Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work as Hard as You Do By Frank Hurtte Let’s talk LinkedIn. It's your digital elevator pitch, online handshake, and social proof. If you're in sales, leadership, or any role where people do business with you , not just your company, then your LinkedIn profile is your online handshake. First impressions matter. If your profile looks like a ghost town or a resume from 2004, it might be time for a tune-up. Here are a few practical, real-world tips to help your profile rise above the noise: 1. Use a Real Photo—A Good One No selfies. No sunglasses. No vacation shots cropped from a wedding. Invest in a professional headshot or at least a photo where you’re well-lit, smiling, and look like someone a customer would want to talk to. If headshots aren’t in your budget, take a photo against a plain background and use a program or app to improve it. Reality Check: Listen, we KNOW you looked great at your frat brother’s wedding, but save those photos...

Years ago, one seasoned distributor executive said, “One of the natural laws of distribution is that you will lose between 8-10 percent of your business every year.  Companies change direction, close their operations, are acquired by others, and a mess of other things.  If you don’t plan for this, you will be forever behind the eight-ball.”  The message was shocking.  While I am not sure his percentages were entirely accurate, the message was true.  Customers do occasionally go away.   Having a solid source of new customers is important.  Yet, according to our 2022 State of Distributor Sales research, only a dismal 34 percent of distributors are happy with the number of new customers brought into their organization each year. The distributors we spoke with went on to state that traditional salespeople were their primary source of new customers.  It has been my experience, and this research further illustrates, that distributor salespeople do a poo...

Words like Pandemic, Lock-down, Disrupter, Social Distancing, and Community Transmission wash over us like a tsunami in an ocean of hand sanitizer.   Whole countries are under lockdown.   Tradeshows and other events are going into cancel mode.   States are declaring health emergencies and closing all public gathering places and there are forecasts of even more stringent plans in development. Many of our customers are considering going into emergency mode.   Travel is curtailed, everyone who can do so is telecommuting and business is being conducted in non-traditional ways. As distributors I feel we have two options available to us: 1.       We can stand idly by and simply react to the situation.   2.       We can anticipate the situation, make some plans, and push forward. Anticipating the situation It might be safe to assume the following will accelerate: Increased number of...

When I ask the question “Do you have sales meetings?” most often the answer is to the Without teaching about the science of selling, your meeting room may as well be empty affirmative.  Weekly, monthly, quarterly or something else is the standard answer.  But when it comes to content, a few follow up questions are often needed.  That’s when the truth comes out; distributor sales meetings are rarely about sales.  Oh, sometimes the numbers are reviewed.  Goals are generally discussed near the beginning and ending of each year.  And occasionally, distributors talk about the need for results on some supply-partner’s new product line.  Rarely, if ever, do distributor leaders actually talk about the science of selling. Over the past few days, I have participated in over a half dozen conversations (phone, email and social media) on the topic of sales meetings.  Allow me to highlight.  In one conversation a manufacturer asked one of their...

I just had a conversation with an old friend; somebody I worked with back in the 70s.  We were both young Turks on the training program of a major manufacturer. Armed with freshly minted engineering degrees and lots of ambition, we felt we were poster children for “manifest destiny” or at least something like that.  Early on we kept in contact, but then life happened.  And now, after all these years, thanks to the good folks at LinkedIn and unusual last names, we reconnected. Did someone say FREE SUPPORT? It turns out we both ended up in distribution.  I asked him to tell me about his business.   Somewhere midway through the description he said, “We are a high service distributor in our market.  We have engineers, highly trained sales people and we provide tons of free support for our customers…” With mass quantities Starbucks caffeine already surging through my veins, my blood pressure did a flip-flop.  My muscles tightened, the fight or f...

American Music Icon Willie Nelson is turning 81.  While most octogenarians enjoy hanging out at home and occasionally doting over grandkids, Willie is still way out there; touring, “toking,” and writing songs.  For those of you who happen to be near Austin, Texas, Willie has a big shindig lined up on April 29 th  to celebrate his birthday.  True Confession:  I love Willie’s music, it comes with growing up in a Texaco Station.  But this isn’t about Mr. Nelson, it’s about you. Some time ago, I read an interview where Willie said his songs rang true because he really had something to say.  The same concept might be applied to individual sales effort. If we don’t have something to say, why visit the customer?  This sounds sort of strange.  But, “having something to say” might mean having a plan for the sales call; better still, a strategy for the next three or four calls.  Why am I wr...