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Lennox Industries Sales Team of the Year

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2012, Click to Enter The 2014 American Business Awards

Company: Lennox Industries, Inc., Richardson, TX
Company Description: The residential business unit of Lennox Industries, the largest business unit within Lennox International Inc. (NYSE: LII), is responsible for $1.5B of the $3.1B in sales within the LII portfolio. Led by record growth and performance by Lennox Industries, our stock price has increased another 10% from $86 to $94 per share since July 2013.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Department of the Year - Industrial & Manufacturing

Nomination Title: Lennox Industries Sales Team of the Year

Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since the beginning of July 2013 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Sales Record Breaking Performance

The residential business unit of Lennox Industries, the largest business unit within Lennox International Inc. (NYSE: LII), is responsible for $1.5B of the $3.1B in sales within the LII portfolio. Led by record growth and performance by the Lennox Industries sales team, our stock price has increased another 10% from $86 to $94 per share since July 2013. Lennox Industries is different than other HVAC manufacturers in that we sell directly to the dealers instead of to a distributor that sells to the dealers. This gives us a bigger advantage by having a direct line to the dealers that sell directly to home owners and other businesses that buy our products for usage.

Lennox Industries has achieved or exceeded sales plan for 14 straight quarters. Our revenue over the past three years has grown consistently from $1.16B in 2012 to $1.51B in 2014 despite the economy and weather patterns not always being in our favor.

This performance is record breaking for Lennox Industries and it took the efforts of the entire 756 North American member sales team. In fact, over the past 18 months, we had 81% (158/196) of our sales territories and their managers grew over the prior time period and 94% (31/33) of our districts grew as well. The average rate of those who grew was over 12% growth. Also, over the past 18 months, 63% (123/196) of our territory managers beat their quota and 63% (21/33) of our districts exceeded quota. The average % to quota for those that reached their quota was over 123%. This outstanding performance did not happen by a few key members of the team alone. It took the efforts of the entire sales team, the leadership and all of the supporting personnel at Lennox Industries.

To highlight some additional specifics, our sales force has more than doubled our new customer sales in 2014 versus 2013 ($268M versus $125M) by adding 1,070 new customers over the past year. With our consistent strategy of becoming a world class sales organization, the Lennox Industries sales team has exceeded company, market and shareholder expectations year over year. We believe that the fundamentals of strategy and culture, customer focus, new employee training and coaching, talent management and sales operations are the key building blocks for ensuring our success each and every year.

Geographic Expansion

The sales team, through its Lennox PartsPlus (LPP) retail stores has opened 25 new LPP retail stores to expand our geographic footprint 155 total stores throughout the United States and Canada and get even closer to our customers. We have also opened 6 partner stores, leveraging our sister company’s distributor network to reach customers who had previously been out of reach. Our store selling teams have increased their revenue contribution by 6.3% when comparing 2013 to 2014.

A Winning Sales Culture

Through our employee culture survey, the sales team indicated in 2013 that Lennox Industries is a good place to work and during the past 18 months our scores have improved even more. We work diligently at maintaining our culture of excellence by providing best in class training and coaching as well as retaining and attracting top talent. We have developed a Graduate Sales Academy designed to prepare college graduates to sell HVAC, best in class HVAC training and coaching programs for our territory, district and regional managers and we regularly participate in contests such as the National Collegiate Sales Competition and perform recruitment at the top university sales programs. Our sales team is fueled by their competitive spirit and driven by their metrics and objectives to succeed from the start of their career at Lennox throughout their tenure with our company. We believe in promoting and growing our sales employees from within. All of our sales leadership were previous territory and district managers and have grown into their current executive roles from within which helped make us successful.

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