind of paraphrased, that, `We sell life insurance and investment products.' And we helped them change their mission statement to say that, `We help people set and achieve financial goals.' See the difference? One is very product-focused, one is very customer-needs focused.

And I believe that sophisticated consumers today, who are being bombarded with advertisement about all kinds of products and services, and who have options that they've never had before--we have low prices and we have lots of different kinds of options--I believe these people are beginning to say that, `I'm going to spend my money with people who are interested in me, who really care about me, who are honest, who have integrity and who are going to try to understand and fill my needs.' And so clearly, that's one way that consumers are changing today, and one way that selling is having to change today to meet the needs of these consumers.

HATTIE: But before you go, I want to leave you with one thought, from the novelist Amy Tan: `You can't have luck when someone else has skill.'