Finding the Next Connection: Associate Profile on Division Manager Cory Lister
Cory Lister has affinity for connecting with people. That’s probably why the Division Manager of the P1 Service Ankeny, IA, office has always gravitated toward sales and customer-connected careers.
While Cory is fairly new to the HVAC/service industry, he has worked in sales—specifically tech sales—for more than 25 years.
“I sold maintenance software, like CMMS software, and before that, I worked at Best Buy selling technical equipment,” Cory said.
After all those years in sales, Cory was ready to use his selling skills in a different way.
“I was ready for a change, and when I saw the listing for the Division Manager role at P1 in Iowa, I just liked how the job sounded,” he said. “I had a feeling it might be a good fit.”
After applying and meeting with P1 Service General Manager Andy Dunbar and General Manager Todd Andrews, the feeling became a certainty.
“I felt like we clicked – I liked P1, and it felt like the right opportunity at the right time,” he said.
Today, Cory is managing the overall performance of the preventative maintenance sales efforts in the Iowa region.
“This position still has some similarities to what I’ve done in the past,” Cory said. “But there are so many new things to learn –never idle time! I’ve had to learn to manage my time carefully because there’s always work to be done.”
The P1 Ankeny office serves a lot of ethanol customers, and Cory also discovered many of the customers in the ethanol industry were people he had met or gotten to know during his time in maintenance software sales.
“I’ve been able to leverage a few of those relationships,” Cory said. “It has opened some doors for P1 at some ethanol plants who hadn’t done business with us before, and I’ve been given the opportunity to do business with other ethanol plants that I had not connected with previously.”
Cory says he likes having the opportunity to introduce P1 to both customers he knows, and those he’s never worked with before.
“P1 has the advantage of our single-source capabilities, and customers like that,” he said. “The broad nature of what we have expertise in - and the vast resources our technicians have access to - gives P1 an edge.”
“No one at P1 has to work alone,” Cory added. “Even if a new challenge comes up, we can reach out to so many different technicians and experts in the P1 Service network, and someone will have an answer. That’s something we can sell.”
And it’s not just ethanol – Cory notes that the Ankeny office has started doing work with the State of Iowa, a large industrial food manufacturer, and will continue to pursue multiple industries in the region.
Cory says he looks forward to a successful future with P1 - a company and industry that are growing and full of career opportunities.
When he’s not at work, Cory says he and his wife Nicole “got bit” by the travel bug a while back and travel as much as they can to exciting locations, including Bora Bora, Mexico, and Vegas.
Cory has a 17-year-old son, Hayden, and two Dobermans, Kami and Kilo, which keep him busy!
