Gil Welsford
Founder and CEO at ValveMan
Gil Welsford is Founder and CEO of ValveMan, which offers online and offline solutions for industrial valves. He's the third generation of his family in the valve business. He also sits on the board of the Welsford Company, the family valve distributor his grandfather started in 1965, where he has helped bring the business into the modern day with software and processes. Outside valves, he invests in real estate and private companies through Welsford Holdings, and co-founded Nicecream, a DC-area ice cream shop that freezes its ice cream with liquid nitrogen. He graduated cum laude from James Madison University with a business degree.
On Pipeline
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How to Build Relationships With Customers Who Order Online
Gil Welsford, Founder and CEO of ValveMan, turned a website built for one-off industrial valve sales into a relationship business. His team calls the customers who order on the site and asks if they need anything else, even when the order…
Key takeaways
- Call the customers who order through your website and ask if they need anything else, even on a small order like the $50 check valve Gil Welsford describes.
- Read a complex order as a signal: Gil's point is that someone buying a three-inch, 150-pound flange, pneumatically actuated ball valve needs other products.
- Hire people who genuinely like people, as ValveMan does, so the follow-up call isn't a disguised pitch.
- This Monday, call your top five customers with no reason to sell them anything.
- When someone comes to mind, follow Peter Kolot's saying, "Listen to the nudge," and send the text or make the call.
In Gil's words
"I didn't even know what GitHub was eight months ago."
"Why don't we try taking these orders that we get on ValveMan and calling those customers and building relationships with them and asking them if they need any- anything else?"
"Because if somebody's buying a three-inch, 150-pound flange, pneumatically actuated ball valve, with a solenoid valve and a limit switch, Joseph, I don't think you need that in your house."