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In the petroleum industry where everything is carefully measured at every turn, Don Borzilleri’s contributions to SIGMA have been so numerous that it’s hard to tally them all—and even now he’s a vital part of SIGMA as he calls new members to “welcome them aboard”. For 33 years, Don transformed a career of business relationships into a lifetime of true friendships based on mutual respect and sincerity—and that’s pretty hard to measure!
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Here's What the SIGMA Family Says...
“Don is one of the people who is
always there! He’s there with a handshake.
He’s there with a smile.He’s
there to help any marketer he can,
and he’s never looking for anything in
return. He’s always there to be a good
friend to SIGMA!”
– LEO LIEBOWITZ, CEO,
Getty Realty Corp.
“When I first started coming to SIGMA
meetings over 20 years ago, Don
made it a point to show me around
and introduce me to many new friends
which has made my involvement with
SIGMA the significant relationship that
it has become. Thanks Don!”
– FRANK GREINKE, CEO, SC Fuels
“Don is a strong reason why SIGMA
has been so successful over the last
decades! Don is one of the most
diligent and hardworking people in the
interest of this organization that I can
think of.”
– MIKE PORTS, President,
Ports Petroleum Co., Inc.
“SIGMA has always been a form of
extended family where everyone knows
everyone and everyone likes getting
together with other members. While
not a petroleum marketer, Don has
always been considered one of the
key members of the SIGMA family—
accepted, included, and even
recognized for how special he is.”
– KEN DOYLE, Executive Vice President,
SIGMA
”Don Borzilleri exemplifies the values
and personal qualities that make our
industry great. His warm, personable
manner as well as his dedication
to excellence in his work over the
years helped make Gilbarco a leading
supplier to our industry. We are
grateful Don's spirit of volunteerism
has carried over in service to SIGMA
in recent years—service that has
strengthened our association by
convincing marketers to be involved—
thank you Don.”
– PAUL REID, CEO, The Reid Group
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Because of his integrity, his contributions to SIGMA, and his real passion for the overall good of the petroleum industry, SIGMA is proud to honor Don Borzilleri with the “Distinguished Statesman Award”. It’s rare (once in 20 years) to select an individual who is not a SIGMA member for such an honor. But as you read on, you’ll realize that SIGMA is fortunate and proud to still include Don as an active part of the SIGMA family—we appreciate you Don!
Don’s Petroleum Industry Start In more recent years, pay-at-the-pump technology has helped petroleum marketers maintain their edge in convenience and capture an increasingly cashless clientele. With gasoline margins driven to record lows, innovations from video screens to pump-activated audio have aided fuel retailers in generating store traffic. And the emergence of Web-based connectivity has enabled marketers to detect leaks, reconcile inventory, monitor flow rates, access transaction data, and more.
“Because dispensing equipment is the interface with the customer, changes in the retail petroleum business are eventually reflected in new solutions developed by the manufacturers,” explains Don Borzilleri, “and that's why marketers need a great equipment supplier and knowledgeable distributors to help them choose the right solutions.”
From 1967 to 2000 Borzilleri did just that, first as a district sales manager for Gilbarco and then, from 1981, as the company's Eastern Regional Manager of Distributor Sales. In that newly created position, his Atlanta office ultimately generated 42 percent of Gilbarco's worldwide dispenser sales. For his accomplishments in helping two generations of independent marketers identify equipment solutions essential to their survival, Borzilleri recently received SIGMA's Distinguished Statesman Award—only the second person so honored in the history of the association.
Being a People Person
Yet those who worked with Borzilleri also note his leadership in another aspect of industry change. “The petroleum industry was, and is, becoming more diverse,” recounts Walt Gavin, former vice president of sales for Gilbarco and now, as founder of Leadership i2i in Greensboro, N.C., an independent leadership coach and consultant. “But to Don, diversity was simply about hiring the best and most promotable people available, whoever they are.”
That observation is confirmed by Joan Borzilleri, who lives today in Atlanta with her husband of 43 years. “Don’s personal favorite corporate accomplishment,” she recalls, “was creating a diversified work environment. His modus operandi was to hire good people, train and mentor them, and move them up in the company. He coached his employees to help them realize their potential.”
