Know When to Hold ‘Em “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em Know when to fold ‘em Know when to walk away And know when to run” With credit to Kenny Rogers, who resembles my friend Frank Hurtte—I believe they once shared the same barber—I think of Kenny’s song “The Gambler” when faced with potential clients or customers that raise a red flag.  Parents, teachers, and mentors have likely told you to trust your gut. Sometimes it’s better to collect data and use it in combination with your gut instinct. Either way, when you are staring at a potential problem customer and your gut is raising the red warning flag, don’t ignore it. There are some folks out there that are simply not a good fit for you or your organization. Let’s unpack those various hands you might be dealt. 1.) High-Maintenance Mike:  Mike is not a good ole’ boy, Mike is a demanding toddler. He wants his part numbers and bin numbers on all his packages, he wants same-day delivery, he wants extended payment terms, a...

Once again, working with Distribution Strategy Group has been a blast!  If you didn't catch the webinar on Competing and Winning with Value-Added Services, you can watch it >>>HERE<<< . Of course, we realize some people learn better from reading the material rather than from listening.  The webinar material has a whitepaper format that can be downloaded >>> HERE <<<. Special thanks to both Distribution Strategy Group and Epicor for putting on a first-class production!

It has been an honor to work with our friends at Distribution Strategy group again.  We recently spoke about how competition is in a state of flux.  We're no longer vying for the top spot with the typical competitor.  There are now strictly digital players without a name or face.  In this webinar, we tackle how to up the ante in a digital world to become a more strategic partner. Check it out >>>HERE<<< TIP: Frank feels he sounds much better, and possibly more normal, at 1.25 speed.  Give it a shot! Special thanks to Epicor for sponsoring this event.

National Boss’s Day – an official holiday since 1958 – falls on the workday closest to October 16 th .  Back in 2015, I proposed the addition of another holiday, National Bring your Boss to Work Day.  With tongue firmly planted in cheek, I outlined why I felt sellers needed to get their bosses out of the office and in front of customers.   This message is even more important today than in the past.   For the enjoyment of our younger readers, we started our message off with a snapshot of an era when dinosaurs ruled the planet – circa 1978. It was the age of leisure suits and wingtips.  Sales offices were richly adorned in thickly shagged carpet and orange metallic furniture.  The computer, fax machine, Internet, smartphone, tablet, and text message were decades away.   The latest bit of sales technology centered on the auto-flip Rolodex.  Times were different; very different.  And to further amuse our younger readers, several ...

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...

How often do the services you provide cost you more than money than they bring in? What determines why one customer access to free services while others are charged? Do any of your slow pay customers receive free services? Frank Hurtte answers these and other often controversial questions in the November 14th Webinar hosted by Industrial Supply Magazine and sponsored by Epicor.  Register here to join us !  This event runs from 12:00 pm-1:00 pm Central Time. ___________________________

Both my iPad and my iPhone could fit in here! True confessions: I started my career working in this industry back in 1977.  No, this isn’t going to be some old-timer’s story of the good old days.  Instead, it’s a personal observation of four decades of selling styles.  While going through an 18-month factory training program designed for future sales engineers, I was force fed massive amounts of product minutia and drilled on maintaining my trusty new leather bound “Day-Timer” calendar.  Since I was destined to become a “Sales” engineer, I had the opportunity to attend some of the best sales training programs a big company’s money could buy.  I was ready to soak it up like a sponge.   Prehistoric Sales Techniques The state-of-the-art selling technique of 1977 can be summed up in two words: features and benefits.  After the aforementioned training, I became a master of features and benefits.  In a time before massive competition and the ens...

Last week I threw out some thoughts on sales training for distributors.   The response was great, but I received more than a half dozen challenges from inside sales groups.   The overall feedback could be summarized as: Don’t forget about Inside Sales.   The comments reminded me of a couple of points: Outside Sale people may make the phone ring, but it is the service the customer receives when they call that keeps customers coming back (aka customer retention). Most customers gauge Distributor customer service by the quality of the Inside Sales team. Historically, distributors have focused on outside sales improvement… Experience shows when distributors invest in skills training (which is meager at best,) they tend to focus on the outside sales position.  A quick “Google Search” on the topic of “distributor sales training” brings up something like 28,600 results.  While I didn’t read all 28 thousand of them, I did look at the first twenty listi...

Buzz words bug me. A decade or so ago everybody suddenly became a “value-added" sort of guy. Every salesperson I talked with for more than 20 seconds managed to find a new place to insert the words “value-add," yet most couldn’t define the value they were adding. Even fewer had any idea as to the worth of their “value” to the customer. And, only one in every thousand could manage to prove their value in dollars and cents. Long ago we suggested a break from the whole value-added selling hyperbole and laid out a plan for value-metric selling. You can read what I said back in 2011 here .  Value-metric selling added definition and focus to the extra services distributors provided along with their products. We suggested then and still believe providing services or some other value to the customer equation without thinking (or at least considering): • Does the customer even want the service? • Does the customer place any value on the service? • Is the value the cust...