PBM – How Refilwe smashed glass ceilings and built her dream business

What stands out in the story of a young, black female entrepreneur, Refilwe Sebothoma, who took on a patriarchal, male-dominated industrial sector, is the unwavering focus on the end goal and a firm belief in her and her team’s ability to achieve a remarkable goal of scaling her business. This rebellion invigorated her Grow coach, who shares her passion for breaking boundaries and achieving unprecedented goals. 

In just 12 months, Refilwe scaled her R70m business to R109m. When asked how she managed to achieve this amazing feat, Refilwe will tell you that it would not have possible without the support of her team at the PBM Group and her Grow coach. The evident commitment to leadership growth, teamwork, focus and commitment displayed by Refilwe and her team is what allowed them to win in a tough market with odds stacked against them. 

Refilwe was also a winner in the Shell Amplify Supplier Development Partner Awards 2022 Leadership Excellence award – achieving scores that the judges have not seen in almost 100 entries and decades of adjudication. Refilwe’s Grow coach says this demonstrated Refilwe’s acumen as a business leader who is well on track to leading an independent, profitable, and enduring business.

PBM Group provides expert services in analysing, sourcing, customising and distribution of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), providing corporates with full circle, data-driven safety solutions. Instead of being just a supplier of PPE products to their clients, the company works to become a reliable and dependable partner of choice in entrenching safety as a way life in business. They do this through a process of collecting data across all clients that is then used to provide advice on optimal solutions to address their clients’ health and safety needs. They then close the loop by collecting data to inform the validity and refinement of solutions offered. For example, the data may inform that a more effective solution than simply replacing equipment frequently, would be education of users on how to better use a particular item. 

It was evident that the company needed, at a base level, to increase sales. According to Refilwe, there was a level of stagnation in the business that she needed to overcome: “We didn’t quite understand how we were going to scale the business to the extent that we wanted to.” 

We were referred to Grow IMPACT by way of a Supplier Development programme. At first, I was a bit sceptical, as I had been exposed to many Enterprise Supplier Development programmes, and I thought this would be just another one of those,” she explains. She is happy to admit that she was wrong and, in fact, pleasantly surprised and extremely satisfied with the outcome.

Coaching is challenging work, and her Grow coach is adamant that the program would not have been as successful were it not for Refilwe’s relentless commitment to the process and the resulting plan. The self-belief, championed by Refilwe, also played a significant part in the success, so that it was never “if” they achieved their goal, but “when.”

Setting a five-year plan with a vivid vision was step one in the plan. A R100m revenue goal was set, and the team committed to achieving an additional 5% gross profit (GP) margin, taking it to 30%. When a 20% GP is considered good if not excellent by industry standards, aiming for 30% was an ambitious target.

With the long-term goal set, the next step was for the team to have clarity of the current position of the business. Their coach guided the team in developing a SWOT analysis, competitive analysis and customer analysis to understand more fully the current position of the business more fully. “For example, we gave careful consideration to who our gold customers were, and how, where, and when to interact with them” her Grow coach explains. They defined very clearly where they would play in the market, i.e., their sandbox, then got crystal clarity on who their core customer was and how they could position the business to give value to their core customer in a unique way. This further allowed them to plan their geographical expansion into the Western Cape.

With the future goal set, and the current position known, the team could establish a clear plan to move the business from its current position towards its ambitious goals. They created focus around strategic execution quarter on quarter with strategic objectives that included building a high-performance team, igniting sales in their Pretoria branch, fostering collaboration, achieving revenue targets and what the team termed as their “year of efficiency” through systems development. 

Coaching sessions were used to debate and test ideas related to the strategic focus and the best way to apply these ideas to progress their key results for the quarter.

To help create the focus needed to drive sales, the team created their business development plan which included KPI’s of Revenue per Customer, Product per Customer, Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Education. Customer segments were defined, and plans were created in response to the needs of these segments.

To address efficiency, accuracy and keyman dependency, the management team developed new systems and refined existing systems, implemented and tested them. These systems included onboarding, recruitment, one-on-one’s, client classification process, sales process for each classification of clients, client information sheets and client relationship sheets.

One of the team’s objectives was to build a high-performance team. Through a talent assessment, they understood the various levels of talent within their team and the relative conversations to be having with respective team members to shift them to A-player status. Refilwe and Dylan also created a rhythm of one-on-ones and accountability in their team with weekly performance meetings. They introduced several scoreboards to provide visibility of performance and to motivate their team.

As the key management team members, Refilwe and Dylan recognized that if they wanted to achieve their lofty goals, they would need to be proactive in enhancing their leadership skills and qualities to become more effective leaders. They focused on better communication between each other and with their team. They delegated tasks effectively but remained accountable for the delivery of those tasks that they delegated. Refilwe and Dylan were also introspective and actively sought feedback and advice from their team and their coach on how to progress their leadership development.

New business development kicked into high gear, and Refilwe’s team worked cohesively with a clear understanding of the roles each one of them had to play. Thanks to the work done on building a high-performance team, there was a mutual respect among the group, which included some strong personalities that could potentially clash. 

Traction was built and it was not long before the month-to-month revenue trend broke through R90m, and soon thereafter, broke the R100m goal they had set for themselves.

The role and importance of measurement should not be underestimated. Everything was tracked according to the plan that was put in place at the beginning of the process. Refilwe says that while challenging, the pre-planning was crucial as it immediately highlighted the business gaps. 

“The odds were against this team,” says their Grow coach. It is industrial PPE, male dominated, which demanded Refilwe swim upstream. On reflection: “I was so privileged to watch it unfold and see Refilwe obliterate the boundaries and cultural glass ceilings.”

Refilwe believes that PBM now has a better understanding of its business environment and is well positioned to make considered decisions in the future. “The tools we picked up during the coaching process will enable the team to plan, hire and communicate its vision more effectively while also being better equipped to build and sustain the business.”

When asked about the value she gained working with Grow, Refilwe says: “My coach always says, ‘we cannot change what we cannot measure, and we cannot measure what we do not know.’ Our previous decisions were made on assumptions, which was extremely dangerous. What we have learnt from the coaching process has been invaluable. To have achieved so much in such a brief period with Grow was nothing short of remarkable.”

As for Grow, her coach says he is in awe of Refilwe’s exceptional leadership abilities: “She just got bolder and braver as the process continued. I felt truly inspired to be part of building something this big, and to be trusted by an executive with such grit.”