Rick Wills, Director, Education & Development, GROWMARK, Inc.

GROWMARK is a regional agricultural supply and marketing cooperative based in Bloomington, IL serving members in 20 states and 1 Canadian province. The GROWMARK System does a total dollars volume of about $6 billion annually, with about 10,000 total employees and directors.

GROWMARK is seen in the agribusiness world as being a leader in training and developing people. The GROWMARK Education & Development division consists of 10 full time trainers and 2 support staff. All training within the System with the exception of safety training a the technical aspects of product training is conducted from E&D.

I am extremely fortunate to be part of an organization in which the development of people in an integral part of the organizational culture. One of our predecessor companies was doing distance-based sales training in the 1930's, We also internally develop all of the executives in our organization today, with many of them having spent time as salespeople. Our sales process, which was developed internally over 20 years ago, is also a past of the organizational culture and was once described by a previous CEO as one of the two things he had on his bathroom mirror so he saw it everyday. (The other was his four key objectives.)

I have a BS in Agricutural Education; an MS in Educational Adminstration; and have attended uncountable outside training and educational sessions on all aspects of sales, leadership, marketing, you name it.

I became a sales trainer July 1, 1977 after spending several years in both public education and sales (I sold a competing seed line to GROWMARK). In 1981 I became the manager of sales and supervisory training, in 1992 Manager of Education & Development and 2002 Director of E&&D.

I am a generalist who has, and continues to be involved in sales training. I currently do a lot of leadership and executive training. In 2001 I created a certification program for boards of directors of the local cooperatives of the GROWMARK System, an area that takes a significant amount of time with almost 400 directors of multimillion dollar companies being involved in the training/certification program today.

Whe I took over responsibility for sales training in the 1980's we had 2 sales specific programs; our basic sales process training and a course on Transactional Analysis. Today we have a core sequence of 12 programs that are offered on an on-going basis with additional programs in development. The programs range from 1/2 to 3 days in length. Many now have blended formats to reduce time of the job. Since 1985 we have ,with our product divisions, developed and implemented internal sales certification programs that reward salespeople based on their technical and trouble shooting skills as well as their marketing and sales skills. (Note 1: our original certification program came from information gotten from an "editorial" written by a fellow NSSTE member). (Note 2 When a national technical certification program for agronomists came along in the early 1990's our internal certified agronomists had a 95% pass rate on the test while the national average was 65%.)

My first interaction with the National Society of Sales Training Executives, predecessor of SMT was as a participant in the Sales Training Clinic in November 1977 at the American Airlines training Center in Dallas,
TX. I was inducted into the Society in 1982. I have been involved with the Sales Trainer Clinic (Training for Sales & Marketing Trainers) since 1982. I have been a member of the clinic faculty, director, or assistant director over 30 times and have helped in the development of over 1,000 sales trainers in companies from Allstate to Zeneca. I have been actively involved in the four major revisions of the clinic moving it from a week-long series of half day lectures to today's format of highly interactive, modeling sessions in a three day format.

I was initially elected to the board of directors in 1989. I was honored to serve as the president of the NSSTE in 1992. I was again elected to the board in 2002 and reelected this past year. (Thank-you)

The strength of SMT is, without doubt, our members. The Society was originally established to share information about sales training and training in general before there were the sources available today. That openness and sharing continue to be the strength of our organization. Relationships have always been a key value component of Society membership.

Our biggest challenges are our membership. We first of all must provide the level of value to members that we "old timers" have seen and benefited from. Losing members because they don't see the value of membership is an indictment of each of us members to reach out to new and prospective members to help build those relationships that produce value.. We need to increase membership to enable us to have the critical mass to finance the quantity and quality of programs and services that will be of benefit to our members.

As a current board member I hope to bring a number of things to the organization: a sense of history of the organization; a business mentality to the decisions we make; the ability to ask questions to assusrre that we have the information we need to make the best decisions possible; and, a sense of humor.

I think today's trainers are faced with the challenge of proving our value to the organization. To do this we must know the issues and concern of all of our stakeholders. We must focus on increasing individual and company performance in a manner that is more economical than outsourcing the total sales training function, and we must communicate our efforts and results back to those stakeholders.

My advice for trainers is to remember that when we are gone from our organizations we will be missed briefly if at all. If we lose our relationship with our families we will leave holes that will never completely refill. Keep your job and your life in perspective.

I especially enjoyed two books by Patrick Lencioni, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Five Dysfunctions of Teams. They are both easy reads with great messages applicable to what we ars trainers try to do on on-going basis.

I have a beautiful, talented, intelligent, tolerant wife, Cheryl. Two miracle children (ask me about them when you have a few hours to spare). And I have the pleasure of being "back home" living just 3 miles from the farm I was born on. I am active in a number of organizations. I represent GROWMARK on the boards of the Illinois Cooperative Council; the newly formed Mid America Cooperative Council; the Iowa Institute for Cooperatives; I am chair person of the Illinois Leadership Council on Agricultural Education. I serve on the Illinois State University Ag Alumni board of directors. I also try to be involved in about everything my children are involved in. Traveling with my family, golfing, and riding my John Deere are other ways I enjoy spending my time.