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The Art of the Ask

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The Art of the Ask A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment 🕒 3 min read By Desiree Grace Does your pre-teen daughter ever greet you with a hug? If so, like me, you know she wants something. I have to give her points for effort and leveraging affection as a potent negotiating tool. While that only works in our personal lives, there's much to be said for the art of the ask. I recently received a letter from a customer demanding "your very best pricing for our new distribution center." There is so much that was wrong with this request. 1. I did not know the person sending the letter. 2. No conversation, text, or introductory email preceded the demand. 3. Nothing reciprocal was mentioned, such as increased purchase volume, displacement of a competitor, or even preferential treatment during their next planning session. I had to wonder if the woman who sent the email was fresh out of college, having barely passed her Negotiation 101 course, or if she had simply had a bad start ...
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Are You Waiting for the Perfect Time?

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A Perfect Failure Part 6: Wait for the Perfect Time 🕒 3 min read  By Frank Hurtte This may be the most expensive and most popular failure of them all. I've heard thousands of variations on the theme. In rapid-fire order, here are the top five: "My customers are really busy in the morning" (or the afternoon, or any other time). "The big guys are in the middle of budgeting, vacation season, or the holidays." "They've got another project." "They're just finishing a shutdown" (or any other named event). "Let's wait until things settle down." Here's an observation from someone who's spent a lifetime serving industrial customers: things never settle down. Successful people are busy because that's what successful companies do. Engineers always have another project, maintenance managers always have another shutdown scheduled, and purchasing always has some kind of supplier deadline. ...
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Do Perfect Products Exist?

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A Perfect Failure Part 5: Do Perfect Products Exist? 🕒 3 min read  By Frank Hurtte Customers aren't shopping for perfection. They're spending money to solve a problem. Successful automation product manufacturers invest between five and eight percent of their sales revenue in R&D, trying to build better products. That's a serious sum, yet after watching product development for decades, I've learned that every engineering improvement usually comes with another compromise. Technically superior products lose business because they weren't available when the customer needed them. And I've watched “good enough” products become outstanding solutions simply because they kept a line running. Sometimes C+ is good enough. Not because customers don't value excellence, but because the best solution isn't always the technically perfect one. A C+ product that is available, serviceable, and keeps the customer's operation running can be worth far more than an...
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Encoding & Decoding: Learn the Language of Your Customers

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Encoding & Decoding: Learn the Language of Your Customers A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment 🕒 3 min read time  By Desiree Grace You wouldn't try speaking Spanish to a Polish person, would you? Of course not! Experienced travelers know the importance of learning a few basic words and polite phrases when they head out on adventures, and good marketers should do the same. How you communicate matters. When we review the Communication Model, we see that what you mean to say and what your intended recipient hears don't always match up. Converting your ideas into a message that resonates with your target market requires research and understanding of your customers, plus careful attention to the details of "Encoding." The Encoding Side: How You Shape Your Message Word Choice is incredibly important. Knowing the right slang terms to use can make the difference between your target market thinking you're a "tool" (negative connotation) or "sick...
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Do Perfect Suppliers Exist?

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A Perfect Failure Part 4: Expecting Your Suppliers to be Perfect 🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte Expecting perfection from suppliers is like expecting the weather forecast to be right every day. Helpful, usually. Perfect, never. Some salespeople expect the regional sales manager to know every answer, the application engineer to solve technical problems with a snap of the fingers, and the factory to deliver every order the next day, come rain, shine, or global supply-chain crisis. That's a fairy tale, not a reality. I've worked with hundreds of manufacturer representatives over my career. A few were exceptional. A few probably couldn't be trusted to water houseplants. Most fell somewhere in between. The common denominator wasn't perfection. They were all human beings trying to serve customers in an imperfect world. Customers don't judge us by whether our suppliers occasionally stumble. They judge us by how well we respond when the organic material hits the rotat...
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Don't Expect Your Company to Be Perfect

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A Perfect Failure Part 3: Expecting Your Company to Be Perfect 🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte People inside your company are prone to making mistakes. The warehouse ships the wrong part. Customer service transposes two numbers. Accounting sends an invoice that leaves everyone scratching their heads. Inside sales misunderstands a purchase order. It happens. Such are the travails of working with humans. One of the biggest surprises of my career was discovering that customers are generally more forgiving than salespeople expect. They understand mistakes happen because they run businesses too. What they don't tolerate is finger-pointing, excuses, or silence. I once watched a salesperson spend fifteen minutes proving a mistake wasn't his fault. By the time he finished, he'd convinced the customer nobody else inside his company could be trusted either. Accountability has rescued more customer relationships than perfection ever has. Companies don't earn loyalty by avoiding ever...
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Wait Until You Catch Up- A Perfect Failure

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A Perfect Failure Part 2: Wait Until You Catch Up  🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte Every salesperson on the planet shares the same fantasy. Someday, they're going to get caught up. Every email will be answered. Every quote will be completed. Every CRM record will be updated. Every voicemail will be returned. They'll finally lean back in their chair, admire a perfectly organized desk, and shout hurrah. Here I sit, almost five decades into my career, and that day has never arrived. I leave the office with twenty emails in my inbox and return the next morning to find sixty. I'm convinced my to-do list breeds after dark. Nobody has explained the biology. How does 20 become 60 overnight? Quotes multiply. Meetings appear on the calendar without permission. Customers somehow develop emergencies while I'm sleeping. If you're waiting until you've caught up before you begin prospecting, you've unintentionally created a permanent excuse. Successful salespeople ...
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