Who Wants to Be Just a Number? A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment   ⏱️ 4 min read By Desiree Grace Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to be treated like just a number. Not in life, and certainly not in B2B. People want to be treated like people. If you want to win the sales and marketing race, you must understand and invest in personalization. Real personalization. The kind powered by AI and enhanced by humans. Think AI + Humans So what is personalization? It’s customized communication that recognizes role, company, priorities, and buying stage. The design engineer searching for the right sensor for a new garage door opener cares about safety, response time, and what happens during a power outage.  The datacenter enterprise customer racing to activate a greenfield site cares about delivery and quality. The defense contractor? Delivery and quality come first, always. B2B personalization is the best practice of tailoring communication, content, and sales interactions to the s...

How AI Turns Missed Quotes Into Real Revenue AI May Finally Solve One of Distribution’s Oldest Sales Problems: Quote Follow-Up By Frank Hurtte Hundreds of quotes go out each week. Most are never followed up on. That’s not a process issue. It’s a revenue leak. Nobody likes to admit it, but we've all seen it happen. Every experienced distributor sales leader knows this. Everyone agrees follow-up matters. Yet in most organizations, it happens inconsistently, sporadically, or not at all. The average distributor produces hundreds of quotes each week. That volume alone represents a major opportunity. If a distributor issues 500 quotes a week and even 5 percent of the unfollowed quotes would have converted, that’s roughly 1,300 additional orders a year. There is nothing worse than losing an order simply because the customer never actually received the quote. It happens more often than anyone wants to admit. Emails get buried. Spam filters intervene. A customer hesitates because the quote ...

What Can a Carnival Fortune-Teller Teach Us About Customer Experience? By Desiree Grace Imagine a fortune-teller at a carnival. You walk into her tent, engulfed in the smell of incense, and there she sits with her crystal ball. “Welcome,” she says. “I am Madame Desdemona. I know you have questions. With the help of the spirit world, I have answers. Sit, and I will tell you what you need to know about the future of customer experience in the B2B world.” I’ve sat in enough customer experience reviews to know the questions sound eerily similar. She gazes deeply into your eyes, as if she can see into your soul. “I see you have concerns about AI,” she says. “If AI could replace good customer service, it would have already done it.” The conversation continues. You discuss how AI can improve and predict problem resolution, especially for routine issues like lost order tracking, proof of delivery, and invoice discrepancies. You realize that many of these challenges can be anticipat...

AI’s Closing Argument: Frank Hurtte Remains Guilty  | By Frank Hurtte (and AI) Forward I have been a proponent of Artificial Intelligence for a very long time. In fact, one of the reasons I am sitting here today was a book I read when I was 8 years old called “Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine.” This late 1950s book for kids told the story of a young man programming a computer to do his homework. That has been my life’s dream. With that in mind, is it any wonder I have closely followed the development of ChatGPT and other platforms for the past couple of years?    I believe AI will be a game-changing tool for our industry. Those who embrace it early will definitely have a competitive edge against the “laggers.”   Last weekend, I scheduled “play time” and researched some of the new features of my favorite AI platform. After burning through a rainy morning of experimentation, I had the silly thought of testing what ChatGPT knew about me. I was working on an...

North Stars: The Distributor’s Original GPS In Defense of My North Stars Why I Still Trust My North Stars (Even in the Age of AI) By Frank Hurtte Forgive the extra titles, I just couldn't decide on the perfect one to reflect this post! I’m not exactly sure when the concept of “North Stars” first became part of my thinking. It may have been from Peter Drucker, whose books-on-tape I devoured back when I was a young sales guy working through an MBA reading list on the road. Drucker hammered home the importance of enduring principles and mission-driven leadership. Later, Jim Collins in Good to Great reinforced this idea, showing how great companies cling to their core values even as they navigate massive change. For me, North Stars are those steadfast principles that offer clarity and direction, especially when markets shift and trends whirl around like the weather here in the Midwest. Never one to let a solid idea slip by, I developed my own set of North Stars for distributors...