Whether he’s taking a turn at top-speed at a racetrack or totaling his weekly sales from his mobile tool business, Ben Aurich is fueled by competition. The Cornwell Tools dealer, based in Farmington, Minn., utilized that drive when he began his business in February 2015 and it paid off almost immediately.
Despite being new to the industry, Aurich has cemented himself among the top 50 Cornwell dealers, peaking as high as No. 7 nationally. He foresees continued success and has plans for expanding his business in the near future.
“I can’t help it. It’s just my thing. I’m competitive at everything I do,” the 36-year-old Aurich says.
An avid racer and former college football player, Aurich has employed his competitive nature to multiple jobs prior to becoming a mobile tool dealer. From 2002 to 2007, he performed title loan work and closed housing sales. “That was a competition for me,” he recalls. “Who’s closed the most loans in a month or a week?”
His experience in the housing market also allowed him to develop positive people-skills and fine tune his ability to negotiate, which are valuable assets in his current line of work with Cornwell. “I guess I didn’t realize that was happening when it did,” Aurich says. “But now, when I look back, those years doing that have probably helped me the most doing this because I’m not afraid to go walk into a shop and go talk to people. Whereas some people walk around timid, I don’t.”
He also got a taste of owning a business when he established his own title company and operated it for three years. But when the housing market declined, Aurich made his first career move.
He relocated to Pennsylvania with his future wife and found work at a Philadelphia dealership, detailing cars and decided to leave the housing market altogether. “That was kind of the final nail,” Aurich remembers. “I could make good money (closing loans), but I hate it. I don’t like sitting at a desk. I want to be a mechanic.”
Aurich and his wife, Sheila moved back to Minnesota. He enrolled in technical college and found work as an auto tech immediately upon finishing his schooling in 2010. Once again, he found competition in the work. “When I was a mechanic, you’re getting paid flat rate. So it’s how many hours of work you turn and that’s what you’re getting paid. Well, bam, there’s my measuring stick right there,” he says.
Aurich enjoys working on cars. But he found working as a tech and coming home to more vehicle repairs was becoming too much. “After you do it for a little bit, you don’t like working on other people’s cars as much,” Aurich says. “I had so much side work at my house. … I would rather just work on my own stuff.”
His desire to find a new line of work led to conversations with his Cornwell dealer, and Aurich discovered an opportunity to work for himself in an automotive environment.
Connecting with Cornwell
Aurich’s journey into mobile tool sales began with questions directed to his Cornwell dealer at the time, Mike Manther. “Dealers aren’t really all that upfront with, ‘You can make this amount of money.’ So I really had to dig between talking to him and the other guys,” Aurich explains. “I was trying to figure out what kind of money could be made.”
Eventually conversations led to a meeting with the district manager, Steve Holmberg. That meeting shed light onto the type of living Aurich could make and the flexibility the job offered toward his schedule.
“After talking to them, I realized there is no cap. I can make whatever I want,” Aurich says, adding that he usually finishes his route in the early afternoon and alters his routine in the warmer months to accommodate his racing schedule. “I usually go get my kids at 4 PM and bring them home. If I want to take days off, I can take days off.
“It’s a great business.”
Aurich explored working for other flags as well and nearly signed with a competitor. But ultimately, he felt Cornwell was the right fit. “I realized that the reasons I wanted to go with Cornwell originally hadn’t changed,” he recalls.
Once Aurich got further into the process of establishing his tool business, he received an opportunity to take over the route in his hometown area that Manther was operating. “I didn’t know he was trying to leave. He has a cabin up north that he would always go to,” Aurich says. “Mike said, ‘Well, why don’t you take my route and I’ll just move up to my cabin and do a route in northern Minnesota.’”
Not only was the route local, but it had many established customers. Plus there were opportunities for Aurich to add additional stops. “For me, it ended up being perfect because I pretty much got half existing route and half of a brand new route,” he says. “Most of the people liked Mike, so my existing part was awesome. And the other people were all clamoring to get a Cornwell guy in there.
“It ended up being a great deal.”
Instant success
Aurich’s suburban route south of the Twin Cities is based in Farmington, extending into nearby Burnsville, Rosemount, Apple Valley, Lakeville, Elko and Eagan. While he services several communities, Aurich says he doesn’t have to drive more than 15 minutes to get to any of his stops.
“I use a tank of fuel a week,” he says. “I have a pretty good setup.”
Even though he established his business in February, and hence didn’t make any sales for the first six weeks of the year, Aurich has been among the top tool dealers at Cornwell. As of December, he was 33rd nationally but rose as high as seventh earlier in the year.
“I’m plenty happy with it,” he says of his first year of sales.
Aurich credits his strong start as a tool dealer to his ability to work with different types of people. “This business is just people. If you’re a people-person, you can do just fine,” he says. “You’ve got to be able to talk to the 18-year-old tech student. You’ve got to be able to talk to the 55-year-old guy who’s going to be retiring.”
Aurich has cultivated his approach to selling based on his experience working as a technician. He understands the challenges his customers face. With approximately 170 customers on the books and roughly 400 technicians on his route, Aurich is mindful of how much time he spends at each stop. He feels his “in-and-out” approach allows him to see as many customers as possible and keeps technicians from feeling pressured to buy.
“I hate feeling like I’m inefficient,” Aurich says. “I don’t want to short-change them, but if I know they don’t need anything, they don’t need me to sit there and look at them.”
