Chris Wise Email & Phone Number

Nicholasville, Ky, Us

Lexington, Kentucky, United States

Lexington, Kentucky, United States

In addition to my distribution development responsibilities, I was given the responsibility of managing our Marketing team as well as our Pricing & Programming team. This is the kind of role that I dreamed about in college! Half of this role involves helping lead our marketing group which has been so much fun as they are all extremely talented and love what they do. Getting to work with creative people on a daily basis is very rewarding and encouraging. Again, building on my dealer experience and relationships, we have been able to assist dealers with direct marketing campaigns, ad designs, social media pushes, and customer job stories while strengthening and growing our brand image. I am also responsible for communicating design changes on our existing and upcoming new machines with our parent company, Sumitomo Construction Machinery. The other half of this role focuses on the pricing of our equipment and the dealer marketing programs that support our dealer network’s wholesale and retail efforts. This makes the other side of my brain very happy as it requires analyzing data and listening to the needs of our dealers. Fortunately, this team is also very talented and more than capable of handling a wide variety of dealer and end customer needs. Leading such smart and insightful people gives me a better understanding of how to address dealer needs to compliment the marketing and development efforts of our overall team.

My first 9 years at LBX really prepared me for the challenges of the Distribution Development Manager position. I was able to establish relationships with most all of our authorized dealer network through my previous roles and this gave me the foundation to understand our distribution needs. The largest responsibility, and quite honestly the most exciting, was recruiting and signing up brand new dealers in some of our prioritized open markets. Doing research, site visits, planning meetings, and ultimately reviewing potential dealer business plans was quite rewarding and during my term in this role LBX was able to bring on 11 new dealers. Another responsibility was to work with our existing dealer network to help them grow their customer base through various marketing efforts and even to expand their coverage area with new locations. I was able to assist 9 dealers with expanding their territory with new branch locations. The Distribution Development role allowed me to gain an even better understanding and respect for what our strong and diverse dealer network does on a daily basis. If we continue to build upon our dealer relationships to help them be successful and grow their business, then LBX will grow. This was a very exciting role to have at LBX!

Being the Sales Operations Manager gave me the opportunity to work very closely with the LBX dealer network and our regional sales managers to get a thorough understanding of the heavy equipment wholesale and retail business. My product training and analytical background with LBX gave me the confidence and experiences necessary to undertake this new challenge and help the company grow. It was in this role that I closely monitored industry retail trends and paired that with field intelligence to plan our equipment orders to support the dealers growing needs to be successful in our targeted markets in construction, forestry, material handling, and pipeline. I communicated monthly to the executive team on dealer demand and the direction our sales organization was taking to meet the ever-changing market place. I also managed the sales order process from receiving to fulfilling dealer orders, including invoicing and shipping to dealers. Getting the opportunity to work with all aspects of our business and with multiple departments to continue to grow LBX and our North American dealer network was the most rewarding and exciting part of this role.

As Brand Manager, I had full responsibility for all current products in North America including our standard excavators, scrap & material handlers, demolition machines, and forestry equipment from a marketing, brand awareness, competitive analysis, and sales training standpoint. I enjoyed getting to create product launch materials and collaterals in unison with our marketing communications department and lead all voice of the customer and voice of the dealer trips to the field. I was utilized as a consultant in assisting our Brazilian company with competitive fuel testing and analysis to help drive our brand awareness in growing our business not just in Brazil, but throughout the rest of Latin America. Another aspect of this job was the market research portion where every month I would pull together all the current industry data and break it down into regional and segment data to make sure we are participating in all the growing market segments. I would deliver monthly reports to our executive management team as well as our Japanese owners on industry trends and our market share by segment and region. This information, in addition to the VOC & VOD interviews, is critical in driving our business as well as assisting our product development team in creating new products.

As the Sales Training Manager for LBX, I had the pleasure and challenge of training all of our dealers in North America. I would conduct factory trainings in Lexington, regional trainings throughout the US and Canada, dealer specific trainings as requested, and web based trainings to assist our regional sales managers. I created all training materials including large presentations, webcasts, training books, and YouTube instructional videos. This position allowed me to train an average of 150 salespeople per year and still included the Marketing Analyst responsibilities.

Lexington, Kentucky Area

My first position with LBX was a Marketing Analyst position. This was a great place to start with the company as it gave me in depth knowledge of the product we offered and the industry we competed in. I was in charge of all market share information and industry reporting data for our company. I learned to analyze market conditions and trends to identify growing and shrinking market segments to assist our dealer network in targeting potential customers. I worked closely with our Business Development Manager in developing sales presentations to attract new dealers and would file all the legal paperwork in getting those dealers officially signed up to do business with us. This position also allowed me to work with our marketing department on all customer events and special projects.