We are currently in the process of researching the top sales leadership duties of knowledge-based distributors.  We know that the assortment of responsibilities ranges from the mundane to strategic, with many of the activities divided between several people.  It is also important to note that both the size and the age of the company can change the number of tasks assigned to an individual, regardless of title.  As companies grow, so do the total number of leadership duties. As we sat down to prepare this list, it was quite small.  It has now grown to a lucky 13 list of major categories, which includes the following: 1. Direct Customer Interaction 2. Joint Calls with Team (i.e. coaching calls) 3. Sales (people) management ( i.e. reviews and training) 4. Sales (people) Strategy/Policy and Direction (i.e. number of calls required) 5. Pricing and other price guidelines 6. Analytics (i.e. customers who are profitable) 7. Supplier Relationships 8. Supplier Stra...

For those of us selling into the industrial sector, the economy has turned tough.  One of the gauges of business levels comes from large manufacturers of industrial products.  Numerous end of quarter reports point to slumping sales.  We’ve seen everything from no growth to decreases from three to six percent being typical.   At the same time, a few large industrial corporations have announced plans to “revisit, reevaluate and rethink” their supply chains.  Their strategy is simple:  The economy is slowing and they plan to squeeze a few points out of their suppliers to offset other slides in profitability.  In the past 45 days or so, distributors have shared feedback on margin squeezing moves by key customers.  Longer payment terms (How does 105 day payment sound?) and requests for across the board price reductions are common.  In the past month alone, at least a half dozen distributors report moves to “eliminate the middleman” with cus...

The Challenge – How to Incentivize a Distributor Photo from zazzle.com Purchasing Professional After writing tons of articles on the sales process in distribution where I brutally vilify purchasing and procurement types, I received an email with the following: “Frank, you often make sweeping generalizations about purchasing types. As a former sales guy, I tend to agree with most of what you say. However, my organization (a distributor) has a couple of purchasing people. And while I certainly don’t push them to lie, cheat or steal from our vendors, I would like for them to be more proactive in helping our business make money. Do you have any recommendations for points we should intensify them on? Is it possible for them to do more than just enter orders with our suppliers?” This was a very good question and one I hadn’t thought about for quite some time. There are many purchasing folks working in distribution. These folks are critical to our organization. Most are har...

A couple of weeks ago I published an article called Pricing Professional – The time has come . The piece outlined the need for distributors to consider how they run their business and develop a new position. We hit on why the person who typically handled ‘pricing tasks’ was likely more of an administrator responsible for loading the prices of income purchases rather than a margin building professional. We pushed for distributors to consider the impact of a true pricing process and the qualities of the person best equipped to make the pricing process work. Somewhere along the way, we touched a nerve. Building a pricing process is a viewed as a top secret strategy. While a number of our readers commented, it seems no one wants to go on record with their plans. Here is a sample of the way the emails began: “Hope things are going well. While you'd probably prefer I comment directly on the post I really don't want our competitors to know we're doing this. So feel ...