Under the direction of its new sales and channel marketing VP, Steve McNally, LG Electronics has restructured its regional sales force into three sales zones with Stuart Rayle directing the Eastern regional zone, Greg Regelbrugge directing the Western regional zone and industry veteran Rick Calacci joining the company to direct the newly created Central regional zone.
The appointments are effective immediately, McNally announced today.
Calacci, who most recently has run a marketing consulting business, has a long industry track record with senior level sales and marketing experience working for Thomson, Sharp Electronics, Toshiba, Hannspree and others. He will be based in the new Lincolnshire, Ill., branch office, working with seven regional account executives.
The new Central zone, which is added to the pre-existing Western and Eastern zones, will include states from Illinois and Wisconsin down to and including Texas.
The regional zone teams will work strictly with regional retail accounts – the current national accounts team, which is headed up by Michael Roach, remains in place, McNally said.
“The guys that we had in place did a great job to a certain level, but as the company has grown they’ve been spread too, too thin,” McNally told TWICE.
“Since joining LG Electronics earlier this year, I have been developing our sales channel strategy for 2007 and beyond,” McNally stated. “As I assessed the talented team already in place, it became evident that LG’s dramatic growth in the United States requires us to reorganize in order to maintain the high level of service to our valued accounts while achieving the right balance for our sales channels and brands.
“I wish to thank CE president KI Kwon and CEO Michael Ahn for their support in assuring that we have right people in right places to support our position as a tier-one player in the U.S. consumer electronics market.”
McNally said he is looking to balance LG’s distribution arrangement.
“My main platform at LG has been balanced distribution. Most brands don’t do a good job of balancing their distribution, and this is an opportunity for growth, while maximizing the strengths of each of our distribution partners,” he said.
“In keeping with this philosophy, we are elevating our level of attention to buying groups, whose retailers represent a key avenue to showcase and explain new technologies.”
He said Michael Fleming, formerly of Sharp, will lead the effort as buying groups senior account manager, and will help with dealer communication as the third sales zone is established.
“Mike’s been in the industry a long time, and thinks of himself as a frustrated engineer, so he’s addicted to the business,” McNally said. “He is familiar with the positioning of tier one brand and he knows what works for the buying groups and what doesn’t. He also allows me someone who can hit the ground running.”
McNally said that now that LG has become established as a premium CE brand, the company will place more emphasis on building Zenith as a second brand.
“Zenith is still a strong brand, which continues to enjoy a very high level of brand awareness,” he said. “To assure that LG capitalizes on its dual-brand strategy and to allow the regional accounts to focus on the LG brand, we have hired a new sales director for the Zenith brand, Brendan Morris, who joins us from Westinghouse and Uniden.”
“Part of using a dual brand strategy is remaining true to your tier one brand, which we will continue to do, but Zenith still enjoys strong brand recognition and we felt we were missing some opportunity here,” McNally explained, adding that the company will encourage account expansion for Zenith as well as driving over all sales volume behind the line.
To assist with sales support, McNally said Toby Groves has been promoted to sales training director, and five additional trainers will be added to help him.
“Our supply chain management team under the direction of Guillermo Juvera also has been restructured and now includes five additional team members to ensure more responsiveness and accuracy for our customers,” McNally said.
