How Do You Know if Your Sales Strategy is Broken? By Frank Hurtte Many distributors struggle when asked to explain their sales strategy. With  a great deal of hand waving and stuttering , the conversation quickly turns vague and squishy. Sales leaders talk about relationships, service, responsiveness, and “taking care of the customer.” All important, of course. No customer enjoys working with an unresponsive supplier or a company that creates problems instead of solving them. But those statements rarely explain why customers actually buy. Listen closely, and you’ll hear familiar catchphrases: “Our strength is our relationships.” “Our people care more than the other guys.” “We give great service.” (What does that even mean?) “We go above and beyond supplier expectations.” True? Possibly. Strategic? Not even close.  You can bet your bottom dollar that every competitor can make the same claim There’s a simpler way to test the strength of a sales strategy. Instea...

Why Relationships Alone Are Not a Growth Strategy Stop Waiting for Competitors to Retire By Frank Hurtte Relationships matter. If everything else is equal, the salesperson with the relationship usually wins the order. But if your only competitive advantage is that customers like you, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. Your competitor has a relationship, too. And if your growth plan depends on waiting for that competitor to retire, transfer, or die, that’s not a strategy. That’s wishful thinking. I’ve watched salespeople play this waiting game for decades. Their “growth plan” often sounds like this: “I’ll keep showing up. I’ll answer the phone at night. I’ll jump when there’s a problem. I’ll build trust. And when the competitor eventually slips up, I’ll move up the food chain.” Relationships can open doors. The keyword is "eventually." Eventually might mean a year. It might mean five. I’ve seen reps wait a decade for a competitor to “finally mess up.” Meanwhile, the accou...

Frequent Flyers, Forgotten Value: A Pricing Wake-Up Call By Desiree Grace and Frank Hurtte Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is marketing-speak for the value of capturing a customer early in their buying journey and keeping that customer for life. Statistics show that it takes 5-7 times MORE money to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing customer. Treating your best customers better is key to customer retention and reducing customer churn. This should be a company-wide effort. Pricing strategy and execution should align with that strategy, and while typically part of Finance, they should not be excluded from company-wide coordination. Let’s review a real-world example from the airline industry. Recently, I had the experience of booking a three-legged journey with United. Due to a colleague changing schedules, I had to cancel one of the legs. As a Premier 1k and Global Services customer, I expected some sort of refund for the cancelled journey, since I was essentially buying ...

We are well into January which means many of you have given up on your personal resolutions.  And maybe you gave up on your professional ones as well, but I have a feeling you didn't make any!   Wait, did I touch on a nerve there?  Never fear, I have some questions you can ask yourself to give you a jump on 2025.  Much like like we did during and after the Pandemic, we continue to pivot in the face of adversity.  Only instead of COVID-19, we're working with devastating weather patterns and political polarization along with past troubles like chain issues, rising labor costs, and general price increases. The way you adapt is the key to your success. So here they are, Top 10 Distributor Questions that Demand Answers in 2025: 1. What can we do this year to provide even greater value and service to our customers? 2. How can we strengthen our customer relationships today to make it harder for competitors to take our business? 3. What new strategies or offer...

My 11-year-old wants to earn money this summer. Preferably by babysitting. Since I want to encourage my budding businesswoman, we started by discussing our Target Market and the 4 Ps of Marketing: • Target Market:   4 neighbors with 3+ little kids who could likely use help • Product:   My daughter’s services (we’ll refer to her as E) as a babysitter or Mother’s helper. • Place: Within walking distance of our home. • Promotion:  We made a flier detailing her qualifications: o Completion of a babysitting course at the local community center o Straight A student o Safety Patrol during her 5th grade year o First-degree black belt o Completion of all Red Cross swimming courses o Good with kids and animals o Cute picture of my kid dressed appropriately and smiling—underlining the responsible and friendly aspects of her personality o We also rehearsed “the approach” aka introducing yourself, smiling, looking adults in the eye, and extending a hand for ...

What value do you bring to the customer? Several months ago, I had the opportunity to “ride along” with what my client described as “one of our promising new sales guys.”  Because I wanted to just get a snapshot of the quality and quantity of this guy’s work, I didn’t do much to brief him on our objectives for the day.  Instead, I emailed him, "I just want to ride along and observe your work."  A few days later he texted coordinates of a greasy spoon where we would slosh down a cup of coffee and brace ourselves for the day. After a handshake and a few social niceties, we dove into the day ahead.  I was pleased.  He had real live appointments at three accounts and plans to drop by another couple if time allowed.  Demos and literature were well thought out and carefully stored in the back seat of his meticulously clean company car.  He had invested in timely topics to explore with the various people scheduled to see us.  I could easily see ...