Global Sales Team Studies Rats with Rodent Expert, Bobby Corrigan, in NYC

New York rats got it tough! With cars, predators and pest control technicians out to get them, rats in this harsh urban environment rarely live beyond six months, one year tops, considerably shorter than the 18-month life expectancy for most rats.

Of course, they're breeding a good portion of their lives which is why rodent expert, Bobby Corrigan, Ph.D., is in big demand to help the city find ways to control them.

Bell's technical sales team had an opportunity to study with Corrigan in May at Bell Boot Camp in New York City, gleaning his rodent expertise to take back to their customers in all parts of the world.

Bell's worldwide technical sales team
Flying in from Australia, Europe, and locations throughout the U.S., Bell's 18 technical sales representatives, along with other Bell staff, gathered in a meeting room on the 59th floor of the Empire State Building for four days of rodent training and team building. 

For two days, Corrigan led in-depth training sessions on rodent biology, behavior and control techniques, culminating with a nighttime trek down the back alleys and side streets of the city and into its subways for a glimpse of the challenges facing rodent control workers in New York.

They saw firsthand the day's trash piled up on the streets ready for collection and witnessed "bucket loads of rats" scurrying across a nearby construction site.

"Though the perspective was from New York, we drew lots of comparisons and contrasts to other cities, such as London and Paris," noted Agostino Panetta, Bell's new European Business Manager.

The real test of the training came the final day when the group broke into teams of five and six people for firsthand inspection of four sites around the city. After rotating from site to site, the groups reconvened for an in-depth discussion, along with a little team competition, to share what they had observed and recommend measures to achieve an effective IPM program.

"It was a fantastic opportunity to participate with the whole team," said Brady Hudson, Bell's U.K. & Ireland Manager. "Bobby Corrigan gave us some extremely useful points that I'll use in my day-to-day talks and presentation materials, as well as practical experience for use in inspections."

Building a global sales team
Team building among Bell's domestic and international sales teams was part of the training, too. They spent their first day together discussing key issues in each individual's territory - everything from regulatory changes in the Middle East to mouse plagues in Australia to mole problems in the U.S. 

"Each rep gave a short presentation which worked really well," said Mark Westover, Bell's VP of global sales.

There were also sessions by Bell staff on marketing updates and on Bell's active ingredients and their mode of action.

In a city as large as New York, where 70 percent of rodent control is burrow baiting and the remaining 30percent, baiting with bait stations, it must have been reassuring for the global sales team to occasionally spy a touch of home - Bell's PROTECTA LP and PROTECTA Landscape Bait Stations lining subway walls and tucked away in parks.