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 ...

The Supply Chain situation is creating critical issues.  Important customers are going without the products required to keep their factories running at peak performance, OEMs cannot ship machines to their customers, and contractors have projects “almost” completed, not finished.   In our research with distributors across North America, Supply Chain issues are of critical concern compared to the recent past.  We asked distributors to rank their current situation with receiving products on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being awful and 5 being just the normal flow of business.  The highest-ranking report we have received is a whopping 2 ½. Most are ranking things as awful.   The big news across the internet started with tales of an electronic chip shortage.  For the Automation industry, that equates to just about everything with Drives, Servo, and Human-Machine Interface (HMI) systems getting the most mentions.  However, the shortage extends into everything – lit...

We are honored to be featured on the cover of the latest IMARK Today magazine.  It's a quick, but worthwhile read on how to find and nurture new customers. Check it out  HERE . ~or~ copy and paste: https://imarkelectricalnow.imarkgroup.com/Editions/Fall-2021/Features/How-to-Find,-Nurture-New-Customers Frank Hurtte is the Founding Partner of River Heights Consulting. He combines the battle scars of 28 years of front line "in the trenches" experience with over 13 years of service to knowledge-based distributors and their manufacturer partners. Email or call today to make these virus-driven times work for you.

The National Association of Wholesalers (NAW) publishes a daily email called SmartBrief.  It goes out to over 100,000 leaders in every “line of trade” in the distributor landscape – this is the biggest circulation of any publication electronic or otherwise.  Because our work is laser-focused on a very narrow group of Knowledge-based distributors, they rarely see our work.  As a matter of fact, in the course of 16 years of writing about our kind of distribution, we have only been recognized by NAW’s SmartBrief a handful of times.  Here is the article as posted in Industrial Supply Magazine and featured by SmartBrief.  For those needing to copy and paste, here's the link.  https://industrialsupplymagazine.com/pages/Print-edition---SepOct21_Hurtte.php Frank Hurtte, Founding Partner of River Heights Consulting, has been featured in dozens of national and regional trade magazines.  His easy-going demeanor and “Iowa-speak” make him a relatable favorite as a...

  True confessions, way back in the early stages of my career, a friend who knew I was in sales gave me  a Zig Ziglar calendar.  Each day came with random quotes from the famed sales trainer.  Quite frankly, most of them were throwaways that applied more to guys selling waterbeds or satellite TV contracts than to the electrical and automation products I was selling.  Sandwiched into those 365 days (maybe 366, it could have been leap year for all I know) were two quotes that I continue to share with others:   Thought One: “Enthusiasm for the product or service comes from product knowledge. How can we develop enthusiasm for something about which we have little or no knowledge?”    Thought Two: “Stop selling. Start helping.”   These should be the mottos of every salesperson on the planet regardless of industry.  If you consider yourself a Sales Engineer, they are mandatory descriptors.  For the past 40 plus years, I have considered my...

Over the past few months, I have been working closely with David Gordon of the Channel Marketing Group.  David is laser focused on the Electrical Distribution Channel.  His blog, Electrical Trends is widely read by those who call themselves electrical distributors.  This is a large and diverse group.  They range from people who are full ahead knowledge-based distributors to those who might be better categorized as “supply houses”.    We have discovered, the issues are very similar.  A good many in the electrical channel wonder who is doing the selling.  More importantly, how does this selling impact the operational costs and how should a distributor (and their supply partners) look at the overall direction of their business?  As suppliers continue to broaden their product offerings and fight for market share in sometimes niche areas, these suppliers must review and take a new look at precisely who is doing the selling.    Wi...