At 7:15 on a south Georgia summer morning, the sun is beaming and so is "Cowboy" Jackie Allmond as he stands in the parking lot of Choo Choo Build-It Mart's Rincon yard. With 50 tasks on his to-do list, Allmond knows he's going to be busy today. But he can't dive in just yet: A fellow salesman has stopped Allmond seeking his advice on hurricane-rated floor fasteners, an important commodity in this coastal market.

Allmond doesn't dismiss the salesman's request with a hurried reply. Instead, he leads the man inside to show the exact piece he should offer the builder. Only after providing technical advice does he move to his office, get organized, and prepare to take off in his tricked-out red Ford F-150 pickup for a day of deal-making.

I'm riding shotgun with the Cowboy today to help verify what I already suspect: Jackie Allmond may be the best outside sales rep in the LBM business. That's near-impossible to prove, I know, in part because yardsticks like total sales and share of market are pretty much useless given the vast differences among dealers and their markets.

But I also know this: In the decade I have spent running LBM sales seminars across the country, personally traveling with more than 200 sales reps, meeting thousands of other salesmen and hearing stories about yet thousands more, I have never met or heard of anyone at any LBM dealer anywhere who sells better than Cowboy. Over the course of this and several other days, Allmond's work habits, technical and technological savvy, and above all his organization and attention to detail proved to me that he's The One.

Take that to-do list. Like many salesmen, Allmond keeps a running list of action items on a notepad. But unlike most, his notepad is a tablet computer in which he not only keeps a prioritized master list but also organizes his schedule into 18 subfolders, categorized by such topics as First Things, Orders To Place, Phone Calls, and Delegated Items. "You've got to put your personal items in there too or they won't get done," he adds. On this day, that Personal folder includes the need for new windshield wipers.

As a result, Allmond gets more done in his work week (typically 60 hours, he says) than other reps I've watched. Equally important, he attacks that to-do list in an organized, prioritized fashion.

"I have three categories of urgency," he notes. "Hot, meaning do it now; Normal, meaning get it done today; and the rest." Thus, on a day when he has more than 50 tasks to be accomplished, he is able to isolate and focus on the critical items of the day.

"I hate to say that I run an emergency room," he says. "But if you have a bee sting, I'll tell you to sit in the corner while I deal with the guy that is stuck beneath a tractor that tipped over on him."