Few practices drive more value to your business than year- end planning, yet many distributors fail to put the proper effort into their plans. There are a thousand reasons/excuses ranging everywhere from the perennial, “We’re too busy driving business to spend time planning” to “Planning just doesn’t apply to our business.” A few don’t build strong end-of-year plans because they simply don’t have a workable model to use in their efforts. End of Year Planning is Important Once a year, it’s a good thing to pause and consider how things have changed in the past and the impact of those changes in the future. Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, slow and steady environmental changes are difficult to comprehend in “real time.” A subtle shift here, a little bump in the economy there, add a dash of personnel changes and before you realize it, your business is performing like a 1984 Renault Alliance (the crappiest car ever owned by anyone in our office). In reality, many d...

Make no mistake, customers are thinking and behaving differently today than just a couple years ago. When I was a  rookie sales guy, the primary source of product information for my customers was their favorite salesperson. Introducing customers to new products, providing catalogs for additional product data searches and demonstrations of new features (and benefits) of existing products was job one. Early on, I discovered the salesperson who provided the best and most valuable information held a position of grace and favor. #ASKGUDMUNDUR: The world's  first human search engine. Once I worked my way into the favored spot, I became the trusted “human search engine” used to find solutions and new products. Here’s how it went. The customer described their problem, I took notes, drew pictures and scurried off to research a list of possible solutions. A week or two later, I returned with a few catalog data sheets, a dozen or so pictures and we refined the “search” and ...