What's Your Brand Personality? A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment 🕒 3 min read By Desiree Grace You know that person; they are the life of the party. Your partner in business has a never-ending supply of stories and tall tales. A colleague is super-smart, knows numbers, and is a financial whiz. These are all recognizable personalities. Brands have personalities, too. Like people, some are better than others. Why should you care about your brand personality? Brand personality is how you humanize your brand, stand out from your competition, strike an authentic chord with your target market, and, really, provide a quick, short take on who you are, what you stand for, and what customers can expect. It's also a good standard to measure your decisions against. Perhaps your brand is all about environmental responsibility. Do you rely on a third party for recycling without verifying their bona fides? No, not consistent with your brand personality. How do you express brand personal...

Recruiting Is a Contact Sport By Desiree Grace You think boxing is tough? Wrestling? Try recruiting in today’s labor market. Recruiting in a tight labor market is tough. Recruiting for an industry that flies under the radar is tougher. When you work in the B2B space, you need to be a tough, creative recruiter. Don’t try to snag another company’s A player and spend big bucks. Instead, investigate the worlds of retail and hospitality. Why? Retail and hospitality professionals already do the hardest part of customer-facing work. People in hospitality and retail have the skills you need: interpersonal skills, the ability to stay calm under pressure, and adaptability. Interpersonal skills: They know how to look people in the eye. They can quickly assess mood and personality. They can smile, be friendly, and lift the customer’s mood. This matters. Stay calm: When people have experienced the worst, such as being stuck in a snowstorm and missing their meeting or vacation, they ...

Most of you don’t know, but River Heights Consulting is located in Davenport, Iowa. Maybe you've seen the Quad Cities on the Today Show recently.  The Mississippi River at Davenport is standing in the midst of a flood of historic proportions. Downtown had a break in the floodwall and water is cascading down Second Street like a raging mountain stream. Just moments ago, my phone convulsed in a wild, continuous modulating buzz. Not knowing whether it was the result of my last coffee spillage or something else, I grabbed it quick and was met with an Emergency Flood Advisory. Without all the extraneous noise, allow me to share a “Distributor Advisory”. Based on the prognosis of Brian Beaulieu and the folks at ITR’s latest report, we are in for a slowdown end of this year and early 2020. Quoting a published piece paraphrasing the words of Alex Chausovsky who serves as the Director of Speaking Services at the same company: “…according to ITR, the U.S. economy has peaked in terms...