Out on a lonely street of the seldom used two-lane highway between Dubuque, Iowa and Madison, Wisconsin, there once stood a ragged and paint-worn billboard with these words emblazoned in three foot letters: “Eliminate the Middle Man and Save!” While the sign has likely fallen and the once flourishing cheese factory is gone, the legend lives on in the hearts of untrained purchasing professionals everywhere. It’s one of their dozens of negotiation tools and they’re not afraid to use it on the unsuspecting manufacturer’s sales executive. Allow me to set the stage for the typical play of this tool… The purchasing guy’s company uses your product and has for a considerable amount of time. One day, you get a call from the purchasing department. The buyer asks for a meeting but specifically requests you come without your distributor. During the meeting, this procurement guy describes how his company likes your product and wants to strengthen and expand their business relationship with...

My assistant came back to the office today with a distinct look of disgust.  Apparently she did some last  minute dress shopping over lunch.  She went on to explain how infuriating it is when a salesperson tries to cram a “hideous mess of a dress” on to anyone willing to buy.  She further explained how she had met this salesperson before and was given a song and dance about how great an outfit looked, when clearly it was just meant for a mannequin.  This trip, she tried to avoid this salesperson and with good reason.  While I laughed at her fitting room trials, I couldn’t help but think about how it’s not just mall employees who push their way in for a buck. Tips for the New Guy – Don’t sell a square peg for a round hole Want to ruin your career?  Just establish a reputation as a guy who “force fits” the wrong product into customer applications. Customers will never forget or forgive you for it.  I call the practice selling square peg...

Poorly Planned Direct Sales Policies First let me start off with a statement:   I’m not a negative guy.   Just the opposite, I typically walk around with a smile on my face and fill the silent void with sonic sweetness – whistling my own renditions of rock classics.   I am a distributor guy with a special spot in my heart for manufacturers who recognize the power of a well-developed channel.   You can call me Mr. Nice. The problem is my cerebral serenity is torn, stapled and otherwise mutilated by irate calls from distributors looking to load their emotional baggage on to the consultant guy from Iowa.   Here’s the scoop.   In the Saturday afternoon matinee Westerns of my misspent youth, the hero took a shot of whisky, put a bullet between their teeth and growled “yank it on out”.      In this case the flaming arrow is lodged in the muscular torso of our hero Trust and his faithful companion Cooperation.    The P...

Distributor Policies – Worst Practice Mistakes Revisited In the past couple of weeks I have been bombarded with horror stories of distributor policies gone wrong.   I have to wonder how and why so many manufacturers fall into the same traps.   Perhaps they don’t have a vehicle for benchmarking distributor practices.   Manufacturers with strong distribution channels typically participate in Distributor Associations and one can surmise networking takes place to some extent or another.   If not directly with other manufacturers, then information may be exchanged by way of distributors sharing best practices.   The others, well some days it’s tough to imagine where they get their input.   Management teams from Europe and Asia often don’t truly understand how the channel works in North America.   The whole concept of distribution sounds as goofy as buying hot dogs at a barber shop to their native sensibilities.   I mean, if you don’t re...

I can’t really remember when I saw my first “Red Box”; it probably wasn’t all that long ago. But over the past few months, these things have become a part of my environment. I see them everywhere – at the local Walgreen’s, in the front entry of my neighborhood grocery store and at busy convenience stores. And, last week, I noticed one along side an interstate McDonald’s. For those of you who spent the past 5 years holed up in a hermit’s cave or incarcerated in solitary confinement, the Red Box is a refrigerator sized vending machine that dispenses rental DVD’s. What makes the machine cool is: You can locate and reserve DVD’s over the internet There are 5-6 of these machines within a few miles of my house. I can see which movies are available at the machine standing at the Walgreen’s a half mile from my house. You can rent from one location and return to another You can rent movies while traveling; basically watching movies as one hops from machine to machine across country. Your ...

One point of discussion among distributors across all lines of trade comes under the heading of POS data. Distributors find themselves being muscled into providing POS data which is expensive (because every manufacturer wants it done differently) and distracting. In a recent informal poll conducted by this office, most distributor sales managers could think of just one or two suppliers who provided them with a reasonable clue that POS data was being used for anything worthwhile. A recent survey completed by Pembroke Consulting backs up this largely anecdotal story. Distributors and their partners need to get together on this. Sending data "over the wall" where it is not properly used is only friction in the channel. AHTD , PTDA , NAED and a number of others have developed POS guideline models that need serious consideration. A survey recently completed by Pembroke Consulting uncovered a "surprising number" of companies, still using manual systems for collecti...