Video: Mentorship
Peter Alexander, CEO, BMC
HQ: Boise, Idaho 2011 Employee Count:3,700 2011 Pro Sales:$630.8 million
Pace Your Growth
When Peter Alexander came on as BMC’s CEO in 2010, the company was still adjusting to its new footprint. A year earlier, the firm’s two-unit predecessor had reorganized under Chapter 11 bankruptcy-law protection, emerging with half the employees it had in 2008 and, at $700 million in annual sales, about half its former revenues. But that was only part of the problem. “It was beyond just two separate companies,” Alexander says. “It was really 27 different companies all having kind of the same moniker but running independently.” That prompted BMC to re-examine and realign its corporate culture. Here’s how he describes the process.
We don’t have too many layers between the yard and headquarters. But as large and spread out as we are, it’s a challenge to know everyone’s name. What I can do is be visible and accessible and show employees I’m willing to get out there and roll up my sleeves for the same goal. We have about 85 locations, and I try to visit each one two or three times per year.
Our core values are our foundation. You have to have that recognized at the branch level. You have to have them in Spanish and English. Everybody has to be on board and be willing to pound them home every day. You tie them into your plans. You drive them at a pace, knowing what you have to do every day in order for the plan to work. You execute fundamentally well and incrementally better every day.
I like to talk with potential hires about their war scars—two or three things that they really screwed up in a past job. That’s more helpful to me than their successes: What did they learn?
Correction: An earlier version of this article attributed the following quote to BMC’s Peter Alexander: “Our goal is to promote from within, whether that’s up or horizontally. We try to avoid the trap of having everyone pushing higher up the ladder. There are many people who just want to be world-class branch managers in their town. Horizontal promotions let them go up two or three pay grades within one position.” Those remarks were made by ABC Supply’s David Luck as part of a panel discussion featuring Alexander, Luck, and Stock Building Supply’s Jeff Rea at the ProSales 100 Conference Thursday, March 7, 2013. We regret the error.
