Does your OEM customer view spare parts as a revenue stream?   Solution sellers should know the answer to this You and your customer can share a love of those spare parts! very simple question.   Strangely, perhaps even sadly, many distributor sales guys have never fully explored the question.  In their daily struggle to get parts specified, solve technical issues and sometimes baby-sit orders flowing from the customer, they overlook an opportunity to move up the supplier food-chain.  For review let’s look at the types of folks selling to our customers: Type of Supplier Customer Perception Vendor A company we send lists of materials to and sometimes make purchases if the price is right and delivery schedules meet our needs. Supplier A company we regularly purchase from because they appear to provide a competitive price and good service. Valued-Supplier A company we do more ...

The State of the Economy – a down and dirty analysis Everybody always wonders how the economy is impacting business.   The topic comes in Numero Uno in the cocktail chat at most distributor association meetings.   No distributor to distributor phone conversation excludes the topic.   We are in some uncertain times.   In general I have heard stories of great Januarys followed by pathetic Februarys or some permutation of the story.    Privately held distributors often won’t provide sales data for the record and sometimes exaggerate when asked.   Yet I believe most of us are still interested in what’s going on.   With this point in mind, we thought about providing a short recap of the publically held companies in our sector.   They are required by law to report sales so the information is real.   While there is a difference between their business model, territory and scope, I think it gives us a subtle insight into the economy. ...

I can’t really remember when I saw my first “Red Box”; it probably wasn’t all that long ago. But over the past few months, these things have become a part of my environment. I see them everywhere – at the local Walgreen’s, in the front entry of my neighborhood grocery store and at busy convenience stores. And, last week, I noticed one along side an interstate McDonald’s. For those of you who spent the past 5 years holed up in a hermit’s cave or incarcerated in solitary confinement, the Red Box is a refrigerator sized vending machine that dispenses rental DVD’s. What makes the machine cool is: You can locate and reserve DVD’s over the internet There are 5-6 of these machines within a few miles of my house. I can see which movies are available at the machine standing at the Walgreen’s a half mile from my house. You can rent from one location and return to another You can rent movies while traveling; basically watching movies as one hops from machine to machine across country. Your ...

We have long pushed for Distributors to get involved in the training business. This is especially true for those wholesalers involved in technology oriented businesses. But allow me to add a point of clarification here; when many think of technology they think of Silicon Valley - computers, data-communications and the like. Technology is nearly anything that changes and needs a bit of training to understand. Distributor members of HARDI, NAED, PTDA, AHTD, NIBA, SEDA and others should be considering training as a potential source of revenue. We believe that Distributor Specialists need to be involved in the training. Many upper quartile distributors have already figured this out, others are quietly ramping up their efforts. A resent survey conducted by accounting firm, RSM McGladrey, detailed the need for skilled workers. “One in five companies cannot find the workers they need for today’s advanced technology manufacturing and wholesale distribution environments,” said Karen Kurek, mana...