Sales Trends
market and engaging with them to generate more“ networking” content.“ You have to have market segmentation to a much finer degree to be effective,” Feldman says.“ So, you use the platform differently; there’ s a lot more direct messaging. And a lot more engagement.”
Tech tools such as Stell’ s Navigator can help salespeople narrow their prospects so that key posts are addressed in terms of your company’ s“ total addressable market” or TAM, Feldman says.“ The way I teach it to people is I say to them,‘ When you get to work, the very first thing you do is you open your Navigator. See who in your TAM has posted, and you engage the post individually, thoughtfully, with context. That stands out. That makes an impression. That says,‘ I’ m thinking about you and your journey.’” The Stell Navigator is a proprietary product distinct from the similarly named LinkedIn Navigator. The Stell Navigator is designed to help clients analyze markets, organizations or stakeholders in complex decision-making environments, according to its website.
Inter-Gen Dialogue
Training web-savvy millennials( born 1981-1996) or Gen Zs( born 1997-2012) to improve their online posting strategies is challenging enough. But getting baby boomers( born 1946-1964) and Gen X( born 1965-1980) sales staff to communicate more effectively online can be even more difficult. For example, as a business operator, how do you get your sales veterans to understand the expectations of today’ s millennial or Gen Z buyers? Harrison, himself a Gen Xer, says the selling approaches that worked when he started out have changed dramatically. Salespeople who don’ t adjust will struggle to succeed. The“ old school” way to build relationships was through personal interests, such as hobbies or children’ s activities. That approach seldom works with millennials and Gen Z, Harrison says.
“ It is completely 180 degrees different,” Harrison says.“ Millennials and Gen Zs form relationships completely backwards of the way that boomers and Gen Xers and the generations beforehand did. The old model of forming a relationship with somebody was you would walk into their office. You’ d take a quick look around. You’ d see what indicated a personal interest. You’ d start a conversation about that personal interest, whether you cared about it or not.”
The idea was to build a bond with the person through shared interests. Then you could leverage that relationship as a sales tool.“ Millennials and Gen Zs don’ t have time for that crap,” he says. Younger prospects typically expect you to come into their office or do a Teams call and tell them how they can strengthen their businesses.“ You’ d better ask great business-related questions,” Harrison says of working with younger sales prospects.“ You’ d better talk about how you can help them run their business better. And if they buy from you, live up to those promises. And here’ s the thing: Once you do that, then you become somebody they want to get to know on a personal level.”
Cooker adds that as sales teams transition to more millennial and Gen Z people, the use of technology can boost morale as well as enhancing skills.“ One challenge is that many commercial laundry sales processes were historically built around long relationship cycles and traditional prospecting methods. Gen Z salespeople often come in expecting more digital tools, faster feedback loops and clearer systems.” Younger staff typically have a higher comfort level with technology. Most have never known a time before the internet took hold in the early 2000s. Arming these staff with technology can help them get up to speed faster.“ Gen Z tends to be very comfortable with technology and digital communication,” Cooker says.“ When laundries embrace that, whether through CRM( customer relationship management) systems, marketing automation, or better prospect-research tools, younger reps can actually become extremely effective at building new business.”
To help bridge this“ generation gap” and help both new and veteran sales staff thrive, Feldman suggests deploying technology to capture the knowledge that veterans have gained over time and share these lessons with younger staff who“ get” technology but may be short on“ EQ,” i. e., the emotional quotient that comes with experience.“ The aging out of our veterans and the lack of codifying their intel, their domain knowledge, is causing a huge gap,” he says.“ What companies should be doing is basically‘ downloading’ people through conversations into an LLM( large language model) so that their knowledge is historically stored. The problem with younger people is that they lack EQ, so they lack the sales EQ to execute these plans. They’ re not sophisticated enough emotionally to be able to do that.”
Companies can devise any number of ways to get this information, but a digital LLM can simplify the process, says Feldman. He outlines a scenario for transferring generational knowledge, saying,“ If I were an owner / operator of a laundry, I would sit all my veterans down periodically, and systematically extract from them all the things that they can share.” For most companies, much of the information is already available through a CRM( customer relationship management program). This data can provide a foundation for an LLM. What’ s critical for laundry operators is to capture the knowledge that sales veterans accumulate over their careers.“ The‘ tribal knowledge’ in this industry is so
36 Textile Services • May 2026