Lee Kerley III was born into the sales business as was his son Lee Kerley IV. As president and CEO and treasurer, respectively, of General Sales in Grayson the pair is continuing a legacy reaching back seven decades.
    It all started in the 1940s with Lee Kerley Sr. who started Paper Supply Company in Bluefield, Virginia, with three other partners. Kerley III’s father, Lee Kerley Jr., later followed him into the business and rose through the ranks of the company too, eventually becoming its president.
    From a young age, Lee Kerley III took up work in the business. Through high school and college he worked in the warehouse. Then after college, Kerley III was sent to Greenville, South Carolina, to manage a branch of Paper Supply Co. there. He was later called back to Bluefield to manage the company under his father’s presidency.
    Then tragedy struck. Kerley Jr. died unexpectedly in March 1979 at the age of 54. Kerley III tried to convince the company to install him as its next president, but instead they sent him to Ashland, Kentucky, to manage General Sales. Paper Supply Co. had acquired General Sales in 1968 from the family of Chuck Woolery.
    In Ashland, Kerley III’s dream to lead a company only grew and soon he met local businessman Rannie Cooper and attorneys Milton Goolsby and Howard VanAntwerp who began to mentor him. Before long, Kerley III decided to sell all of his family’s stock in Paper Supply in order to purchase General Sales from the company in March of 1981. He was just 26 years old.
    “Those people, although they were older and successful, they took time out to help get me where I am,” Kerley III explained. He had lots of naysayers in those early days, he added, including a bank president who told him he was too young to own a business.  “If you have a dream, you have to follow your dream,” Kerley III said, “I had a lot of faith in myself. I had been in it since I was 16. I saw the area and saw what we could do. Our sales were increasing at a tremendous rate.”
    General Sales was small when Kerley III took it over, based in a 7,500-square foot warehouse and office on Blackburn Avenue, at “dead man’s curve.” The company sold candy, Coca-Cola® and various sundry items. “Anything to make a dollar,” Kerley III recalled, which they delivered in second-hand bread trucks.
    In addition to Kerley III, there were two other salesmen, including Claude Valandingham, who is still with the company. Back then salesmen would sell during the day, load the trucks at night and make deliveries to customers themselves, Kerley III recalled.  
    But soon the business was booming. Sales spiked from $20,000 a month to $50,000 then $100,000 a month. Kerley III was able to hire designated delivery drivers and more salespeople who accelerated the growth further.
    By the 1982, General Sales had moved into a 22,500-square-foot warehouse with 5,000-square-feet of office space at Paul Coffey Industrial Park. Fueled by the success of other large regional companies like Ashland Oil, “Sales increased until we were busting at the seams there,” recalled Kerley III.
    During this time, Lee Kerley IV began dipping his toes into the business. Like his father, he officially started at age 16 although he’d been helping out for years. “The warehouse was like a big playground when I was a kid. There was always something going on. It was interesting from day one,” Kerley IV recalled. Twenty-two years later, Kerley IV now leads the salesforce and is treasurer of the company.  
    In 2007, the company purchased 14.5 acres at EastPark where it now has an 80,000-square-foot facility. General Sales employs approximately 30 individuals and services customers in a 150-mile radius, delivering supplies to a diverse range of customers from schools and hospitals to gas stations, convenience stores and all types of other businesses.
    If the lifeblood of the business is its salesforce, the warehouse is its beating heart. The enormous but very tidy warehouse is the hub of activity with workers busy filling orders with the help of forklifts and chairlifts. Five days a week, trucks loaded with supplies ranging from paper cups to mop buckets and everything in between roll out of the warehouse for delivery while tractor-trailers with product roll in.
    A variety of technology helps the company manage it all. General Sales has prided itself over the years on implementing new technologies that make it more efficient. For example, all sales representatives have shifted to using tablets and customers can also use an online system to place and track orders. Kerley IV explained, “The technology is always in real time. It’s not updated at the end of the day, it’s updated all throughout the day.”
    “We’re very much a technology company,” Kerley III explained. “I’ve always had a curiosity with technology and we’re about as up to date (with it) as anybody. “We’re trying to make it easier for the company to buy from us. We have to differentiate ourselves.” Sometime in the not -too-distant-future Kerley III sees total automation in the warehouse.
    “Our success is totally based upon people. Yes, I’m here and I’m the president but I would be nowhere without good people. The salesforce is the backbone of our company. The sales force is what leads everything. It’s the people that make the company work. It’s certainly not me,” Kerley III explained. “We can go as high as our people will take us.”
    “One of the biggest ingredients for success is product knowledge. You can’t go out and bluff your way through a case of paper towels if you don’t know what kind of paper towels you are even talking about. The B.S. is good, but it is basically product knowledge that runs the business,” Kerley III explained.
    “The salesforce, we count on them to get out there and work. It’s one of the hardest jobs there is. They all have to be self-motivated. There isn’t a little clock that follows them around that says you have to start at 8 a.m. and work until 5 p.m. They have to, in their mind, realize that if they don’t work they aren’t going to sell anything and the business is going to go downhill,” Kerley III said.
    The company, in turn, treats its employees like family – from its competitive pay to a generous 401K matching program along with “every benefit you can think of to offer.” That’s why many employees stay put. Valandingham has 58 years of service to Sharon Magann’s 38 years but even new hires like Warehouse manager Cory Rice, with less than two years on the job, recognizes how rare an employer General Sales is. Rice plans to retire from General Sales.  “It’s a great company,” Rice explained. “It’s like a big old family here. I couldn’t ask for anything better.”