Colleagues whom Don Borzilleri hired included the first African-American to hold a petroleum equipment sales position in the South, as well as the first woman in the petroleum industry to hold such a position. One of the women hired by Don, Claudia Barnes, went on to become Gilbarco's Northern Regional Sales Manager and then U.S. Manager of Distributor Sales. “In his managerial skills Don was very much a coach,” she remembers, “and that fit my independent personality. He helped me excel because he didn't just tell me what to do—though he probably could have solved the problem easily himself. He mentored me, forced me to think, and guided me by asking questions.”
After a nine-year stint at Gilbarco, Barnes left the company in 2001 to pursue graduate study and a second career in counseling. Now as a graduate student living in Davidson, North Carolina, she says Borzilleri's impact has continued into the next stage of her life. “As I’ve been repurposing the people skills I learned at Gilbarco,” she explains, recognize now that Don first showed me the model of someone who has the ability to read people and help others see their talents and use them.”
While Barnes once worked under Borzilleri, Gavin recalls his former colleague from the perspective of a supervisor. During some 20 years with Gilbarco, from 1983 to 2002, Gavin progressed from marketing manager and then manager of national accounts, to general sales manager and finally vice president of sales. “In my roles,” he relates, “I had responsibilities for product development. And Don was my ‘go-to guy’ for understanding the needs of retailers.” Borzilleri was “successful at knowing marketers' needs,” Gavin says, because “he cared about his customers, took the time to listen and know their businesses, and also took the time to learn about his customers’ customers.”
Back at the office, Gavin noted how Borzilleri similarly took the time to know his employees. “Don had a great ability to develop people,” he points out. “His employees trusted Don because they always knew where they stood with him, and knew Don would always follow through and do what he said.”
Since leaving Gilbarco in 2002 Gavin has traveled nationwide, teaching principles of leadership development to a wide array of clients. Having studied leadership, he believes Borzilleri's career exemplifies three core concepts. “Clarify your values and then model them,” Gavin explains. “Enable others to act by fostering trust and cooperation based on win-win principles. And encourage the heart through employee recognition and building a spirit of community.”
In his presentations to clients Gavin uses many examples from his career. “If I was going to use Don as an illustration,” he says, “I would say observing Don showed me that just about everything we do affects our customers in the long run. At the end of the day, you've always got to circle back to the customer.”
Help in Changing Times
Because of Borzilleri's commitment to retailers and their needs, Gavin continues, “He was really able to help our Gilbarco customers through periods of great change in the industry and in equipment technology.” As an example Gavin cites the introduction of pay-at-the-pump card readers.
“At the time that card-reader technology was being introduced,” Gavin recalls, “retailers were also experimenting with a technology called 'island readers.' Rather than pay at the pump, consumers could pay at a single terminal on the fuel island.” But while island readers offered the convenience of not having to pay a store or kiosk attendant, he adds, consumers had to swipe their cards both before and after fueling. Further problems could occur if consumers entered an incorrect pump number.
“Island readers just weren't user-friendly,” Gavin relates, “and Don was so focused on the needs of marketers, he would always promote the best solution—in this case, card readers at the pump—rather than simply sell a piece of equipment.” That kind of customer-driven commitment was important to Malcolm Barnett, who first began working with Borzilleri in the 1970s. As a Mississippi-based sales representative with Cruzen Equipment, Barnett distributed Gilbarco equipment and depended on Borzilleri for the latest product information. “When Don was Gilbarco sales manager for my district,” he recalls, “we all knew he had integrity. He convinced us of the need to always be customer-oriented, tell the truth, and admit to marketers when we didn't know the answer.”
On the practical side, Barnett remembers how Borzilleri “always knew his products, kept us abreast of the industry, took the time to conduct distributor sales meetings, and even went with us individually for on-the-job training.” Training was vital for distributors to adequately serve their petroleum retailer customers. “Probably the biggest change in the 1970s was the switch from mechanical to electronic fuel dispensers,” remembers Barnett, who today is a sales representative for Petroleum Equipment in Richland, Mississippi. “Even when gas was still under a dollar, Don told all of us distributors that we needed to be ready for when gasoline went over a dollar.” At the time, mechanical dispensers had been the standard for decades. “Some of us were kind of slow about promoting electronic dispensers,” Barnett recounts. “But as gas prices went up, mechanical dispensers hadn't been designed to turn the numbers so fast.” As a result, fuelretailers could end up with disparities between the transaction amounts on the pump and at the point-of-sale console in the store. “So to present the electronic solution to marketers,” he remembers, “Don would even go with us, if needed, to the customer.”