He doesn’t routinely tote and promote, opting rather to bring flyers into shops to highlight sale items. However, if he comes across an interesting item that he thinks his customers could benefit from – like his top-selling 1/2” Stubby Impact Gun – he will bring it into shops.
“When I say tote and promote, I don’t have the box every week full of a bunch of random stuff. If I find something cool like that, I will,” Aurich says, of his top-selling impact. “If sales are slow, I’ll repack the truck with more stuff and probably tote and bring stuff in to try and get it going again. I just don’t do it every week.
“I like to bring them the coolest thing,” he adds.
His experience as a technician has helped him sell scan tools because he owns one himself, and can assist customers with product demos and provide other first-hand information. However, he has less experience with auto body tools, which makes that category more challenging to sell.
While he tries to keep a low-pressure approach with his customers, Aurich says it is vital to be vocal. “You have to be able to ask for a sale,” Aurich explains. “If you see someone looking at something, and they’re asking questions, make sure they know how much it is and that they can buy it today.
“If you’re afraid to ask for the sale, you’re definitely going to be afraid to ask for a payment once they already have that item and you go back the following week,” he adds.
To date, Aurich has a loss of just $35 because he sold a breaker bar to a person who worked in the office of a dealership. That person was fired, and Aurich didn’t have any personal contact information for that customer. Even though his annual loss for 2015 is well below the 1 to 3 percent that he was told was the industry average, his competitive tendencies kick in. “It’s only $35, but it still makes me mad because it’s my own fault,” he says. “If I could have made my first year and have no loss, that was going to be kind of sweet.”
He has turned the loss into a learning experience and now always gets a customer’s address and phone number. “If I don’t find somebody when I’m at that stop, I’ve got all their cell phone numbers, and I give them a call,” he says.
Aurich typically strives for five to six week turns for smaller balances. For larger amounts, he’ll extend that range to 10 weeks in order to close the sale. “It all kind of depends on what the item is and if I have it paid off,” Aurich says. “If you want something that I have to order for you and you want to try to not pay that much per week, that’s probably not going to happen because all of a sudden I’ve got to tie a lot of my money up.
“If it’s something I’ve already had on the truck and it’s already been paid for and it’s just there, it’s better off in your hands and you paying me a little something than sitting on my truck and having nothing come in.”
Aurich says every person is different, and it’s important to develop a good sense of character. “Some people’s eyes light up and they bite off more than they can chew,” he explains. “You’ve got to be able to feel that out. You can’t know everything, but you should be trying to feel those guys out from day-one.”
He hasn’t had to repossess many tools, and he attributes that to the relationship he has with his customers. “They can just call me because I feel like I’m easy to deal with,” Aurich says.
His personality has helped him work with his customers. But the support he receives at home from his wife Sheila has paid dividends as well. When Aurich is running his route or delivering a toolbox, he can’t pick up his sons, Bryan and Adam, from daycare or drop them off at appointments. “She’s always pretty easy to help with my weird, last-minute stuff I drop on her,” Aurich says.
“My workload is greater than the business, so she picks up the loose ends a lot,” he adds. “She’s the boss of the house.”
The right truck for the job
Aurich believes 75 percent of his sales are impulse purchases. Because of this, his focus is getting techs onto the truck. So naturally, he put a lot of thought into the truck he purchased.
He bought an 18’ 2009 Chevy C5500 used, noting “it’s kind of a standard, beginner truck.” The truck was designed by LDV for another flag. So when he purchased it, Aurich had to remove the previous decals and apply Cornwell logos.
“I like their interiors because they’re all metal,” Aurich says of LDV.
“When you buy the nice truck, everything is nicer – your electronics are nicer, the heater’s nicer, the air conditioner is nicer,” he adds.
He would like to upgrade his truck soon, going with a 24’ or 26’ cab and chassis to allow room for more merchandise. “We sell an 84” box. It’s one of our bigger boxes. I’d like to be able to have one on my truck and I can’t ever do that,” he says. “I’ve sold a few of them, but I sell them off of the flyer, and then I hook my pick-up truck to my trailer and tow them to their shop.”
‘Wheeling and dealing’
Aurich’s favorite part of operating a tool business is the “wheeling and dealing.” He finds it fun to negotiate with customers on large-ticket items like toolboxes. “My boring days are the days where not many people come out to the truck and we don’t wheel and deal much,” he says. “I like the interaction.”
According to Aurich, his father has always called him “a hustler and a salesman” – even while he was growing up. “If I feel strongly about something, and I want something, I guess I can be persuasive,” Aurich admits.
His ability to sway people has been an important attribute since he began his tool route. “When the truck fills up with seven or eight guys, you can be a mouse in the corner, or if you see somebody looking at something, you can go talk to him or give them information on it or tell them the price or whatever. I’m not afraid to do that.”
The biggest challenge for Aurich is preventing his truck from feeling stale. “I’ll actively get a bunch of new stuff and clean it up, move stuff around and change it around,” he says. “Then all of a sudden, bam, that week I’m having a huge week of sales.”
Additionally, he says managing cash flow is vital to success. He stresses buying merchandise at the right rate. “You can’t blow it all, and you can’t try not to buy anything. You have to find that happy medium,” Aurich advises, adding that he buys in bulk when he has the opportunity.
Regardless of his weekly sales, Aurich recognizes that the mobile tool business has ups and downs so he keeps a level head.
“I’ve had a week before where I’ve done $33,000 and I’ve also had a week where I’ve only done $3,300,” he says. “It’s going to happen that way, and you can’t get hung up on the numbers.”
