Meet Our People: Keystone Q&A
Tim Workman is our Business Development Manager and one of Keystone’s newest team members! Tim is a seasoned B2B industrial sales professional who joined us in late February to develop new business opportunities for Keystone. As part of our Meet the Team series, we recently sat down with Tim to learn more about who he is and what he does at Keystone.
Tim, what do you do here at Keystone?
My role is to find business opportunities for Keystone via market research, sales, and revenue generation; innovation and product development; and relationship management.
What’s your background?
I have been in business-to-business industrial sales for 29 years, which includes a college internship. I have mostly sold fasteners, but also electronic components, plumbing chemicals and specialties, maintenance and repair products and service station equipment. I worked for A Raymond (fasteners), Pioneer Standard Electronics (electronic components), Federal Process Corporation (plumbing chemicals and specialties), Premier Farnell (Rotanium div. – maintenance & repair items), and SSECO (Service Station Equipment Company – college internship).
Tell us about something you’re working on for Keystone right now:
I have been contacting customers by phone and email and thanking them for their business. If their sales are down, I have been asking if there are specific reasons that I then try to address with them in hopes to win their business back. I am also building brand awareness by letting them know about our capabilities. I send our capabilities brochure to everyone I talk to or leave a voice mail message for. I am also researching how Keystone can do business with the U.S. government. I do handle some accounts as an Inside Sales function. I am also profiling customers to visit at an upcoming trade show in Cleveland called Fastener Fair.
What’s your favorite part of the job at Keystone?
I work with a helpful and fun team of people, and I really enjoy the variety of the work I am doing. I have done a lot of different things in the very short time I have been here.
What’s something not work related that we should know about you?
I’m a lifelong musician. I’ve been playing drums since I was young child, but I also play guitar, write songs, sing, and have played in cover bands and original bands and have recorded in several recording studios and played live, etc.
What was your favorite band experience?
I was in was an original hard rock band called Alexis Machine. I played drums and sang backing vocals. One of the guys named it from a character in a Steven King novel. It was pseudo-progressive hard rock, but we had very well written, melodic songs and good vocals with 3-part harmonies. The lyrical content was thoughtful and tasteful. It was a more “artistic” hard rock band. I spent a lot of time creating my drum parts and rehearsing them so I would play the same part every time, the same way. That helped to make the band very tight. We only recorded a two-song demo and played live a couple times in Toledo at a big club called The Bijou. That band had the most potential though, but like most local bands, we didn’t last forever and went our separate ways.
Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met?
I once had a conversation with a rocker named Lizzy Borden. He had a record deal in the 80’s and still tours the world. He’s kind of like an Alice Cooper type “shock rock” singer. I was very young and met him in L.A. at another band’s concert, but he was just there, hanging out. I almost told him that he should get rid of his drummer and I’d send him a demo tape. Luckily, I didn’t. I found out (decades later) that his drummer was also his brother! Nice guy though. Very professional.
