Brandon Cox’s unique journey from teaching to selling turf equipment

Brandon Cox hooks up STEC's VGR TopChanger with David Taylor. (Photo: STEC Equipment)

No one journey in turf is the same. Some start out by working on a golf course in high school, others decide to join the family business. Brandon Cox, territory sales manager for STEC Equipment, began his journey while he was pursuing a degree in education at Clemson University.

Brandon Cox

Looking for a way to stay involved in sports post-high school, Cox turned to his PE teacher whose husband worked in the athletic department at Clemson.

“I thought, you know, I’m not a Division I athlete and I’m not going to play sports anywhere,” he says. “So, I thought, ‘What can I do to stay involved with that?’”

Cox mainly worked in the athletic training room and with the football team during his time at Clemson. After graduating, Cox was looking for a way to reconnect with his love for sports after being an athlete in high school. He started coaching football and soccer where he was teaching, but it still wasn’t quite what he was looking for.

“I missed college athletics and the excitement of it,” he says. “It’s a bigger scale, and I realized fairly quick that the high school teaching thing and coaching wasn’t the part I really liked about sports.”

After going back for his master’s at Georgia Southern University, Cox snagged a job opportunity in the athletics department doing all sorts of tasks, such as game day operations and turf maintenance. Ten years later, Cox headed back to Clemson for a job in fundraising, which ultimately led him to where he is now.

Put me in, Coach

During his time at Clemson, Cox coached his son’s 8U baseball team. After practice one day, a particular parent changed his life forever.

“One of my things with coaching is telling the kids, ‘Hey, nobody’s getting a scholarship today, let’s just come out here and play a game and have fun,’” he says. “They’re kids. They want to have fun and play. They don’t want someone screaming and yelling at them.”

It was this attitude that caused a parent to approach him after practice early on and offer him a job.

“Some random parent came up to me and was like, ‘Hey, you should work for me,’ and all I could ask him was, ‘I’m sorry, which kid is yours?’” he laughs. “It was only like the second practice, so I was still putting names to faces.”

Later that night and after some internet sleuthing, he realized that parent was none other than David Taylor, the owner and president of STEC Equipment.

Cox sat with that offer for about a year and a half, questioning whether he really had the skills to sell turf equipment.

“It was like that imposter syndrome of, ‘Do I really have the skills to go out and sell turf equipment to anybody?’” he says. “I’ve never worked in corporate America. I’ve never worked outside of a collegiate setting. Eventually, I realized I wanted to try something new, but I didn’t want to be the sales guy. I wanted to learn the machines, the parts, the business.”

Cox did exactly that for two years until 2021 when he finally entered his current role as a territory sales manager.

Brandon Cox hooks up STEC’s VGR TopChanger with David Taylor. (Photo: STEC Equipment)

How STEC can help

STEC Equipment started in 2007 when Taylor, an Englishman who grew up on a nursery farm, decided to take his equipment business overseas to the Americas. Now, the company carries more than 10 brands of equipment and caters to a variety of markets, including sports turf management.

Located in Anderson, S.C., STEC has roughly 25 employees with five sales representatives out on the road. Cox’s territory covers Virginia to Maine and then over to the Dakotas, and he is often on the road demoing equipment.

Since he did not come from a typical sales background, Cox says figuring out the ways of sales has been a learning curve, but his background in sports and his short stint in fundraising ultimately helped his game.

“You’re talking to athletes and you’re talking to coaches. You’re interacting with fans,” he says. “You’re there on game days, and you’ve got the polo on that everyone else is wearing and people are coming up to you asking questions. I realized I couldn’t just know my little silo. I needed to know a little bit about everything, and [my background] definitely helped.”

On top of their everyday travel schedules, the STEC team can also be found at trade shows across the country, including the Sports Field Management Association (SFMA) Conference.

When having conversations with sports turf managers, whether it’s on the road, at trade shows or just over the phone, Cox says he gets two questions the most:

How can this machine save me time or labor?

What is this machine going to do for me?

Starting with these questions, Cox then works out what the person’s — and ultimately the facility’s — main goal is to find the best equipment fit for them.

Although these questions are a good start, Cox encourages sports turf managers to also ask distributors what kind of quality their machines are and to not be afraid to speak up if they had issues with the company’s machines.

“We want feedback as well because we run it in demos,” he says. “You’re the day-to-day user, so any feedback and any criticism is OK. We want to hear it because we can take it to our manufacturer and make it even better.”

(Photo: STEC Equipment)

What makes STEC different

One thing Cox says that Taylor is big on at STEC is answering the phone. With only 25 people on the STEC team, it’s a close-knit crew, and someone is always around to pick up the phone when it rings.

“Since I’m on the road a lot, I may not be sitting in my office to answer the phone right away, but if (the customer calls) the office, someone can help you out,” he says. “That’s the good thing about being small; everybody is in everybody’s business. We talk at the lunch table and around the office so everyone just knows.”

On top of talking amongst themselves, the STEC team also loves talking with others in the industry. Cox encourages sports turf managers to approach them at the next show to not only talk equipment, but any other interest as well.

“Just come hang out,” Cox says. “We’ll talk about anything. We’re big sports guys for the most part, or we can talk about tractors or race cars. Yeah, I’m going to give you my business card, but you don’t have to do anything with it.”

If you do end up calling up the STEC guys and Cox comes out to your facility, he says he’ll have one very important question for you: “Where’s the best place to get lunch?”

So, be sure to have your recommendations ready for the next time you see the STEC team.