Five years as a territory manager for Ford Motor Company gave Kell McGowan many of the tools she needed to become an effective consultative seller to her veterinarian customers.

“When you’re in the presence of someone doing something they love, it’s a good energy,” says Kell McGowan, Southeast territory manager for Webster Veterinary Supply.
McGowan feels she’s in the presence of such people when she calls on veterinarians. And she’s right at home, because she has the same energy, doing what she loves to do.
McGowan, 37, says she got her love of animals from her mother, Paulette. She learned the value of hard work – as well as her appreciation for farmers and farm animals – from her dad, Ancelan Carl McGowan. She picked up the subtleties of customer service – including the value of having a thick skin – as a waitress working her way through college. And she learned about sales and small-business ownership as a territory manager for Ford Motor Company. Now, in her position with Webster, she has brought together all these loves, interests and skills to serve her customers well. And she’s having a good time doing it.

A love of animals
McGowan was born in 1973 in San Jose, Calif., where her father was a territory manager with Monsanto. But when she was just seven or eight, the McGowans moved back to Augusta, Ga., where her dad and mom were raised. “He decided he was tired of someone else telling him what to do and how to do it,” she says of her father. So he started a fertilizer service company for farmers, calling on farmers and talking to them about spraying their fields, and selling them what they needed.
It was in Georgia that young McGowan got the chance to learn more about animals. “I loved animals for as far back as I have a memory,” she says. “I think I inherited it from my mother.
“There’s a difference in people who appreciate, enjoy or are interested in animals; and people who truly love them,” she says. “My mother loved them. She had a sparkle in her eye when she would ‘meet’ an animal or tell us about something she’d read. I would sit captivated and listen to her stories about how koala bears aren’t really bears, or why rabbits thump their feet when they’re scared. It was as if she was telling me the most important story in the world.”

Weekends on the farm
The McGowans settled in a suburb of Augusta, but her father bought a 250-acre farm near Wrens, Ga., about 45 minutes away, where Kell McGowan would often spend weekends. The farm had no production animals, but “there were always critters, as my dad would call them – squirrels and things being destructive,” she says.
Her dad raised birddogs, though not for sale. Rather, he used them for quail-hunting. “The only ‘rub’ was when he took me quail hunting with him,” she recalls. “I was so excited when the dog would point, and I thought the quails made the cutest sounds. Then, he shot one. When my dog brought it back to my dad, it wasn’t dead; my dad said he had to twist its neck. I had a complete meltdown, and used all the negotiating skills I had at that early age to bargain for its life. My dad agreed to let me carry it until it died, and it did – right in my hands. Well, I was absolutely inconsolable.”
Come Mondays, she would rejoin her schoolmates in Augusta. “All of my ‘city friends’ were shocked – the girls were more shocked, the boys more curious – when I would come home with stories of my weekend adventures,” she says. “I remember in middle school, I skipped school with a few of my classmates – boys, of course; girls weren’t interested. My dad took us to a farm expo in Moultrie, Ga. We had a blast. While the boys went to the chewing-tobacco booths to sneak samples, I went to check out the livestock exhibits. That’s where I learned that a pig will do almost anything for an Oreo.”

Farm calls
She got an education about farming while accompanying her father on customer calls when he had his fertilizer business. “I remember having so much fun playing on all the equipment – small tractors, large tractors, 18-wheelers, spray trucks, you name it. I became quite the tomboy.” She also loved playing with the various animals she met on the farms.
“I enjoyed getting to know the farmers and their families, and gained a lot of respect for hard-working, small business owners who chose their profession based on what they loved to do, not necessarily to become wealthy. This is the same respect and admiration I feel for the veterinarians I call on.”

The value of hard work
When the farming industry began to struggle, McGowan’s parents started a retail/commercial nursery business closer to home, in Evans. Ga. The business grew into a successful commercial irrigation and landscape business, which her father still runs today in Augusta. (Paulette McGowan died about four years ago.)
“My dad is old school,” she says. “He works Monday through Saturday, starting at 7 o’clock. And he has these ethics: Be honest, work hard, do what you say you’re going to do. The clients he has today are the same ones he had 15 or 20 years ago.”
Her father taught her another valuable lesson. “My dad taught me at a very young age about the value of a dollar, and to consider the work it took to earn your money when spending it,” she says. “It’s such a simple concept, but it’s kept me from making some impulsive financial decisions many times throughout my life.”

