Joint Calls: Are You Leaving Money on the Table? Stop Chasing Today's Order and Build Tomorrow's Business 🕒 6 min read By Frank Hurtte I've been making joint sales calls for almost half a century. First as the field rep for Allen-Bradley, then as a distributor trying to build a business where none existed before, and finally as a consultant assisting distributor salespeople to expand their skills. Some were great. Some were a waste of everybody's time. And a few left me wondering why we didn't just meet for breakfast and save the gasoline. Joint calls are nothing new in distribution. A supply-partner salesperson comes to town. The distributor salesperson clears some space on the calendar, lines up three or four customers, everybody jumps into a nondescript sedan, and off they go. But here's my question: Why are you making the call? If the answer is, "Because Fred from the factory is in town," you have already flunked the first test. Each call needs mo...

Can You Beat Amazon at Their Game? 🕒 5 min read By Frank Hurtte The vultures are circling again.   Every few years, the doomsayers resurface: Amazon's eating distribution. E-commerce is the death of wholesale. Distributors are obsolete. The headlines are predictable. The advice? Equally predictable and predictably wrong.   Build your own Amazon. Hire consultants to help you compete on speed and price. Invest millions in e-commerce platforms. Match their logistics. Underprice the giants.   If you take that advice, you'll lose. And you'll waste time, money, and energy doing it. Here's why: You're competing on their battlefield instead of yours. W hat Amazon Does Better (And Always Will) Let's be honest. Amazon, Grainger, Faire, and the newer B2B marketplaces have invested billions in logistics, data, and algorithms. A mid-sized distributor can't match their speed or price. Competing on those terms is like a neighborhood bookstore trying to o...

The Art of the Ask A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment 🕒 3 min read By Desiree Grace Does your pre-teen daughter ever greet you with a hug? If so, like me, you know she wants something. I have to give her points for effort and leveraging affection as a potent negotiating tool. While that only works in our personal lives, there's much to be said for the art of the ask. I recently received a letter from a customer demanding "your very best pricing for our new distribution center." There is so much that was wrong with this request. 1. I did not know the person sending the letter. 2. No conversation, text, or introductory email preceded the demand. 3. Nothing reciprocal was mentioned, such as increased purchase volume, displacement of a competitor, or even preferential treatment during their next planning session. I had to wonder if the woman who sent the email was fresh out of college, having barely passed her Negotiation 101 course, or if she had simply had a bad start ...

A Perfect Failure Part 6: Wait for the Perfect Time 🕒 3 min read  By Frank Hurtte This may be the most expensive and most popular failure of them all. I've heard thousands of variations on the theme. In rapid-fire order, here are the top five: "My customers are really busy in the morning" (or the afternoon, or any other time). "The big guys are in the middle of budgeting, vacation season, or the holidays." "They've got another project." "They're just finishing a shutdown" (or any other named event). "Let's wait until things settle down." Here's an observation from someone who's spent a lifetime serving industrial customers: things never settle down. Successful people are busy because that's what successful companies do. Engineers always have another project, maintenance managers always have another shutdown scheduled, and purchasing always has some kind of supplier deadline. ...

A Perfect Failure Part 5: Do Perfect Products Exist? 🕒 3 min read  By Frank Hurtte Customers aren't shopping for perfection. They're spending money to solve a problem. Successful automation product manufacturers invest between five and eight percent of their sales revenue in R&D, trying to build better products. That's a serious sum, yet after watching product development for decades, I've learned that every engineering improvement usually comes with another compromise. Technically superior products lose business because they weren't available when the customer needed them. And I've watched “good enough” products become outstanding solutions simply because they kept a line running. Sometimes C+ is good enough. Not because customers don't value excellence, but because the best solution isn't always the technically perfect one. A C+ product that is available, serviceable, and keeps the customer's operation running can be worth far more than an...

Encoding & Decoding: Learn the Language of Your Customers A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment 🕒 3 min read time  By Desiree Grace You wouldn't try speaking Spanish to a Polish person, would you? Of course not! Experienced travelers know the importance of learning a few basic words and polite phrases when they head out on adventures, and good marketers should do the same. How you communicate matters. When we review the Communication Model, we see that what you mean to say and what your intended recipient hears don't always match up. Converting your ideas into a message that resonates with your target market requires research and understanding of your customers, plus careful attention to the details of "Encoding." The Encoding Side: How You Shape Your Message Word Choice is incredibly important. Knowing the right slang terms to use can make the difference between your target market thinking you're a "tool" (negative connotation) or "sick...

A Perfect Failure Part 4: Expecting Your Suppliers to be Perfect 🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte Expecting perfection from suppliers is like expecting the weather forecast to be right every day. Helpful, usually. Perfect, never. Some salespeople expect the regional sales manager to know every answer, the application engineer to solve technical problems with a snap of the fingers, and the factory to deliver every order the next day, come rain, shine, or global supply-chain crisis. That's a fairy tale, not a reality. I've worked with hundreds of manufacturer representatives over my career. A few were exceptional. A few probably couldn't be trusted to water houseplants. Most fell somewhere in between. The common denominator wasn't perfection. They were all human beings trying to serve customers in an imperfect world. Customers don't judge us by whether our suppliers occasionally stumble. They judge us by how well we respond when the organic material hits the rotat...