The Distributor Channel

Strategic Account Planning Part 1 How Strategic Are your Sales People?  Here's a three question test to find out. Just ask any salesperson if they work a strategic plan focused on developing their accounts and I will bet you a brand new nickel they will answer with a resounding YES!  Most will back up their story with lots of details on how they are exploring new opportunities, meeting new contacts, improving their business relationship and lots of other good stuff. No doubt, you will start nodding along. Perhaps you will be completely sold. Salespeople can be optimistically convincing. And, I like this quality in a seller. But, I suffer from buyer’s remorse. A few weeks after being “sold” on the salesperson’s strategic plan, I ask for something relatively simple. Maybe it’s a sales projection for a new product, insight on the customer’s market position or thoughts on whether an OEM uses spare parts as a profit center. My inquiry could be just about anything, but the an

We don’t normally post things like this, but recently River Heights Consulting’s Founding Partner Frank Hurtte was interviewed by Distribution Center Magazine. His informal interview was captured online and put out on podcast. Listen in as Frank discusses Building a Sales Process here:

Marketing the Last Frontier Marketing plays an important role in business. By definition, marketing works to inform customers of the value created by an organization. Extending further, marketing also complements the sales department by acting as the mechanism for collecting customer data, determining why customers buy, developing a comprehensive value message and matching a company’s product/services to various customer groups. In years gone by, Distributors sorely lacked marketing knowhow. When a marketing person was on staff, they were most generally described as event coordinators and keepers of the trinkets. I’m not saying they didn’t work hard. Nor, am I implying these early marketing folks weren’t an asset. But they certainly did little to actively direct the Distributor to higher sales or greater gross margin. Happily, those days are gone. Last week, I attended the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) AdVenture Marketing Conference in C

Let the good times roll – growth and expansion create people issues According to a just released survey from the National Association of Wholesalers and accounting firm McGladrey LLP, distributors are experiencing robust sales growth. Actually, the numbers looked even better than one would expect; 74% had growth over the past 12 months and 91% expect to see growth in the coming year. The distributors came up with projections just shy of 9% projected increases ahead. All pretty darn good. Here are a few factoids from a couple of the National guys: • Wesco reports organic sales increases of 6% with Gross Margin holding in the 20.5% range. • Lawson Products reports sales increases of 5.5%. • Graybar, the electrical giant, reported a record first quarter. • Praxair and Motion are talking 6% increases. • Grainger was up 5% Yes, this is a very rosy outlook for distribution. Why do I share these numbers? I believe we all need to benchmark ourselves against the industry. It