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How Smart Distributors Spot Problems Before They Become Expensive

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How Smart Distributors Spot Problems Before They Become Expensive For years, distributors have treated Voice of the Customer surveys like something you send out there to customers without much follow-up. But after running dozens of these projects, we’ve learned something a little surprising: some of the most eye‑opening insights come from your own people. No one likes to admit it, but the hesitation usually starts the minute we ask a sales team to help promote a survey. Some worry customers will think it’s intrusive. Others are convinced management will use the results as a scorecard. A few swear surveys are pointless because “we already know what customers think.” And almost everyone quietly wonders what happens if the feedback is negative. But here’s the funny part. Once the final report lands, those same teams almost always say the survey helped them understand their customers better. The resistance was never about the survey itself. It was about not knowing what to expect. ...
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Mission Possible: How to Capture Customers Before They Leave Your Website

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Mission Possible: How to Capture Customers Before They Leave Your Website By Desiree Grace We all know the sneaky reconnaissance behaviors. These guerrilla shoppers visit your website, grab screenshots of your best information, and quietly skulk off to the next site. Much like saboteurs, you can see the evidence they were there, but you can’t catch them. Worse yet, they don’t buy. These uncaptured customers represent lost revenue. They often take your best marketing and product research straight to your competitors. In sales and marketing circles, this bad behavior is known as Webrooming . So how do you keep these shoppers from slipping away? How do you get them to stay put and buy from you ? There are A LOT of things that matter to the Webrooming customers. The strongest ways to convert webroomers are simple and research‑grounded Best Practices: reduce friction, increase confidence, and personalize the journey so they never feel the need to leave. Before we get into best...
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Advice to Grads: The Real Commencement Speech

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Advice for New Grads By Desiree Grace, River Heights Consulting Picture this: your friend and mine, Frank Hurtte, is invited to give a commencement speech. Before stepping up to the podium, he’d get a trim to sharpen that Colonel Sanders meets Midwest straight talk look. Then he’d sit down to prepare his remarks. As you might imagine, this discussion took place over a diet soda (generic, of course) for him and a black coffee for me. In my mind, new graduates need to understand a few fundamentals. To start, they must learn the strategy, goals, and culture of their new organization. Their actions and priorities should align with those elements. Even the language matters. For example, some companies use “sales” to mean top‑line revenue. Others use “turnover.” Learning the vocabulary is part of learning the job. Beyond that, new grads need to show up on time, follow directions, and be prepared. The homework doesn’t stop when you walk past the podium. In today’s world, no organization hire...
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Into the Unknown: A Practical Guide to New Territories

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Into the Unknown:  A Practical Guide to New Territories By Frank Hurtte Launching a new territory is one of the toughest assignments a distributor salesperson can take on. You walk into a geography where nobody knows your name, nobody is waiting for your call, and nobody has a reason to trust you yet. It is a blank slate in every sense of the word.  A lot of good people underestimate how much structure it takes to build momentum from scratch. The ones who struggle usually fall into two traps: They skip the process They give up too early  Both are avoidable, and both will cost you months of progress. Why Process Matters More Than Ever When you head into new territory, you don’t rely on luck to get you where you’re going. You rely on a map. A sales process works the same way.  The old “drive around and see who you can bump into” routine is dead. Customers are busier. Gatekeepers are gone. Random drop‑ins are rarely welcomed. Even seasoned sellers struggle to re...
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5 Ways to Fight Showrooming Frustration

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5 Ways to Fight Showrooming Frustration A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment By Desiree Grace   Showrooming – the ultimate time-waster and frustration-factor. It’s a battle out there. Customers arrive, get you excited, then leave. It’s worse than seagull management, you know, those folks who fly in, drop a lot of sh—, then leave. Showrooming customers are a close relative of that pesky bird. Surely, you’ve heard of Showrooming. This variety of birds is the annoying customers who waste your time in the showroom or counter. They suck up an hour from your lighting specialist, then buy the product online because someone is selling it for a few dollars less. They walk out smiling AFTER getting educated by your specialist or salesperson. The good news is you’re not stuck. There ARE ways to prevent this. Savvy retailers, like industrial distributors with counters or showrooms, are smarter than the average bird. These strategies work. You have options with successful track reco...
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How Do You Know if Your Sales Strategy is Broken?

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How Do You Know if Your Sales Strategy is Broken? By Frank Hurtte Many distributors struggle when asked to explain their sales strategy. With  a great deal of hand waving and stuttering , the conversation quickly turns vague and squishy. Sales leaders talk about relationships, service, responsiveness, and “taking care of the customer.” All important, of course. No customer enjoys working with an unresponsive supplier or a company that creates problems instead of solving them. But those statements rarely explain why customers actually buy. Listen closely, and you’ll hear familiar catchphrases: “Our strength is our relationships.” “Our people care more than the other guys.” “We give great service.” (What does that even mean?) “We go above and beyond supplier expectations.” True? Possibly. Strategic? Not even close.  You can bet your bottom dollar that every competitor can make the same claim There’s a simpler way to test the strength of a sales strategy. Instea...
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