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...

Last week we shared some thoughts on The Attack CFO. Recently we discovered a cool article on CFO personal operating styles. The article states… “CFOs fall into six distinctive groups of financial decision makers: Politicians (27%), Revolutionaries (19%),Carers (19%), Conductors (16%), Traditionalists (9%) and Visionaries (9%).” And there is a tie between personal style and business performance: “CFOs who were characterized as Revolutionaries were tied to companies that had the greatest profit growth … those CFOs characterized as Traditionalists were tied to companies that had the least profit growth.” Perhaps the Revolutionaries are on the Attack. Read the article here…

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Lately the role of the distributor CFO has been on my mind. I see a need for the fundamental role of the CFO to change from staff accounting and backward-focused record keeping to something more powerful. For one thing, the importance of forward looking analytics grows in importance. Caught off-guard by the last recession, many distributors faced financial stress from systems not geared for a 20-30 percent drop in business. Aside from internal analytics, I see need for customer interaction from the financial side of the business. As an example, many of the services distributors provide create massive financial gains for their customers. Few current customer contacts understand the monetary impact of our services. Distributor CFOs must work hand in glove with their counterparts at the customer to lead the charge in establishing reliable financial metrics. I call the position the Attack CFO. I have a couple of articles scheduled to be published on the topic in trade publication...

Pardon me while I rant . One of the original self-proclaimed experts I just finished reading an article by a fresh faced, newly minted and self-proclaimed sales expert. Quite frankly, I don’t remember if she called herself a business coach, sales trainer, consultant or something similar, but her message stressed the point of helping salespeople in two ways: 1) Avoid measuring selling activities as these metrics frustrate new salespeople who struggle to get into the rhythm of setting appointments, making follow-up calls and learning about customers. 2) Measure sales output. Things like numbers of orders generated, gross margin and incoming requests for quotes. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Terrible advice, possibly the worst advice since the neighbor told Noah to expect a drought. And, the whole thing was prominently published in an online distribution magazine. Let me explain why I this frustrates me. Coaching salespeople based on their output doesn’t work. Allo...

As with all fairy tales, this one happened once upon a time in a land not so far away. There, of course, was a princess who was quite obviously a mix of hillbilly and ridge-runner descent. Her mother, in a fit of rage or depression, named her Gerpruda, Princess Priscilla Gerpruda XIII to be exact. Anyway, this Princess Gerpruda (the thirteenth) lived in Never-Never Land. (Never-Never turn down a Sales Opportunity and Never-Never think outside the box-land-that is.) Gerpruda lacked typical royal charm and beauty. At the age of 37, her parents thought an intervention was necessary to find a proper suitor. A decree was made and a call went throughout the land for a suitable prince to wed the lovely Priscilla Gerpruda. After twelve years and two months, it appeared there was truth to the rumor that all of the potential “Prince-ton” material had been turned into frogs by a neighboring wizard. In ‘88 the Wizards and Warlocks Frog Turning Competition had been held on the pala...

Nearly 20 years ago a friend made this comment: “(Industrial) customers don’t want to buy electrical products, they want to buy solutions. If you only sell half of the solution, it’s not really a solution-- it’s a bag of parts.” At the time, I was squarely in the center of the electrical automation business. And, like most salespeople, everything I didn’t sell was invisible. On a purely intellectual basis, I realized the PLCs, drives, sensors and motion control systems I sold were connected to something, but emotionally, I didn’t care. I had my bag of tricks and my team was better equipped to assist in project layout, troubleshooting and advanced support than any other electrical distributor and I was fat, dumb and happy. But my eyes were opened. I lost an order.  After the fact, my customer was kind enough to explain the reason why. It seems he felt the mechanical portion of the order was more complex than my fancy sensors. The competitor sold both and during the discuss...