PIRTEK South Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) marked 10 years of servicing customers with its onsite hose replacement needs.

Bill Zetterlund is the original owner of PIRTEK South Philadelphia, located in Folcroft. Responsible for day-to-day operations is Pat Monahan, who joined the business in 2006 as general manager and became a partner alongside Zetterlund in 2007.

Although the spring of this year were slow in sales, this summer was definitely on the upswing, and Monahan is making sure he stays in the front of customers.

“I try my hardest to be on the road every day making sales calls,” said Monahan from behind the wheel of his pickup truck.

“I find that if I go to the shop first, chances are I’m not going to get out of there. I make it a point to know my customers and their businesses. I can’t help them if I don’t get out and learn about what they do. It’s our responsibility to find solutions even before customers know they have a problem, especially today when customers are looking for suppliers that really want to be on their team.”

PIRTEK South Philadelphia’s business has evolved over the past decade from being an onsite hose and fitting source primarily for construction and recycling accounts to its current-day status as a source for marine, transportation and manufacturing customers.

Its customer transformation is largely due to Monahan, whose industrial sales experience spans more than 30 years. He began to target manufacturing customers in 2006, when manufacturing accounted for only four percent of the center’s business. Today that number is around 22 percent.

“Since our construction business typically went down each September, we decided to focus on other accounts, such as manufacturing and marine, which are not as cyclical. It’s really paid off,” Monahan said.

Monahan was able to target potential customers by investing in Selectory, a D&B business database that provides comprehensive company profiles. Included is such information as location, products, contact information, personnel, credit worthiness, SIC code and more.

“It’s important to know the SIC code of each of your good customers,” Monahan advised. “Chances are good that a business with the same SIC code will be a good target customer.”

The staff at PIRTEK South Philadelphia includes Pat Monahan Jr., Justin Lauer, Jason Dutterer and Dion Gomez, mobile sales and service technicians; Phil Impriano, operations manager; and Jennifer Ford, administrative assistant.

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