To revolutionize its sales strategy, the North America Industrial Packaging (NAIP) business unit has launched an extensive Sales Transformation Project. This initiative aims to drive substantial growth and streamline operations, ensuring Mauser stays competitive in a challenging market environment.
The transformation of the NAIP sales strategy focuses on ensuring that the right people, equipped with the right tools and support, are in place to attract and retain customers. Our efforts are concentrated on three key areas: reimagining new customer development, expanding inside sales, and streamlining sales deployment.
Reimagine new customer development
The New Customer Development Team, led by newly appointed VP Bryan Buitron, is central to our reimagined new customer development strategy. This team is dedicated to acquiring new customers. To achieve this, we are strategically hiring new team members across North America and providing thorough training in our products and craft to build lasting relationships with customers and colleagues.
Expand inside sales
The Inside Sales Team is committed to rekindling relationships with former customers, fostering the growth of small accounts, and warmly welcoming new customers. Under the leadership of Michael Tanksley, the team is expanding to seven sales representatives and territories. This growth aims to enhance our ability to regain lost business, reduce sales churn among small customers, and increase Mauser’s share of wallet. A larger team also provides more opportunities to build relationships with customers through proactive engagement and strengthens our sales bench by developing a robust support system for field sales.
Streamline Sales Development
To optimize our regional sales efforts, we are reducing the territory size for Territory Sales Managers (TSMs). This change will allow TSMs to put more focus on growing share of wallet (SoW) and finding new customers in their individual territories. Our goal is to drive financial benefits from new business and SoW growth by streamlining operations and relieving TSMs of some Key Account (KAM) support responsibilities and tail-spend accounts.
To further support and develop Key Account Managers, KAMs receive 2-3 hours of coaching per month to manage early-stage opportunities and evaluate performance against metrics. Monthly team meetings are held to review metrics, market conditions, and new business objectives. These meetings and training sessions also feature other presenters to enhance KAM knowledge and expertise.
Despite the potential for growth from these initiatives, we face many internal and external challenges including but not limited to:
- Long “up to speed” time and “clunky” process for product and systems training (internal)
- Already taxed sales support and commercial operations teams (internal)
- Ongoing cumbersome internal processes and sales team turnover (internal)
- Long sales cycle, especially with significant accounts (external)
- Mauser factory capacity constraints (external and internal)
- Retaliation from competitors in response to our aggressive moves to grow market share (external)
- New capacity and overcapacity in the market (external)
The NAIP Sales Transformation project is designed to align our sales teams to effectively tackle these challenges. We are dedicated to equipping our sales teams with the right tools and processes, and fostering collaboration with other Mauser teams to minimize internal inefficiencies.
By reimagining our customer development approach, expanding our inside sales team, and streamlining sales deployment, we are poised to achieve our ambitious goals. However, we must remain vigilant and address both internal and market challenges to ensure our success. Together, we can transform our sales operations and secure a prosperous future for our company.
Meet the Team
Bryan Buitron, Vice President of Sales
Bryan Buitron joined Mauser in December 2024 as Vice President of Sales for NAIP and oversees the recently established New Customer Development Team.
Bryan comes to Mauser with 23 years of sales and sales management experience. His most recent experience was with Goodpack where he held roles including Vice President of Sales – Americas Region. Bryan has a proven track record of sales growth, cultivating strategic partnerships and business development through a variety of roles and companies.
Outside of work, Bryan is a founder and CEO of Tomball Bobcats, an amateur football club which is an incorporated 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in Tomball, Texas that focuses on providing young adult athletes and other members of the community the opportunity to participate in organized competitive football events.
“I am excited to bring my passion for innovation and commitment to continuous improvement to Mauser. This is a strong new customer development team, and I look forward to leading them as we deliver winning sales strategies and market expansion.”
New Customer Development Team
Jasmine Ahmed, Business Development Manager
Lance Bruton, Business Development Manager
Sam Hobgood, Business Development Manager
Rafael Ochoa, Business Development Manager
Jonathan Stanton, Business Development Manager
Jon Ussery, Business Development Manager
Michael Tanksley, Inside Sales Manager
Michael Tanksley has been with Mauser as an Inside Sales Manager since October 2023. Michael Tanksley is a results-driven sales professional focused on customers with over 20 years of leadership experience in sales, training, and operations. He has a proven track record of developing high-performing teams, and implementing process improvements to enhance efficiency and customer engagement.
Prior to joining Mauser, he played a key role at Sonova where he managed a 32-person sales team responsible for $43M in monthly revenue and spearheaded a business-to-business lead process that generated $8M in incremental revenue within the first year. Michael’s expertise spans sales strategies, workforce management, SAP, Salesforce, instructional design, and leadership development. His background in training and quality management has allowed him to build robust learning programs, integrate technology into training, and enhance employee engagement.
With a strong commitment to continuous improvement, lean management, and professional development, Michael is passionate about fostering growth—both for his customers, and the organizations he serves.
“As a sales manager, I am passionate about implementing sales strategies that increase customer satisfaction and retention. I strive to foster collaboration, innovation and teamwork that will contribute to growth and success for the organization and our customers.”
Inside Sales Team
Thomas Beveridge, Inside Sales Representative
Nicole Freer, Inside Sales Representative
Ryan Gohr, Inside Sales Representative
Michael Gosling, Inside Sales Representative
Maria Tiberi, Inside Sales Representative
Joey Ruske, Inside Sales Representative