A Change of Plans
Ben Tweed’s life has taken some unexpected turns. Unexpected by everyone except him.
Putting out fires is part of any sales rep’s job. But Ben Tweed stopped fighting fires three years ago. Literally. That’s when an ACL tear, suffered during a pickup basketball game, led him to end his career as a firefighter in Gig Harbor, Wash., and become a full-time sales rep at Tacoma-based Burkhart Dental. Though fighting fires and selling dental products might seem poles apart, for Tweed, they’re actually very similar. They’re both about providing service to people.
The son of a Lutheran pastor, Tweed was born in Minneapolis, lived for a while on the West Side of Chicago and then in Montana. Before he began high school, the family settled in Gig Harbor. An athlete, he was set to attend Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, where he would play football and basketball. But he had a change of heart. At 18, he felt ready to take on a profession. So he set aside his plans for academic studies and instead went to the Fire Science Academy in Tacoma. That was 1999.
"I’m a very physical person," he says, when explaining his decision to become a firefighter. "I love outdoor sports, outdoor everything. So I liked the physical part of the job." In addition, he saw firefighting as a service profession. "Both of my parents had master’s degrees, but instead of making a lot of money, they chose to help people. My dad was a Lutheran pastor, my mom a teacher. So I looked at firefighting as my way of doing the same thing."
He enjoyed his year and a half at the Fire Academy. "I loved the camaraderie and the training," he says. In addition, the experience reinforced in him the value of discipline and the need to hone his organizational skills. After graduating, he took a job as a resident firefighter in Gig Harbor, a picturesque city on the western side of the Puget Sound. As a resident firefighter, he lived at the station.
Customer service
As a young, single firefighter, Tweed sought a second job to fill time between shifts and to augment his income. It turns out that one of Gig Harbor’s volunteer firefighters was married to Lori Burkhart Isbell, who at that time was manager of Burkhart Dental’s customer service operation. (Today, she is the company’s president.) One thing led to another, and Tweed began working in customer service at Burkhart. With its flexible hours, the job suited him perfectly. He was to work in customer service on a part-time basis for more than four years.
"I didn’t know what I was getting myself into," he says. Sitting at a computer with a set of headphones was a dramatic departure from fighting fires. But it had its own set of challenges. "It’s a tough job. They don’t get enough credit," he says of customer service reps. In addition to the order-taking and product research, he faced questions about shipment status or mispicked products. To top it off, some mornings he would report to work after having spent much of the night fighting a fire.
But he had help. First of all, Burkhart was flexible. "For those four or five years, there wasn’t a week when I would work normal hours," he says. Second, he had excellent training from Burkhart’s in-house trainer, Bob Perry, who trained account managers and customer service reps not just on products, but on dental practice. "He showed us how to take an impression and what went into a root canal, so when a customer called asking for impression material, we could ask them what particular technique they were using," recalls Tweed. He loved the training. "I’ve always enjoyed learning."
While serving as a firefighter and a customer service rep, Tweed decided to take on one more challenge. "I decided to go back to school in the middle of all this," he says. So he began taking classes at the University of Washington in Seattle. Again, it was in large part thanks to Burkhart’s flexibility that he got the opportunity to pursue a degree while holding down two jobs.
From firefighter to field rep
Then, in February 2005, he had the ACL injury, an event that was to have a profound impact on his future. The injury meant he would be unable to resume his firefighting duties for at least six months. Then he ran into some health insurance issues. "I think it all would have worked out, but I was halfway through school, and I was starting to like dental," he says. At the same time, Burkhart was encouraging him to consider becoming an account manager for the company. After thinking about all the options before him, he decided to leave the fire department and in January 2007, become a field rep for the distributor.
"I had never had any sales experience, but there was one thing I knew: After five or six years inside, I knew the products, and I felt I had good relationships with people. I thought I could take a different route in sales, and become more of a consultant than a salesman, and give my customers the best options, as opposed to trying to sell something. The way I look at it, the product sells itself; dentists need products to run their practices. But I could give them other things – product information, knowledge, sincerity, hard work. I took with me a lot of things I had learned in the fire department, like following up and being there. It really paid off."
He soon found that following up is, indeed, a big part of the job. "You really need to stay on top of everything," he says. "And there are a lot of names to remember." But he has worked hard to approach his customers the way he himself would want to be treated. "I look at them as my friends," he says. "I look at what’s best for them.
"I won’t be out there banging on your door, selling myself and promising things I can’t deliver. I’m patient. And I might not be the best at gaining clients quickly. But when I do, I have their whole trust." [FI]
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