In the interest of Halloween and all things creepy and scary, here are four signs your sales team might be zombies. Sales teams can sometimes resemble zombies, driven by habit and lacking strategic thought. These “undead” behaviors slowly drain company profits and undermine customer relationships. Here are four warning signs of brain-hungry habits, along with strategies to counter them. 1. Sale Zombies Don’t Understand Their Customers Successful salespeople align products with customer needs. However, many lack knowledge about how customers make money, their internal costs, or key challenges like labor expenses and material waste. Without these insights, they fail to offer meaningful solutions, missing chances to collaborate with specialists and partners. 2. Sales Zombies Don’t Recognize the Value They Provide Sales growth and commissions are not the real value of a salesperson's work. Strong sellers provide valuable services but often misjudge their economic impact, giving away c...

Distributor owners know, without a doubt, that people are their biggest asset.  They are correct in that nearly 60 percent of all gross margin dollars go to paying employees, but that’s not what I have in mind.  People are important to salespeople and often the importance transcends a purely business relationship.  Long-term customers often become friends, allies, and occasionally future business partners.    Moving a person from a stranger to an important customer, business ally, or even a personal friend, is a time-consuming and difficult process.  Here is a rough and simplified outline: 1.      Identify the person who might have the ability to influence the purchase. 2.      Gather background information on this prospect. 3.      Determine the points/product features the prospect considers important. 4.      Provide information and answer questions to build credi...

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...

Sales 101– It’s easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to find a new customer.  At least one expert says 14 times easier, but I personally believe the number is closer to 5 times.  This is true because you know the existing customer. You know her operation, you know how she applies the product, you know auxiliary people.  Further, if you are doing your job properly, you know the company’s financial process. Distributors, by their very nature, carry multiple and complementary product lines. On many occasions, our chief advantage as a distributor lies in the ability to put together a package.  In an automobile analogy — we provide not only the car tire, but the wheel, hub cap, lug nuts, and often provide inflation as a service, too.  With the day-to-day hustle and bustle, we sometimes find salespeople working in the business rather than working on the business . It becomes very easy to lose our focus. Introducing the FOCUS Analysis The FOCUS...

Lately, Manufacturer and Distributor Joint Marketing Plans have been on my mind. This time of year I generally take a lot of calls from distributors and their supply partners on the topic. Allow me to share a few random thoughts. There are two varieties of plans which seem to go by the same name. Let’s look at both of types: Rebates designed to drive distributor behavior and reward performance. These plans typically create an incentive which comes as a rebate based on the distributor following some guideline. For example, if the distributor carries all of the manufacturer’s products, they get a bigger rebate than the wholesaler who simply cherry-picks the best of the supplier’s product line. Other versions of this type of plan incent distributors for having a specialist, properly trained staff, the right level of demo equipment or the proper inventory. I like these plans as they drive the behaviors and incent the distributor for being more than just a logistics arm for the ...

Do you have salespeople who seem to create their own pricing rules?  Are you missing out on margin by those who are afraid to miss out on the deal?  Strategic Pricing Associates is hosting webcast coming up on December 8th at 2:00pm Eastern to address such issues.  How to Stop Undisciplined Discounting and Track Sales Force  Accountability  features Sid Hendry of Gulf Controls and Dave Lienert of SPA .  It's only 60 minutes out of your day and will be well worth it!  Click HERE for more details and registration.

An Open Letter to New Salespeople Maybe the word "slimy" comes to mind. Last week I had the opportunity to interact directly with a young person thinking about a career in distributor sales.  They were put off by the image of being a “salesperson,” but because of the experience of one of their friends, they were taking a fresh look at the industry. Their questions revolved around a handful of unknowns.  ·       Is sales a position that taints your ability to do something else later in life? ·       Do customers see salespeople as valuable or as sleaze-ball characters to be avoided? ·       What is this commission thing all about? ·       Do I need to be a natural born salesperson? ·       How hard is the job?  It seems like a lot of people “used to be salespeople but quit.  For the benefit of everyone just s...