Waiting tables
It was that appreciation for the value of a dollar that led McGowan to enroll at Augusta State University in Augusta. “I had been accepted to the University of Georgia – my parents are both alumni – and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, but they were more expensive, and I did not like the idea having loan debt when I graduated.” She majored in public relations, because she liked the aspect of “taking a bad situation and making it right.” And the major also left her with a lot of career possibilities.
While at Augusta State, she worked nights, primarily as a waitress, first at a Lone Star Restaurant, then a local country club, and finally at a French restaurant. “It was a way to make good money,” she recalls. And there were some takeaways.
“I learned to have a thick skin, to pick your battles, and to be able to not take things personally,” she says. “I’m not sure who this quote came from – ‘The customer’s not always right, but the customer is always the customer.’ I dealt with that a lot.” She learned how to prioritize things, a necessity when six tables of people would sit down at once for dinner. “There was a sense of urgency, like an emergency room,” she says. And she learned that most of the time, when people complain, they just want to be heard.
But if there was one takeaway from waitressing that outweighed all the others, it was this: “I was extremely happy to get my college degree,” she says. “Waiting tables was not something I wanted to continue to do, being on my feet all day.”
Her first job out of school was with the Columbia County welfare system, helping people on welfare wean themselves off the public rolls by learning a trade. Part of the job consisted of persuading local businesses to come in to offer job training. “When it was good, it was really good,” she says of the job. “When you were able to make a difference, it gave you a huge sense of accomplishment.” But the job had its frustrations too. “We’d put these [training workshops] together and they wouldn’t show up.”

Ford
Her life changed in 1999, when she was hired by Ford Motor Company as a territory manager in the marketing, sales and service division. In the dead of winter, she moved from Augusta to Dearborn, Mich. “I remember being completely shocked at the weather change – it was so cold. People would say ‘But it’s a dry cold.’ When it’s 5 degrees, cold is cold.”
She attended a training class for six months with 14 other new hires. She was intimidated by her classmates, many of whom were from better schools than she was. A few even had MBAs. And she recalls getting a hard time about her Southern accent. “They would ask me questions about my childhood, like, ‘Did you milk cows?’ Well, maybe I did, but they didn’t need to know that. Or ‘Did you ride a horse to school?’” The teasing stopped when she got the highest grade on the first exam. “That was the last time I felt ‘less than.’ We were all on the same level after that.”
McGowan’s assignment with Ford was to represent the company to the franchised dealerships in Alabama, to promote Ford’s policies as well as to help the dealers run successful businesses. “I remember when I called to introduce myself to one dealer principal, he said, ‘We’re located just across the gnat line. We call it that because of all the gnats.’” Then he offered some colorful advice on how to stop the gnats from swarming one’s face. “I thought to myself that this was going to be the beginning of many entertaining stories to come,” she recalls. “I was right.”

Working with franchisees
One of a territory manager’s most important duties is helping dealers manage their inventory. Given that a dealer’s inventory could be in the millions of dollars, it was crucial they had the right mix to ensure that they could turn it quickly. It was crucial to Ford as well. “The better the dealership’s inventory, the more they sold, therefore the more vehicles they needed from us,” she says. “In simple terms, our job was ultimately to keep the plants running.”
One part of the job McGowan loved was helping the dealers put together marketing and advertising plans, including newspaper ads, TV commercials and Internet campaigns. “Most dealers weren’t afraid to take risks and try new ideas,” she says. “And well, I’ll admit, it’s always fun to spend someone else’s money.”
One part of the job she didn’t love so much was enforcing franchise agreements. Even though the dealer owned the dealership, he or she had to agree to operate it under the guidelines of the franchiser, in this case, Ford. For example, in the case of the company’s luxury lines, the dealer was forbidden to use words like “blow-out sale” or “selling cheap” in their ads, because Ford considered that a devaluing of the brand. “When regulations were not followed, we had to confront the dealer with a copy of the ad, explain what was incorrect, and ask that they pull it,” she says.
“There were times where my involvement was taken to be intrusive, because it was, in fact, their business,” she says. For example, Ford would send out surveys to customers asking them to rate their dealer’s performance on various issues. “If they did not give a good score, we had to confront the dealer with a copy of the actual survey and insist they correct the problem to avoid future issues. There were many times where the customers were, let’s just say, ‘indelicate’ with their complaints, so this made the conversation uncomfortable, even if you tried to paraphrase.”
Some dealers resented the fact that Ford corporate was meddling in their affairs. And at times they would question McGowan’s right to challenge them, because she had never owned or even worked in a dealership. “I may not have said it, but I respected their argument in theory,” she says. “But there was never one time I didn’t agree with the correction that needed to be made. It was our priority to protect Ford Motor Company and our brands by ensuring they were being properly represented, just like it was [the dealers’] job to ensure the success of their business.”

