Technology – Our Business System is our Friend While not yet given a fruit name, your business system is your best piece of technology. Business data is a competitive advantage.   I find it weird that many distributors have laid out big piles of hard earned cash but most aren’t getting their money’s worth.   Imagine buying an efficient new warehouse but still stacking stock on grandpa’s homemade wood racks.   Sounds goofy, but according to a sampling of consultants form our business, the average wholesaler uses only half of the power of their largest technology investments.   End of year is the time to bring your crew to a new level. Customer Data by Product Line For just a moment, forget the fancy CRM package, forget spending thousands on iPads, postpone that next version of smart phone, they’re all nice to have but customer data is a must have.   Here’s what we’re talking about:   Sales and gross margin numbers by product line on a monthl...

Ever feel like you're wearing this t-shirt?   Manufacturer/Supply Partner Relationships Stuck in the Middle with You A quick blast from the past: its 1972, you’re tooling down the road in your dad’s Oldsmobile grooving on Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 Countdown.   As you navigate your way through the A&W parking lot, Casey spins the song soon to be the theme of distributors everywhere, “Stuck in the middle with you”.   And, just like the song says, we in the distributor world are stuck in the middle with our suppliers. This means supply partner planning is every bit as important as customer planning.  And keeping with the lyrics, you may find you're dealing with both clowns and jokers along the way.  Discovering and handling these will contribute to your success in the coming year. Supplier Stratification As with customers, the first step in building a plan (and a strategy) comes in understanding the positioning of your suppliers. ...

Rockwell Automation Fair from the Street Level I attended Rockwell’s 21 st Automation Fair last week in Philadelphia, and since loads of people are asking, I thought I would share a few thoughts on the fair from a street level perspective.   Over the years I have attended all of the shows but one, so I feel relatively well qualified to comment. First, in spite of Hurricane Sandy and Northeaster Athena, the attendance was strong.   Rockwell published the first day’s attendance at somewhere between 9,000 -10,000, but it definitely seemed like more.   The booths were packed and the people seemed qualified.   The show started at 8:00 AM and unlike many shows that start off slow – the line had already formed at 7:30 in the morning.   I saw attendees from virtually every corner of the globe.   This shindig really is a world event. Secondly, I saw my all-time first planning issue with one of these fairs.   They ran out of cookies at lunc...

Building a Better Marketing Plan – Annual Planning Let’s have a difficult discussion.    The cold hard facts are most distributors do a lousy job with marketing.   Over the years, most distributors leaned on the brand recognition of their supply partners.    In a few instances where their major supply partners use very limited or exclusive distribution, this strategy may even work.   However with just a couple of exceptions, meaningful exclusive channel partnerships are slip sliding away.   And this leaves distributors with a need to crank up their marketing efforts. In distribution there are three basic components of marketing (ranked here from easiest to hardest): sales aids, sales events and brand building.   Experience dictates marketing people on distributor payrolls tend more towards the keeper of the trinket closet key and event coordinator.     We are not bashing them for the work they do, but we do believe it should be...