By the early 1980s when MPDs were an emerging equipment technology, Barnett recalls how Borzilleri maintained a personal touch—though he had been promoted from district to regional sales manager. “Don was covering a big territory,” he relates, “but he would still take the time to arrange for, say, a retailer with MPDs in Atlanta to call one of my customers in Mississippi and talk about the equipment.”
Barnett likewise appreciated how, after Borzilleri was promoted to the regional level, “he hired district managers who
were top-flight people and well trained to help me as a distributor.” Yet he never lost touch with Borzilleri and, after 43 years in petroleum equipment sales, he states, “What I’ve done in sales, I give Don a lot of the credit. He's an A-1 motivator and, even though he's a Yankee from New York, he makes you feel comfortable!”
Guiding Principles
As for Borzilleri himself, he has rich memories of his 34 years of service to independent marketers. “My philosophy in helping marketers,” he explains, “was to look at their needs and then apply myself to assisting those needs, rather than focusing on my needs. During my time at Gilbarco our company had a technological edge in the industry. So I always felt it was part of my job to stay informed on advancements. And if I didn’t have an answer for a marketer's need, sthen I'd focus on how to arrive at an answer and provide the needed solution.” Over a career that spans the 1960s thru the year 2000, Borzilleri also recalls assisting his customers through changing times: from full-serve to self-serve; from mechanical to electronic dispensers; and from cash on the counter to pay at the pump. “I've seen the industry go from kiosks to stores and now to foodservice,” he says, “and from gasoline-only to having car washes and quick-serve restaurants.”
Borzilleri has been around long enough, however, to see some things come full circle. Even as the past generation has seen the chain operators buy up or crowd out single-site dealers, he explains, more recently some of these chains are deemphasizing retail and leasing their sites to single-site dealers. “People leave the industry, while other people come in, all the time,” he observes. “And we always see new Americans coming in and buying one or two sites.”
His commitment to a diverse workplace, Borzilleri notes, is driven by his observation that “people change and so the petroleum equipment sales force must change in order to keep up.” Similarly, he believes that equipment manufacturers “must spend the money and effort to train their distributors. I've seen different manufacturers over the years make the mistake of not getting their own people out into the field to spend time with the distributors.”
Ignoring the importance of distributors to the equipment supply chain is a mistake, Borzilleri continues, because “they're so vital for working with your local customers.” By the same token, he adds, “For its distributors, a manufacturer needs qualified people with aptitude and ability, and not just warm bodies. Then after that, you've got to train your distributors—and not just in the classroom, either.”
As part of his own professional development, and to keep up with a changing industry, Borzilleri was a regular attendee at SIGMA conferences from 1981 through his retirement in 2000. “Every year for 20 years I went to all the industry shows and conventions,” he recalls, “and always felt SIGMA events were truly first-class. I always came with the attitude that, rather than just talking about myself and my company, if I listened to marketers then I could really learn their challenges and needs. I was never disappointed and always learned something new because SIGMA members are high-caliber people. The association is the greatest.”
Borzilleri adds that, after 18 months of retirement, by 2002 he “missed all my SIGMA friends.” As a result, out of the many industry shows he formerly attended, “SIGMA meetings are the ones I've chosen to go back to, even after retiring, as often as I can.”
Always a Member of the SIGMA Family
And go back, he does. Even in retirement, he continues to contribute to SIGMA in so many ways. “His industry knowledge and understanding of the SIGMA membership makes him a membership advisor and mentor to everyone. He is the perfect person to run new ideas past for his input,” according to Marilyn Selvitelle, SIGMA’s business development director. “I always value his opinion and am so proud to call him my friend.”
“Periodically he calls all new marketer members for feedback on their member satisfaction and to get direction on how SIGMA can best serve their needs. Plus, he’ll spread the word at the SIGMA booth during NACS conventions where he continues to explain the values of the SIGMA network firsthand.”
Borzilleri also started the “supplier orientation” program where he explained to fellow non fuel suppliers the guidelines for participating at SIGMA conventions and what a special network of marketers they would be meeting. This program still continues today with Borzilleri as an advisor.
This vendor relationship is extremely important, as Mary Alice Kutyn, SIGMA’s director of meetings, knows. “When I first started with SIGMA as the Manager of Advertising and Sponsorship Sales in 1993 I was told to contact Don Borzilleri at Gilbarco. I was told – and it proved to be true – that Don could explain to me as part of my orientation to the industry exactly why SIGMA was important to the people on the vendor side. His insight helped me tremendously over the first few years at SIGMA. Even though Don has retired he remains a stalwart friend to SIGMA by serving as a mentor to new vendors,” says Kutyn.
