In a pod

A 45-person sales force that sells inkjet printing equipment and supplies from cubicle pods seemingly has little in common with Navy SEALs.

But those two sides connect, with excellent results, in Bill Weiser's world. Weiser heads up the sales team at Sarasota-based LexJet, where annual revenues have jumped 37.7% since 2011, from $55.48 million to $76.4 million in 2013. The company is a subsidiary of S-One Holdings Corp., also based in Sarasota. S-One owns several subsidiaries and brands that work with a host of companies, including independent photographers and Hewlett-Packard.

With more than 100 employees, LexJet markets and sells a combination of its own developed products and materials from industry leaders such as Canon and DuPont. Customers use the products in a variety of ways, from event signs to trade show graphics to canvas photo prints. Yet given the print industry's demise and the move to digitize all kinds of businesses, LexJet, which turns 20 years old this year, could have been on the road to extinction.

“The industry isn't getting larger,” Weiser concedes. “But we are able to take more market share.”

That's where Navy SEALs come into play, in conjunction with pro golfer and Sarasota resident Paul Azinger, who wrote the book “Cracking the Code” in 2010. The book is a play-by-play of how Azinger led the 12-man U.S. team to victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup.

The key: To get a dozen Type-A golfers to play cohesively, Azinger broke the group down into pods of four. It's a technique emphasized in Navy SEALs training, Azinger learned, where small pods, all part of the same larger squad, eat together, train together and are immersed in each others lives. The idea is to develop airtight camaraderie for missions where people's lives depend on others' actions.

“Tour players are hardwired to beat the guys next to them,” Azinger writes, “then one week a year we think they should go against their nature and become a championship team.”

The Navy SEALs training philosophy resonated with Azinger, and his book resonated with LexJet co-founders Art Lambert and Ron Simkins. Lambert and Simkins passed around copies of Azinger's book to top LexJet executives, including Weiser.

The concept also clicked with Weiser, who helped turn the 45-person sales staff at LexJet into small pods. The pods, says Weiser, have no bosses and anyone can be a captain or lead a specific sales contest or push into a new product. That independence, says Weiser, is integral to the overall success because it allows salespeople to think like business owners, not mere product pushers.

“There are a few rules by which one must abide in order to captivate and cultivate the LexJet culture, and those rules are one, have fun, two, make money and, three, don't get in the way of anyone having fun or making money,” Weiser says. “Seems simple enough (but) that particular modus operandi may not be suitable in other organizations that require micro and macro management tiers.”

At a glance: S-One Holdings Corp.
Headquarters: Sarasota. Satellite office in Barcelona and sales teams in multiple other countries, including Germany, Australia and Japan.
Employees: 150
Founders: Art Lambert and Ron Simkins
Industries: Inkjet printing, digital printing, graphic design, media publishing.
Subsidiaries: Six. List includes LexJet, which sells inkjet printing equipment and supplies and has customers in North America. LexJet had $76.4 million in sales in 2013, up 37.7% from $55.48 million in 2011. Another subsidiary is Brand Management Group, which focuses on the wide format print market and has licensing partnerships with industry giants Hewlett-Packard and Kodak.
Products: S-One, through subsidiaries, is the exclusive distributor of Tara Materials' Fredrix line of wide format inkjet canvas. It's also the exclusive business partner for HP Sign and Display large format printing materials for latex inks, and it has the exclusive trademark licensing agreement for Kodak wide format inkjet media.

That's Cold
The 45-person sales team at Sarasota-based LexJet, an inkjet printing equipment and supplies firm, has facilitated a major growth spurt at the company. The team works mostly off lead-generated cold calls, where sales personnel, says sales team leader Bill Weiser, are trained to develop relationship-based sales, not just go for transactions.
That training is centered on two key points:

Ask away: Weiser says asking a sales prospect questions about what they need sounds obvious, yet many salespeople, in all fields, mess it up by asking the wrong ones. “It comes down to asking questions with a strategy,” says Weiser. “The more times you can ask questions, especially in cold calling, the better the relationship you can build. If you ask enough good questions, you won't have to sell anything.”
Autonomous approach: LexJet wants its sales staff to work like entrepreneurs, not cubicle dwellers. “We train them to be problem solvers,” Weiser says. “Think about the decision you will make as if it's your business and your money.”