Before joining Bender, Dale spent 14 years as a Maintenance and Project Engineer in the Pulp and Paper Industry, most of those years with Kimberly-Clark. He joined Schneider Electric in 1999, and spent 13 years as a Power System Engineer and Services National Accounts Manager. From there, he began to focus his career on smaller electrical manufacturing companies, mainly in the ground fault protection and high resistance grounding industries.
At Bender, the job of Regional Sales Director can best be summarized as having ultimate responsibility for all aspects of the Bender Industrial Business in the assigned region. Dale's first level of responsibility is to manage the day-to-day business activities such as quotes, orders, pricing discussions, technical application discussions, etc. He is appreciative of the inside sales team, which gives him help in managing this important part of the business. The next level of responsibility is to develop the Bender industrial representative (rep) network for his region. This involves searching for and onboarding new reps, continued training for reps, and travelling with reps to end-user visits. In areas where we do not have reps, Dale also has the responsibility of traveling to develop the business. When not taking care of these aspects of his job, Dale is involved in IEEE, trade shows, and many other customer-focused activities.
One of Dale's favorite parts of working for Bender is working with a great team. He says, I am surrounded by great sales professionals and application engineers, and supported by a great inside sales team in conjunction with a great manufacturing team. I also enjoy the variety of industries and applications that I get to interface with on a daily basis. While I considered myself very versed in ground fault protection and high resistance grounding, I am still learning constantly. But what drives me most is helping customers solve problems, and helping to educate the next generation of power system engineers understand this niche area of ground fault protection.
In his free time, Dale enjoys spending time with his wife (Kay) and two daughters, both of whom are grown. He also has three grandsons and enjoys going to all of their sports games. They enjoy spending time at their lake home and boating with friends and family, and also love seeing the off the beaten path locations during their travels. Dale is also a sports enthusiast, and has a longtime passion for golf, even though he points out his golf handicap doesn’t always reflect his passion.
Dale's favorite Bender product is between MarinaGuard, iso685 and HRG, but iso685 is the winner. One reason why it is the winner is because it gave him the opportunity to work on a 3 year project with a very large amusement park company, which was a fun and challenging opportunity. Another reason is because it is a unique solution that can only be provided by Bender for ungrounded power systems. Dale points out the key word being “solution” because it is truly a situation where Bender can educate our customers and provide a solution for ground fault location that has real value to the customer.
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