Product launches
A much brighter spot in the manufacturer/dealer relationship – and another learning experience for the veterinary-sales-rep-to-be – were new-product launches. “When we launched a new vehicle, there was a national plan, regional plan and a territory plan,” she says. “I was in charge of executing the territory plan, which included everything from in-dealership staff training to hosting a ride-and-drive.”
These ride and drives never ended without a few “incidents,” she says. “We would lay out a well-marked track where the dealers and employees could drive our new vehicle along with competitive makes. It never failed: There was always one ‘cowboy’ in the group who would go too fast and send the props flying, while being cheered on; or leave the track altogether for an extended amount of time. Sometimes…several vehicles would leave together. Secretly I thought it was hilarious, but I couldn’t let that be known.”
She also encouraged dealers to get their sales and service staff excited about the new launch by setting up showroom display contests, invitation events for customers, or walk-around contests among sales reps.

Business reviews
Another core responsibility of the territory manager is business management. Each month, McGowan would review with her dealers their financial statements. Using reports, she would compare their statements with those of like-sized dealerships in various categories, such as gross profit per vehicle, variable expenses and manufacturer warranty business. “I always cringed when we started digging into expenses, because there seemed to always be something there you didn’t want to know about, like a boat or a house. Ear muffs.”
That said, she admired her dealers greatly. “Successful dealer operators are some of the most talented business people there are, and there was always so much you could learn from them,” she says. “For them, it was like running four businesses under one roof – sales, service, parts and body shop. It takes a lot of working capital and a healthy cash flow to run a dealership, and I saw dealerships go from profitable to bankrupt in a matter of months.”

A learning lab
All of her core responsibilities – business reviews, product launches, etc. – were designed to lead to growth in sales and customer satisfaction, says McGowan. “It was difficult at times, because everything you did had a long-term result; nothing had a big impact in the short term. It was all about winning a long race, one step at a time. This taught me patience, resilience and the benefit of long-term strategic planning.
“On a broader stroke, the classic training I received, along with the five years of field experience with Ford, taught me invaluable skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, relationship-building, collaborative planning, marketing, brand management, inventory management, product development and training, process/procedure development and business development. All are skills I have used in my role as a territory manager for Webster.”

Veterinary sales
In 2008, McGowan researched the veterinary industry and sales, and was hired by Webster. Her territory extends as far north as Lavonia, Ga., and as far south as Columbus, Ga. “I thought that this position would be a great way to bridge my education and experience in general business and marketing/sales, with my love for animals and my eternal passion for animal welfare. I was right!”
As a Webster rep, she quickly found that what she lacked in medical-related experience, she made up for with business and sales experience. “This has given me something unique to add value as a sales rep,” she says. “I have helped veterinarians put together marketing campaigns for everything from clinic openings to monthly themes. I have consulted in areas such as expense management, sales/profitability goals, benchmark comparisons and common areas or missed revenue.
“Veterinarians who also own their clinic often [lack] time to effectively practice medicine and manage the business side of things. I have heard so many times from veterinarians that they ‘went to school to practice medicine – not to deal with things like sales forecasting and trend analysis.’ But it’s also not feasible for some clinics to absorb the cost of an experienced practice manager without a large financial strain. It’s difficult for veterinarian owners/operators to try to do both; usually one area suffers.
“I enjoy business management, and I can say I’ve never met a group of business owners more appreciative of valuable advice, more passionate about what they do, and more dedicated to running a successful practice.”