The Distributor Channel

In early December, I was in Fort Worth Texas for a Distributor Advisory Council meeting.  My early flight landed me in town about six hours ahead of the meeting time.  Waiting for early check-in, I relaxed at the hotel cafe, while sipping coffee, checking emails, and prepping for my meeting.  I grew restless after about an hour as the sights of downtown Fort Worth beckoned me.  As I walked, I was drawn to the brass plaques and historical motif pictures near my art deco-style hotel.  The weather was a beautiful 60 degrees and there was an astonishing number of others out enjoying the day, so “people watching” was the order of the day. I approached a lovely square with a giant decorated Christmas tree.  The area was abuzz with folks making their way to the shops and offices dotting each of the streets coming into the area.  It was an interesting cityscape. Glancing down one of these side streets, something caught my attention.  Off in the distance, I saw someone I would characterize as

Little Johnny was a Bully in Third Grade, Now He’s a Purchasing Agent Are there Bullies in the Purchasing Department New Sellers are Falling Victim to Bad Guys Dressed as Purchasing Agents All three of these were considered as titles for this article.  I like them all, but I don’t like what purchasing people do to new sellers across our land. Throughout my life, I have dealt with hundreds if not thousands of purchasing departments.  Purchasing departments come with many different monikers – Purchasing, Procurement, Supply Chain Management, Sourcing Group, Resource Management, Indirect Supply Management, and probably a dozen more.  For simplicity, let’s call them purchasing people.  Their main role is to handle the administrative side of the products needed by their company with one large additional task.  Many purchasing people are also charged with buying those products at the lowest possible price.   Most purchasing people imply that they are the decision-makers for the p

I love a good challenge.  While talking about sales training with a sales manager from another industry, I made the statement, “Our kind of selling is different.”  The sales manager, who fancies himself as an expert and comes from a consumer-based background, took offense.  He asked me to differentiate our type of sales from the sales background he experienced.   Transactional sales Thinking back on the several hundred books on selling that I have read, I would characterize all but a handful as focusing on transactional selling.   Transactional selling is focused on making a one-time sale and then moving on to the next customer.   This type of selling is often used for commoditized products or services.   Think about the last computer you purchased.   Did the company create or provide anything that caused you to want to continue your relationship?   In my mind, the salesperson's goal was to make the sale – period.     Our kind of selling focuses on building long-term r

Let’s start with two quotes from great thinkers from different and definitely not distribution backgrounds.      "A favorite theory of mine is that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before…"                  Mark Twain   “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”              Winston Churchill   There are no history books for those of us in the Knowledge-based distribution world.  While I consider myself to be a history buff, I am certainly not an official historian.  But, to quote the popular commercial, I did spend the night in a Holiday Inn Express.  Probably more than a thousand nights in various hotel rooms while earning a living in the distributor business.  So here is my attempt at writing history.   All the TV pundits are calling for a recession.  Other industries, like the semiconductor and software industries, are currently in recession.  A Wall Street Journal surve