It’s happening again:  Big Manufacturers Tightening Up their Supply Chain Over the past several years Mega-Manufacturers have settled on a strategy to sustain profitability in a slow growth economy: Tighten up their supply chain.  To the unaware, this sounds like a solid strategy.  Improving the flow of goods, creating more symbiotic relationships with those providing services, eliminating waste, streamlining, re-engineering and a tassel of other business buzz words, all resonate with Wall Street types.  Distributors have been through this a couple of times before, but unfortunately a good many sales managers have forgotten the lessons.  Many of our Millennial-generation sellers were still in school.  But, this is another page from the playbook of previous recessions.  Recalling the pain of the mid-90s, 2001-2002 and the Great Recession, allow me to review. Our largest customers jauntily inform us they “love” doing business with us....

Photo:GM Everyone knows Santa Claus-- red suit, long white beard, familiar belly laugh and long-time leader of all things North Pole.   For some strange reason, most don’t have a clue as to the early days of his career.     So let me break it to you, Santa got his start in sales.   A long time ago, hundreds of Christmases before occupying the big chair in the corner office up at the North Pole, Santa worked on the selling side of North Pole Distributing. Like many hardworking sales types with hundreds of years under his belt, Santa leveraged all the lessons learned out in a territory to move up in his organization.  Playing a front and center role in a global distribution organization with customers around the globe, Mr. Claus puts those lessons to work almost every day.  It’s difficult for a lowly industry consultant to get an audience with big time executives, but last week I leveraged over six decades worth of being on the “nice list” to gra...

Let’s start with two assumptions. First, your company sells solutions, not a hodge-podge pile of parts. Second, some of th e products you sell fit together nicely to solve customer issues. Some reasoning has been applied to the building of your product offering. As you set out to create solutions, you started assembling the right parts and pieces to address customer issues. But I have a question. Are your customers connecting all the dots? Most of us assume our customers realize how all the stuff in those gigantic catalogs fit together. Experienced customers probably rely on you to carefully select just the right products for their particular applications and offer them up in a solution format. A few might bring you into the equation by sharing business concerns and problems before they have fully analyzed the whole situation. Newer, and even some existing, customers are different. They may not fully understand your brand of solution selling. Some may not yet trust yo...

Are your salespeople headed to a knife fight with fingernail clippers? photo: jokeoverflow I travel for a living.  Delta Airlines loves me.  Over the course of the last decade of travel, the fine folks at the TSA security checkpoints have managed to confiscate over a dozen of the fingernail clippers I inadvertently left in my computer bag.  Dangerous weapons?  Somehow, I have my doubts, but the point is to the TSA Security team they fall into the same category as a 17 inch Bowie knife.  Would I want to take on someone armed with a real knife, switchblade or anything thing else?  Heck, no!  This brings us to the question, are we sending our sales teams into a virtual knife fight armed with a measly manicure set? Allow me to get real. Our salespeople go into negotiations with professional buyers on a daily basis, most without real negotiation training.  Further, many sellers and their managers don’t really believe negotiations play a role i...

Looking back at the nearly 200 articles posted to this blog, most were designed to provide insight, suggestions and training for distributors and their supply partners. Our mission has been, and continues to be, creating a catalyst for better ideas within the distributor channel. But, for just a couple of minutes, allow me to take a look back in time. We are celebrating out 10th Anniversary River Heights Consulting was formed ten years ago on November 13, 2005. After many years of consideration and sleepless nights, I decided to take my gathered knowledge and skills to launch out on my own. It was my long-time dream to consult in the distribution world. When I first launched, I had no clients, no prospects of clients and very little idea as to how to find new clients. For a couple of days, I felt like Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, somewhere deep within my consciousness I heard voices say, “Jack, you traded the cow for these three magic beans? How stupid of you…” Bu...

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.

The original CRM with notes scribbled on the sides of business cards Sales experts have extolled the virtues of building a personal relationship with customers since the invention of dirt. Arguing that sellers devote time and resources on activities not expressly focused on business, they encourage salespeople to learn about the customer’s family, hobbies, personal interests and more. Many years ago, Harvey MacKay developed the MacKay 66 , which was used by many organizations to understand and log customer interests. But that was back in the “olden days” before the internet, Amazon.com, big data, global competition and all the rest. The question really becomes this… In the age of big information does customer friendship matter? Let’s think about three points: 1. Most of us think of ourselves as (or aspire to be) “solution” providers. Why? Because solution sellers are able to command a little higher gross margin than “parts sellers." 2. There is a certain risk to ev...