Changes at LESCO

CLEVELAND – LESCO announced the appointment of Steven Cochran to the position of senior vice president, sales, and the realignment of its field sales organization.

Cochran, who previously held the position of senior vice president, marketing and strategic sourcing, will now lead the company’s sales organization which is comprised of 227 service centers, 77 stores-on-wheels, 62 lawn care sales representatives, 40 golf sales representatives and 13 national account representatives.

Dana Wilson, who previously held the senior vice president, sales, position, will assume a revised role with responsibility for the opening of new stores and other sales growth opportunities.

LESCO is currently conducting a nationwide search to fill the vacant marketing and strategic sourcing position. In the interim, Cochran and Michael DiMino, president and chief Executive Officer are managing those functions.

“I have full faith and confidence in Steve Cochran and his ability to increase the sales productivity of LESCO,” stated DiMino. DiMino and Cochran worked together at Cintas prior to joining LESCO. “Steve has a proven record of driving sales through a disciplined requirements based selling system which includes the appropriate management structure and incentives.”

The realigned sales structure creates five agronomically based sales zones led by a vice president reporting to Cochran. Each zone vice president is responsible for sales and profitability, new store openings, customer service, merchandising, and “hub and spoke” distribution. Regional “sales” and “service and operations” managers support the zone vice presidents. Concurrent with the realignment, LESCO added 54 new sales representative positions. The company’s previous field structure was a sales channel organization where lawn care and golf were under separate management teams.

“The realignment of the sales organization eliminates all barriers between servicing lawn care and golf customers providing a seamless and efficient customer experience,” DiMino said. “Additionally, the creation of clearly defined sales and profitability territories enhances our internal accountability and will allow us to move quickly to capitalize on opportunities and focus on growth initiatives.”

Each zone will be divided into “sales” and “service and operations” regions. The sales region will be responsible for providing solutions to existing customers and aggressively pursuing new customers and sales opportunities in all categories of the turf industry. The service and operations regions will focus on the operations of service centers and stores-on-wheels focusing on supplying agronomic expertise to customers, controlling inventory and replenishment of product, assuring delivery of orders to customers and merchandising.