After the Pandemic – Working Remotely Supply-Partner Implications Earlier, we talked about the impact of distributors and their customers working remotely and how the changes impact distributors.  In the eyes of many, the story would end here.  However, a distributor is a middleman, the entity positioned between those consuming and those creating products.  Distributors are a critical part of what could officially be called the supply chain.   A bit about the supply chain  A supply chain is a network between a company and its suppliers to produce and distribute a specific product to the final buyer.  The companies providing raw materials to supply-partners are part of their supply chain.  The distributor and supply-partners are steps in our customer’s supply chain.   If the distributor’s supply-partner experiences delivery issues and the distributor cannot deliver, the customer’s supply chain is impacted.  If the distributor m...

Let me start with a loud proclamation, I believe it makes sense  for distributors to have a value-add shop.  I see value-adds as a competitive differentiator.  They provide the distributor with an easy way to sell logistically focused customer convenience, programming expertise, multiple part subassemblies, and when appropriate, complete solutions.  In the case of products like linear bearings, bus bar, strut, and T-slot extruded aluminum systems, work done in the shop enables smaller customers to apply the product without purchasing the specialty tools required to create a customer solution of their own.  With all these great things in mind, why start an article with the heading “Does your shop cost your company new business?”   In the past three or four weeks, I have come across at least a dozen examples of distributor shops serving as a hindrance rather than an accelerator of business.  All but two of these came from sellers.   The situati...

Let’s face it, for most salespeople getting into a new prospect is a tough job.  It takes persistence, requires lots of phone calls and typically puts the seller through an emotional wringer.  Discussions with hundreds if not thousands of distributor salespeople indicate this is one of the most difficult parts of their job.  First, it takes multiple (actually, our research shows seven) phone calls and email messages just to get to the right person.  Sadly, sellers, who are faint of heart, give up before the actual contact is made.  Many would rather put the task off and procrastinate for weeks.  Some, with established territories, simply refuse to make this kind of call until their managers apply massive pressure to open new accounts. The point is, lining up this kind of call is not on anyone’s top ten list of things to do.  There are dozens of articles on the topic of getting the appointment; my intent is not to provide a tutorial on the topic. ...

Let’s face it, summer time is filled with distractions.  Our customers are distracted; they have vacations, kids playing Little League, golf leagues, cabins in the woods, lawns to mow and who knows what else.  This distraction is contagious.  Being people too, distributor folks get caught up in all the summer stuff.   Sometime around September 1 st , we snap out of our summer induced behavior and put our noses to the grindstone.  For the next week or so, we are going to talk about a few fall tune-ups for distributors.  Think summer end elixir for a better year end.  If ever you planned to institute a new habit, this is the time.  For the next four minutes, let’s think about selling time.  We’ll ask a few questions:  How much time do our salespeople spend selling?  What distracts them? How might we put the beauty back into the process? How much time do salespeople spend actually selling? Based on observations of hun...