Building on the Skills of Inside Sales Staff After conducting dozens of distributor Voice of the Customer surveys and interviewing their key customer contacts, I have discovered one eye-opening discovery. Customers place a high value on inside sales – perhaps higher than most believe. I can still remember the words of a VP of Engineering for a mid-sized OEM: “Tell your client this, despite our primary salesperson’s personality and product knowledge, we depend on the quick answers and problem-solving skills that come from [their inside salesperson] Scott.”    Comments like this reinforce the words of one of my colleagues many years ago. “A good outside sales guy makes the phone ring, and a good inside salesperson keeps it ringing.” In an age of instant gratification, with overflowing product information on the internet, e-commerce everywhere, and customers dealing with a fast-paced work schedule, the necessity for a strong inside sales presence has only increased.   For cl...

Spring Cleaning Your Compensation Plan: As we inch closer to summer, let’s discuss cleaning up your compensation plan. Huh? What does my organization’s compensation plan have to do with spring cleaning? The ritual of reviewing and editing your stuff, cleaning everything thoroughly, ensuring your lawnmower is ready to go, and starting fresh with the season makes sense. It keeps our homes and garages in good working order and feels good when it’s done. We should bring the same discipline to our compensation plans. Our human resource strategy and execution demand it. How you retain and recruit ideally aligns with your overall organizational strategy. Much of how your strategy adapts with the times, so should your compensation plan.  Why now? You have likely finished communicating goals, and your bonus plans to your teams. It’s not yet time for a mid-year review, so dust off your most recent comp plan, and get started. It’s important that you know how your pay scale aligns with the ma...

The first Monday in November is JOB ACTION DAY.  Never heard of it?  Probably not, but you likely have felt strongly about taking action with your job.  Think about the last time you updated your resume.  I am not talking about a resume to find a new job, instead, I am thinking more about taking an inventory of the skills you possess and comparing them against your skills last year.  Have you learned some new skills?  If the answer is yes, that’s awesome.  If not, why not.  You aren’t perfect and the world is changing around you.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to improve your worth, by developing skills that enhance your value to your company or maybe to some future company?   With the state of the world over the last few years, it's impossible for us to think we have job security without new skills.  We have witnessed the unthinkable many times over.  Companies across the globe have closed shop with little to no notice. ...

Emerging Positions in Distributor Sales On June 1 st , I presented research titled 2022 State of Distributor Sales: Rewriting the Distributor Playbook for a New Era .  I like the moniker “playbook” because it exemplifies the sales effort of the best distributor teams.  This wasn’t always the case.  One of the biggest changes I have observed throughout the course of my career is a shift away from “Lone Ranger” sellers who were once the distributor’s only point of connection with customers.  Today the best distributors employ a team of people, each with at least one customer connection.    Way back in 2007, we researched and explored the use of the term Specialist, which was a relatively new phenomenon in the repertoire of knowledge-based distributors.  One key point coming out of that research was this: Upper-quartile distributors used specialists differently.  They created a playbook carefully outlining key areas of the hand-offs between spe...

I have a special file on my computer where I store passing thoughts that should or could be additions to this blog.  Way back in January of this year, I had an idle hour or so in a cavernous international airport.  It was late afternoon and being an intemperate sort of guy, I could have easily justified a conversation with Jim Beam or Jack Daniels in one of the terminal bars.  The truth is, I was headed that way when I saw a nearly empty little conference area and instead decided to invest my time in thought.   Over the past 10 weeks of our coronavirus-based crisis, I have repeatedly visited my notes on inside sales.  Believing recessions and other economic storms serve to accelerate change, I feel many of the things on the inside sales “wish list” will soon move from “nice to have” to mandatory practices.  With this in mind, let’s review some points tied to inside sales. Customers judge our service on inside sales behavior. Long ago a customer commen...

“Customer intimacy is our stock and trade, our most valuable asset and the reason our supply partners select us as their channel to market…” was the message shared with Supply-Partners during conversations regarding the addition of new product lines, territory expansions and other relational interactions. I totally agree with the statement, but... The question is, what are distributors doing to get a better picture of their customer’s interests? I believe not enough. For years I have encouraged distributors to take a deeper dive, to employ new techniques and look at their customers from a different angle. One way is to use a Voice of the Customer Survey as a tool. More progressive members of the distributor community have made the leap and the findings have been eye-opening. The question becomes why aren’t more using this time-tested tool? Join me as we review the most common reasons why some DO NOT use survey techniques. Reason One: We already know our customers. With s...