In addition to educating the non fuel suppliers, Borzilleri works with new and prospective members to show them the ropes at SIGMA conventions. “He is always available to call SIGMA members prior to SIGMA meetings and explain what’s going to be happening at upcoming meetings and remind them to attend,” adds Selvitelle. “He has a ton of friends at SIGMA.”
A Little History
Those friends, and many others whom Borzilleri cherishes across the petroleum industry, were a lifetime in the making. Originally from Buffalo, New York, and an alumnus of that city's Canisius College, as a young man Borzilleri began his career selling life insurance, real estate, and cosmetics. Then in 1967 when Gilbarco launched a division that sold lifts to car dealers, he joined the company as a sales representative.
“But there was one thing I missed in the lift division,” he remembers. “When you’re selling to car dealers, you can only sell a new piece of equipment when a dealer is building a new facility. So I didn't have as much chance to develop relationships with my customers.” When the opportunity came for a transfer to Gilbarco's petroleum division, he took it—and has never looked back.
How did that opportunity come about? In the Gilbarco lift division Borzilleri began as a district sales manager covering Chicago, Northern Illinois, and Wisconsin. Later he moved to Boston as a district sales manager in New England, and then was brought to headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina. And there, though a New Yorker by birth, he quickly saw the potential for petroleum equipment sales in the emerging “New South” of the 1970s. His proposal to establish a regional office in Atlanta was accepted and, in 1977, Borzilleri moved there to head the operation. Today the nation's population shift to the Sun Belt is old news, but that demographic sea change was less apparent in 1977. Yet his idea for a southern regional office proved prescient as the territory quickly became a sales leader for Gilbarco. Borzilleri himself won promotion in 1981 to Eastern Regional Manager of Distributor Sales— where he oversaw sales across one-third of the country—and held that position until his 2000 retirement. In 1998 he also added the title of Senior Regional Manager. Since that date, however, Borzilleri has remained active in many personal and professional pursuits. In addition to attending SIGMA meetings, he has served on the board of directors for Worldwide Tobacco as an advisor to his older brother Charles. In that capacity he has traveled abroad to the company's processing plants in Russia, Georgia, Spain, and Italy. Closer to home Borzilleri serves on the board of directors for the Atlanta Young Singers of Callanwolde, a select chorale society for local youth aged eight to 18. Together with his 14-year-old granddaughter Ginger, a choral member, the family traveled on singing tours to Barcelona in 2005 and to Australia and New Zealand in 2006.
Borzilleri says his two grandchildren, Ginger and 10-year-old Vivian, “are the reasons we decided to stay in Atlanta.” And their mother Laura, the Borzilleris’ only child, is all for it. According to Joan Borzilleri, “Don’s retirement has given him the opportunity to improve his golf game, play poker, and travel—though muchof the travel is pretty local, like driving the grandkids to an endless array of classes, rehearsals, camps, and games.” As Don Borzilleri tells it, his decision to retire in 2000 was prompted by a personal self-assessment. “For more than 20 years,” he explains, “I was used to taking 120 to 150 plane flights a year and being away from home 200 nights a year. I was used to working at home on Sunday nights to get ready for Monday morning. But I'd reached the point where I didn't want to wear out my body before I could enjoy my retirement.”
At the same time, however, Borzilleri has no regrets about the decision to spend his career in the petroleum industry. “I found the industry so satisfying,” he relates, “because of the people. If I had to describe it, I'd say that petroleum is
such an 'honorable' industry. I had the privilege of working mostly with entrepreneurs, men and women who had their own money on the line and were always willing to listen and consider new solutions. You just meet so many classy people.” Borzilleri himself is in a unique class as recipient of the SIGMA Distinguished Statesman Award, an honor given to “an individual who is not a member of SIGMA whose deeds and efforts have made a significant contribution to the welfare of the retail gasoline marketing industry.”
Speaking for many others who have known Borzilleri over the years, Walt Gavin offers a succinct summary: “Service encompasses three principles,” he says, “giving customer satisfaction, providing added value, and developing win-win solutions for the long term. Don is all about those principles. He’s the embodiment of that approach.”
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