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...