Sales, sales, sales --- how about just golf

This afternoon I was reading about John Deere (Moline, Illinois) buying Lesco (Cleveland, Ohio). I know Lesco from the days GolfSolutions.com was working on an online facility management system for golf course superintendents and when I was working with the Nicklaus organization in golf course construction in the late 1990s.

Since Deere is buying Lesco at $14 per share and Lesco is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ, I took a look at Lesco's most recent 10-K. In doing a quick read of the the 10-K what really struck me was the following paragraph:

Employees As of December 31, 2005, we had 1,009 full-time employees, of which 14 were involved in warehouse operations, 783 in sales-related activities and 212 in management and administration. Of the total number of full-time employees, 572 were salaried and 437 were hourly employees.

That means that almost 80% of Lesco's employees are sales people....WOW!!! Sales, sales, sales --- but I like golf, not sales.

I am not a big sales person in terms of advertising and used-car selling. Rather, I am a business person salesman. In that, I mean I build relationships and via those relationships people come to trust me and thus buy from me. I don't push products or services on people. Maybe this is why GolfInvestors is taking awhile to migrate through the minds of others....

As for my sales strategy, it is a good strategy if you want to build a solid company based upon solid relationships with customers....and thus be able to sleep at night. However, it is not a good strategy when you have VC / institutional money as they want to earn money, not build relationships.