Kevin Coon is an Idaho native that grew up in Kuna and graduated from Meridian High - Go Warriors! Kevin started his professional career at Norco, where he spent 10 years, tasked with a variety of positions starting on the loading dock as a temp and working up to the Assistant Manager role. Kevin left Norco to pursue a sales/business development role with a family-owned glass business in Meridian, where he spent 8 years helping build their brand and increasing their brand awareness and revenue throughout the years.
Kevin is now an Account Manager for SERVPRO, where once again he is the FNG - friendly new guy. Kevin has 2 wonderful children (Cole and Kinley) that he is extremely proud of, and he spends as much time with them as he can.
My name is Kevin. I am an account manager for SERVPRO. My colleagues are right there, Ms. Robin Fielder, Kyle Brotzman, and Kelly Zi. They have been kind enough to bring me into the fold, so I appreciate you guys, and it's been a great almost 11 months now. So appreciate you guys being here today.
Personal branding to me is the process of defining and promoting what you stand for as an individual. Your personal brand is a culmination of the experiences, skills, and values that differentiate you from everybody else. So today I thought it was a good idea for me just to kind of talk about my career. You, you got the really brief synopsis there, obviously, there's definitely a lot to it.
I did spend 10 years at Norco. And I can truly say that I did start at the bottom on the loading dock as a temp for the six months. And so there's not really a lot of personal branding that goes on there because there was a revolving door of people going through there, cuz it was literally the worst job at Norco without question.
From there I knew that I didn't want to spend any more time at that than I had to. And so I went and got my CDL and transferred over to the Meridian store where they needed medical drivers and different things of that nature. And so that really kind of sent me into the customer service realm, where the personal brand for me was just really being top-notch customer service, taking every customer and patient interaction as if they were my own family.
So yeah, definitely spent a lot of time there, worked in commercial medical gas delivery, did home setups, warehouse dispatch roles, customer service, and really built that personal brand by taking awesome care of my customers.
Through that I was able to get into the customer service department, where I dealt directly with referral sources, like clinical resource managers in the hospital role, discharge planners, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and I really built that brand as just being somebody that they could trust and knowing that when they called and said, jump, we said, how high?
And so that's really where I built my personal brand as far as that was concerned. Really just taking every opportunity to be the yes person. That's where I've made really good strides as far as my personal brand. I worked in the hospital sales arena for about five years and really increased our referrals and our brand awareness in the hospital setting which led into a managerial role.
I took the assistant manager role at Norco working with their customer service department, overseeing the customer service department, so 30 plus customer service individuals that I was responsible for training, motivating and leading. My personal brand certainly helped me in a managerial role as well. That Norco branch consistently was hitting 2 million a month in sales, so it was really a significant job there.
I trained our customer service reps. I would work the reception desk when our receptionist was gone. I would work a customer service desk whenever somebody was gone as well. So my personal brand there was being somebody that didn't look at any job as beneath them. That was really being a good leader and a good teammate to me. Not many managers, I don't think, want to sit at the reception desk and take hundreds of calls per day for Norco, for sure.
And so that was the way I was able to build that personal brand there. Really it's just being authentic. I think that's the biggest thing for my personal brand, being authentic and showing up just in the best light that you possibly can and being honest. People can see through dishonesty and they can see through the BS, they can see through a sales pitch, they can see through all those kinds of things.
The biggest thing that I took from Norco was probably from the old CEO, Larry Kissler. I was at a barbecue with those guys and they said, you know, the whole thing was find the need and fill it. And I think that's the biggest thing with any industry that you can look at is, okay, how can I make somebody's life easier with us?
At SERVPRO, we want to make the referral process as easy as possible. We want to be the people that people want to see, not they don't want to see us when their house is flooded. But, you know, being able to be a good resource for somebody whenever that need arises.
So find the need and fill it has been a big mantra for me no matter what industry I was in, no matter what job title I had, anything like that. You can find a lot of those deficiencies whatever you're doing, and find the need and fill that.
So when I left Norco, I started working for a local glass shop as their sales guy. And this is probably the biggest lesson that I learned in branding. They didn't really have a good brand at all. They didn't really have any recognition or market share in this valley at all.
I was used to working for the big company, Norco's a big company, they had the name right. So it was easy. As long as we showed up and, and were responsive, we were probably going to get that work. When I was working for the local glass company, we were up against the big dog. We were up against the Safelite of the world. Everybody knows the Safelite repair, Safelite replace, right?
I couldn't compete with that, and especially with a sales guy that was there for 10 plus years, right? So I really had to differentiate myself and find that need and again, fill that need. So again, we wanted to be the absolute best and easiest to work with. So we came up with a, with a good email system.
There are a couple of insurance agents in here that did give me some opportunities. Hi, Jessie, how are you? She's one of my first customers and referral sources. So she's seen a lot of my story as well.
