The Distributor Leader's Guide for Business Resolutions

Questions for New Year’s Resolutions

It is the season for New Year’s Resolutions.  If you are like me, you have probably made a few of them. 

But I am not going to make resolutions for you.  The truth is it would be impossible for me to do that.  Instead, let’s spend a few minutes tossing out some questions that might serve to guide your resolutions.

 

Since we all have a lot on our minds this time of year, I have broken these questions down by position.  This is the first of three posts, each designed for specific positions within the organization.  
This one is for Distributor Leaders.

 

Distributor Leaders

What is the state of the technology you are using?

Can you easily:

·        Track purchases by salesperson?

·        Track purchases by the customer?

·        Track purchases by supply-partner?

·        Track purchases by technology group?

·        Look for sales missing (gap analysis) by the customer?

·        Does your system automatically:

•    Create Ship and Debit reports?
•    Build Point of Sale Reports?

 

What is the state of your sales process?

These include:

·        Are you finding new customers and growing your customer list?  Most distributors aren’t.

·        Do you regularly analyze your sales to ensure your company is selling a full “wallet share” at your top accounts?

·        What do you do to improve the sales skills of your team?

·        If you use Specialists and/or Business Development teams, are they being properly employed by all your sellers?

·        Are there checks and balances on pricing or does your team have the authority to set prices as they see fit?

·        If you use CRM to track customer opportunities, contacts, and activities, what grade would you give to your team?  What are you doing to bring laggards up to speed?

 

What is the state of your marketing efforts?

These include:

·        Does your marketing team have a mission?  Examples include brand awareness, lead generation, running marketing events, etc.

·        Has your marketing team developed metrics for measuring their progress?

·        Does the marketing team have access to our customer contact list?

·        Do you have an active marketing plan with an agenda for the coming year?

·        Does your team interact with supply partners’ marketing teams?

 

Do you have an e-commerce platform?

Consider these points:

·        Are you getting support from your supply-partners on e-commerce posts?

·        Who oversees your e-commerce platform?  (Technical, Marketing, Content updates, etc.)

·        What percentage of your products are online?

·        How is your sales team pushing the use of online purchases?

 

Are you charging for some of the services you provide?

Consider these points:

·        Do you track the cost of the services you provide for free?

·        How do you manage/control who receives these services?  In other words, are small customers receiving services they don’t necessarily deserve?

·        Are you charging for services and discovering your sales team continues to give them away as sales concessions?

·        If you are charging for services, have you factored internal labor costs into the gross margin?

·        When was the last time you developed a new service for your customers?

·        Who is ultimately responsible for setting the strategic direction of your service business?

 

What has changed with your customer base?

·        Has the pandemic or economy had an impact on your customers?

·        Are any of your customers experiencing tough times that could impact your business?

·        Will some of your customers change their purchasing habits over the next couple of years?

·        What are you doing to better position your team with these customers?

·        When was the last time you did an authentic “Voice of the Customer” survey?

 

What about your suppliers?

·        What are you doing to better position yourself with important suppliers?

·        Are there suppliers who will be more or less important to your efforts?

·        How will you shift your sales strategy with your team?

 

People?

I saved the most important point for last.  People are the distributors' main differentiator, representing the single largest investment.  At the same time, good people are in short supply.  Positions that require engineering or technical backgrounds are in even shorter supply.

·        Have you evaluated your current compensation plans against the new normal for people?  Salaries are rising very quickly.

·        Do you have critical positions with no succession plan should a person leave your organization?

·        Do you have a plan for the ongoing recruitment of new people?  Having good people lined up as future candidates is more important now than ever.

·        Are your front-line managers and supervisors trained and reviewed on best practices in dealing with their reports?

·        Are you viewed by current and future employees as a good employer?  Have you checked your company’s reputation on GlassDoor.com?  Future employees read it.

 

A couple of final thoughts.

As I worked through creating this list and chatted with a few clients, one point became abundantly clear.  Operating a successful distributor involves lots of “moving parts.”  It’s not easy to keep track of everything.  Sometimes, a list like this pulls our attention back to areas where needed improvement becomes obvious – hence the call for a new resolution or two. 

 

If nothing else set a resolution to revisit this list again in April, June, or September.

 

Back to the Glassdoor comment.  We found one comment on a well-known distributor which I am sure does little to help the company find new workers.  Here is an original, unedited comment from an employee reporting over eight years with the company. 

Cons (of working here)

1.      Dishonest leadership team who only looks out for theirselves.

2.      Chairman of the board is very slimy and greedy.

3.      Hard work is not rewarded, only office politics matter.

4.      Leadership team has made bad business decisions in the last ten years.

5.      Promote bad people and fire good people.

   

Make a resolution to be better than that with your people.

And for the record, the company was generally viewed by most employees as a good place to work.

 

Stay tuned, our next post will provide questions for salespeople.  

Frank Hurtte, Founding Partner of River Heights Consulting, shares his personal experiences with 28
years of "in the trenches" training and 17 years as a consultant.  He serves as a personal coach to industry leaders across many lines of distribution.  He has authored 5.5 books (one is almost done) and has written hundreds of articles for national trade magazines, including Industrial Supply Magazine.

Frank is also a sought-after copywriter of marketing materials for technology companies.  His charismatic, yet laid-back, easy-to-follow manner makes him a favorite among public speakers.

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