JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Just like the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800’s, The Parts House (TPH) circled the wagons this January and gathered all of its more than 150 salespeople and customer service experts at its 140,000-square-foot East Coast warehouse and headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla., to “mine for gold.”
“We have had an annual award ceremony for our sales force for years. It is a great night of recognition for our guys, but in these economic times we need to do more for us and our customers,” said TPH’s VP of Sales Brian Mendelson. “We wanted to build the event around a theme and Gold Rush immediately came to mind. Just like the Forty-Niners learned to mine for the hard-to-get gold once the easy nuggets were picked off the ground, we want our people to learn how to mine the vast opportunities that abound today, even in recessionary times, amongst our customers, our vendors and our own people.”
More than 70 TPH vendors attended the event, which included an expo and several training seminars. Vendors had the opportunity to interact will all of the TPH’s key sales personnel. The event also featured a keynote presentation by six-time Top Fuel Champion Clay MiIlican. Millican talked about the similarities in a customer service sales team and managing a Top Fuel Championship team.
“Our footprint expands all of Florida in addition to Georgia and Puerto Rico. It’s a logistical and financial challenge to bring so many of our customer-facing associates to one locale. Based upon the reaction we are getting from our Vendor partners and Associates, our Gold Rush event was a total success,” said TPH’s President David Honig.
