Kloeckner Wins Prime Advantage Most Prepared Supplier Award

At the recent Prime Advantage spring conference, Kloeckner Metals was awarded the Most Prepared Endorsed Supplier Award. The award is voted on by Prime customers that attended the conference. Individual meetings are set with suppliers over a two-day span and at the end of the conference, the customers submit their vote on which supplier was the most prepared or most compelling presentations.

“We won this award because the customers felt that Kloeckner Metals was the most prepared supplier, and frankly, we feel we were,” says Chelsy Wagner, Vice President Sales for the West Region, Flat Rolled Group of Kloeckner Metals Corporation.

Kloeckner goes to great lengths to prepare for Prime conferences. Kloeckner sends sales representatives and key managers as appropriate from each of their regions, all of whom already have an established relationship with the customers. The entire team participates in a meeting before the conference to discuss who they are going to meet with, priorities, and particular things that need to be discussed. Most important of all, the team expects to come out of every meeting with some form of actionable task or opportunity.

“We always want to be highly prepared to take advantage of the limited amount of time we have in our one-on-one meetings to get the Kloeckner message delivered to the customer,” Chelsy says.

This year, the Kloeckner Part Manager presentation played a big role. Part Manager is a digital inventory tool that helps customers order steel online and provides real-time inventory updates. This award winning software platform is continually being improved.

“Part Manager was just huge this year,” Chelsy says. “Introducing customers to it, they were pretty excited just to see where the world is headed.”

Kloeckner Metals is a charter Supplier member of Prime Advantage and is looking forward to the 20^th-anniversary conference this fall. The Prime conferences give Kloeckner a chance to engage in face-to-face dialogue with potential new customers who are not currently buying from Kloeckner; or the ability to meet with senior customer executives, normally not present in the day-to-day call activity in the field. The conferences also give Kloeckner the opportunity to reconnect with current customers and build stronger business relationships with them in a fast-paced, intense but enjoyable environment.

“Over the years we have been able to not only build a relationship with the people of PRIME but also with customers and suppliers, fueling business relationships that have also turned into friendships,” Chelsy says.