SANTA FE, N.M. (BRAIN) — BTI has launched a new outside sales team and restructured its management team, with two long-time managers swapping positions.
The new sales team includes inside staff and independent reps and rep groups.
The in-house sales force serves shops in Arizona, New Mexico, and portions of Texas.
To serve dealers in Colorado and Utah, BTI hired the Ptarmigan Group in December. The Ptarmigan Group also represents Scott and Castelli in the Rocky Mountain region.
And BTI also contracts with the Ciclogear rep group, which serves Cinelli shops across the U.S. BTI is the exclusive importer of Cinelli bikes and frames.
On the management side, John Salomonsen and Seth Graves swapped jobs last fall. Salomonsen is now purchasing manager and Graves is now sales manager.
"The time had come to make crucial changes to our organizational structure" said Graves. "We hired new sales staff with extensive shop experience and troubleshooting skills to help us bolster our face-to-face dealer support efforts. The mandate they've been given is to engage directly with dealers, to learn about their challenges, and to assess how BTI can be a better partner for shops. We are already making internal changes based on the feedback we've received, such as adding American Express."
Previously, BTI's sales and purchasing effort were overlapping job duties; the same staff who manned the call center also did the buying. BTI recently split the sales and purchasing departments. According to Salomonsen, since the split, BTI's daily order fill-rate has improved by more than 10 percent.
"Through dedicated staff in both sales and purchasing, we are much closer to meeting dealers' inventory expectations," he said.