But yeah, trying to find that need and fill it, differentiate yourself. One of the ways that I did that, about week one into the glass shop I joined the Meridian Chamber of Commerce. Right, there we go. Thanks. And I was surprised that we didn't have any community involvement at all. At Norco, it was a different walk every day or every weekend, you know, supporting some sort of nonprofit, whether it was Alzheimer's walk, the Cancer walk, the ALS, whatever the case was. I came to the glass shop and there was little to no community involvement at all. People didn't know who we were. The brand recognition was not there.
And so I decided that the Meridian Chamber of Commerce was a fantastic avenue for us to build our business. I had a lot of a lot of different roles through the Chamber of Commerce. When we joined, I started going to the ribbon cuttings right away, the Business After Hours, the First Fridays, all those kinds of different things. I was building myself, but at the same time, building our brand as the glass shop in town.
And so that was one way that I was able to do it. I went up to the Ambassador committee and started working with the ambassadors. And that's a fantastic way to meet new people and really build that personal brand as well. I co-chaired the Ambassador committee for a few years with Cheryl Molehill and and then was asked to join the board, which has been a fantastic experience, and that certainly helped out the glass shop that I was working for.
I took every opportunity that I could to meet new people, whether that was at the first Fridays or whatever the case was. I probably volunteered for every monthly luncheon for three or four months straight and just got to know people. And the more that they see you at things, the more they're going to trust you to do their work as well. I think that's a big thing.
A lot of people will try to do something in a networking group, and they'll show up for the first couple, few weeks, and they don't see that instant gratification that are instant return on investment of their time, and they just bow out. And so I'm definitely blessed to be a part of the Chamber of Commerce, and that was a great win for us at the glass shop as well. When I started over there, it was maybe 30 referrals a month, and I thought that was a pretty good deal, right? Maybe one a calendar day.
When I left in 2021, I had 1300 referrals that year. Over a hundred referrals per month. So definitely a great avenue and a great way to build the brand.
I think the biggest thing that we look at - I'm a sales person, there's probably a lot of sales people out here in the field today. A lot of people, they will just try and take, take, take, right? How can I get business from this person? How can I do this? But I think you have to be more of that. You have to have more of that servant heart and be more of giving than you take.
I think that's another big deal as far as that personal branding is concerned, just being a good connector and introducing people that you think that can do business together, right? I think that's a huge deal.
So let's see here. What else have I got here? I will tell you, when I left the glass shop, I was there eight years, and some of you know why I left the glass shop. Some of you may not, but my old boss when I was giving my notice, asked what I was going to do I said, I had absolutely no idea. But I have a fantastic network of friends that are going to help me land somewhere, right? And he tried to take ownership of the last eight years that I spent at the Meridian Chamber of Commerce building my personal brand.
And so he's like, well, why do you have that network? And it's like, well, I showed up to everything and you and your brand benefited from me putting myself out there for the last eight years.
Kelly sent me a screenshot of a quote last week. It says, employees building their personal brands are not liabilities. They are assets.
Five minute warning. Thank you. That's like the life preserver is getting thrown out for me. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
But to me, your personal brand is your reputation. How do people view you? Are you someone that takes, takes, takes? Or are you somebody that wants to give back with little to no expectation of anything in return?
And I say this all the time to you, my colleagues, and my referral sources as well: I've got to be able to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the night, at the end of the day, and just know that I've contributed in some positive fashion. I just haven't taken, I want to be that light for somebody else.
So that's about all that I had here. I'd like to take a minute to thank SOLV for putting me up here. I still don't know why you did it, but thanks. This is a great event. It's well attended. Thank you everybody for being here. Let's give them a round of applause as well. So, and I'm happy to take any questions you guys might have as well.
I think it's just a matter of really being a captive audience to whoever you're talking to. I think too often in the sales arena, in the networking arena, it's almost like you're thinking about what you want to say to that person next as compared to really sitting down and listening to them and what their needs might be. I always look at a name tag and just want to know more about the business, and I always ask, you know, what's a good referral for you? How can I help you get connected?
Because early on in, in, in my stint with the Chamber of Commerce, I received that same thing. I was the new guy, and the ambassadors really took me under their wing because it's just like, you know, if you don't have a group or any anybody like that, you're just kind of on the outside looking in. And so that was the same treatment that I got early on, was somebody that wanted to be inclusive you know, brought me into the kind of their fold and kind of helped me get connected.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Obviously I'm part of the Chamber of Commerce, so I get those emails constantly when I'm building my calendar. And I'm afforded a lot of opportunity to be flexible in my schedule. I know a lot of people are working that desk and they don't have the opportunity to go out to those ribbon cuttings and all those kinds of events. And so for people that can't do that, I think you've just got to be a lot more selective as far as which ones I'm going to get the best benefit out of, are they going to be well attended, those kinds of things. And of course, we also use a CRM (Salesforce). That helps me with my schedule as well and keeps me on track. So yeah, that's how I manage that. Hopefully that answered your question.