For those of you who don’t know, Santa Claus and I have a special relationship. It began way back when I was still knee high to a short elf. It seems my grandfather, who was a jolly sort of guy himself, was somehow connected with Mr. Claus. Imagine being 3 or 4 years old and learning Grandpa and Santa were buddies. Special feeling? You bet. I knew it was real when Santa greeted my Grandpa with, “Hey Red (my Grandpa’s nickname,) how late did you stay down at the Eagles’ Club last night? If they weren’t pals, how in the world could this jolly red suited man know these details? Santa knew me by name, too. Really! And since that day back in the early 60s, Old Santa and I have enjoyed a close and special friendship. According to Santa, yours truly has managed to make the “nice” list for 5 of my 62 years, but this story is not about me. It’s about distributors. During a slow point down at the local mall, I managed to grab a few minutes of the jolly old elf’s time. After our...

Santa in 1881 by Thomas Nast Everyone knows Santa Claus. Red suit, long white beard, familiar laugh and long-time leader of all things North Pole. For some strange reason, most don’t have a clue as to the early days of his career. So let me break it to you, Santa got his start in sales. A long time ago, hundreds of Christmases before occupying the big chair in the corner office up at the North Pole, Santa worked on the selling side of North Pole Distributing. Like many hardworking sales types with hundreds of years under his belt, Santa leveraged all the lessons learned in his territory to move up in his organization. Playing a front and center role in a global distribution organization with customers around the globe, Mr. Claus puts those lessons to work almost every day. It’s difficult for a lowly industry consultant to get an audience with big time executives, but last week I leveraged over six Photo Credit: GM decades worth of being on the nice list to score a ra...

Introduction and explanation: A few years ago, a friend (fellow writer) and I were bouncing around ideas for the future. Somehow we got off topic and started talking about the stories shared with our kids back in the day. In a world where none of the kids’ stories actually relate to the life of a distributor salesperson, we wondered what would happen if we created “Fairy Tales for Sales” – stories which carried meaning for the sales professional and the kiddos as well. This year we are providing a couple of Holiday Stories which fall under these guidelines. Good reading for the kids and a message for the grownups. We hope you enjoy…. Negotiating with Santa As Frank looks back, he may have been a bit like Billy... Looking back at the last year, Little Billy wasn’t sure his behavior would put him onto Santa’s nice list.  There had been a few temper tantrums, a little pouting and an issue at school with his teacher.  Just last week, Billy got into some trouble wi...

It’s November. The Midwestern Iowa leaves feature Technicolor rainbows of colors; bright red, deep orange, a thousand shades of yellow. A bit of warmth lingers, but Thanksgiving, December, and the Holiday season make this time of year go by quickly. Two painful realities of the season loom in the distance - yard cleanup and annual planning.  As I jot down these few words, I feel the approaching pain of a future Sunday afternoon manhandling a rake around the property.  Some pay a neighborhood teenager to handle the raking. But it’s hard to find an $8.00 an hour surrogate for End of Year Planning. Planning needn’t be the dreaded task hanging around the corner. Join me as we remove the pain out of the process. Start early . Many of us don’t dig into the task of Year End Planning until the last minute. A few of us dread the seemingly gigantic nature of the job so much, the procrastination pushes us into next the year. I know people who move paper clip sorting to the front and ce...

A couple of weeks ago we posted a story about scams going out to distributors. Well, they continue. Here is something fresh from the inbox, only this time we decided to reach out to the number listed. After several rings it was picked up and answered "FMC Corporation" in a less than professional manner – not a good sign. We asked the person answering if he was Paul Graves to which he proceeded to confirm. Playing the part of a local distributor, we indicated that we provide freight with our orders so in order to properly quote, we required a shipping address. Things got quiet for a moment then we were told the products will be shipped to either Wisconsin, Australia or someplace garbled and unpronounceable. The person on the other end of the phone asked if we could email our questions to them rather than talk on the phone. I plan to reach out sometime in the near future, just as soon as I set up my own scam email address; something like W. Coyote Automation of Ariz...

We have all received some sort of scam message or been warned by friends "don't open that" in our personal lives.  I suppose it had to happen sometime. We should be both honored and terrified. Finally, after all these years, the scammers have managed to discover the distribution industry, too. Here’s the scoop, all of our websites identify with distributors. We publish a lot of information and our email addresses are all over the web. To the untrained eye and Google key word searches, we probably appear to be a distributor. A couple of months ago, we received a request for quotation from a major public university. Looking at it closely, I debated as to whether it was fair for me to forward it to a friend near the school. But I looked again. The email address for the university didn’t look exactly right – I mean how many big time public institutions have their purchasing department using a Yahoo email address. Still, maybe there was a reason, so I did a search...

Harboring an ugly gray and decaying complexion, shuffling forward with an unworldly gate, with outstretched arms  flailing and uttered chants of “Brains, Brains, must have Brains,” Apocalyptic Zombies trudge down the hallways of distributor sales offices. Brain hungry undead are scouring our buildings for prey. Surviving on gory morsels of mental morrow called common sense, ever present Zombies have circled the sales group and stand ready to make mincemeat of your team. Unwarily, your salespeople stand in line to “feed” the monsters. They are easy prey. What’s worse, they may not even realize the damage has been done. Allow me to be your post-apocalyptic tour guide as we look for signs of devastation and learn the proper methods destroying the brain hungry beasts. Searching for telltale clues to zombie infestation requires a quick eye. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to really understand the extent of the carnage. First, let’s explore the situation with a c...