Joint calls have been around since the age of dinosaurs.  While I won’t go into precisely what sellers were peddling back in 10,000 BC, I can attest to the fact that joint calls were made in my father’s business in the late ‘50s.  One of my first real career tasks came in the form of joint calls with distributor salespeople.   While the concept has remained the same, the cost has not.  Experts tell us the “typical industrial sales call” costs close to $450.  We can theorize a joint call probably costs double that amount – close to a cool grand.  The money is getting too big to leave anything to chance.  It is imperative to stack the deck in our favor.   Quoting a cooking expert (by accident and for the first time in my writing): “An important concept stressed in practically every cooking class is that cooking is 10% art and 90% chemistry. Recipes are to cooks as formulas are to chemists - important instructions for a consistent result. ...

Years ago, one seasoned distributor executive said, “One of the natural laws of distribution is that you will lose between 8-10 percent of your business every year.  Companies change direction, close their operations, are acquired by others, and a mess of other things.  If you don’t plan for this, you will be forever behind the eight-ball.”  The message was shocking.  While I am not sure his percentages were entirely accurate, the message was true.  Customers do occasionally go away.   Having a solid source of new customers is important.  Yet, according to our 2022 State of Distributor Sales research, only a dismal 34 percent of distributors are happy with the number of new customers brought into their organization each year. The distributors we spoke with went on to state that traditional salespeople were their primary source of new customers.  It has been my experience, and this research further illustrates, that distributor salespeople do a poo...

Now that your new graduates are settled in at your company and have been wowed by HR paperwork and sales meetings, the race is on to get those joint calls under their belts.  It's back to school for these wide-eyed wonders as they soak up as much knowledge as possible.  The following is a tweaked version of an oldie but goodie-- focused on creating expectations for success.  It would be great fodder for your experienced salespeople as well.  Now, let's get those books cracked and ready. We've said it before- product knowledge is the bedrock of selling. From this sound foundation flows the ability to present solutions, grow enthusiasm, and drive sales. Product knowledge pushes to the surface like a fresh spring in the desert wilderness. And, just like the spring water, the most productive flows are channeled to the place where they do the most good. In sales, a well-developed process serves to direct product knowledge to the most productive utilization. Think of this...

Everywhere you turn, people are talking about inflation.  Whether you're out to dinner, in line at the grocery store, or filling up at the pump, rising prices are hitting everyone like a punch to the gut.  So what do we do?  Eat out less often, buy cheaper cuts of meat, work from home a few days a week?  Those seem like feasible options for a temporary problem.   But what if inflation is more of a long-term, possibly permanent problem? Here's what we know in Distributorland... Fuel prices are through the roof Logistics costs are escalating We must continue investing in our people We can't just sit idly by and hope for the best So, now what?   My recent article in Industrial Supply Magazine attacks this issue head-on.  Click  HERE for the rest of the details. Frank Hurtte, Founding Partner of River Heights Consulting, shares his personal experiences with 28 years of "in the trenches" training and 17 years as a consultant.  He serves ...

Emerging Positions in Distributor Sales On June 1 st , I presented research titled 2022 State of Distributor Sales: Rewriting the Distributor Playbook for a New Era .  I like the moniker “playbook” because it exemplifies the sales effort of the best distributor teams.  This wasn’t always the case.  One of the biggest changes I have observed throughout the course of my career is a shift away from “Lone Ranger” sellers who were once the distributor’s only point of connection with customers.  Today the best distributors employ a team of people, each with at least one customer connection.    Way back in 2007, we researched and explored the use of the term Specialist, which was a relatively new phenomenon in the repertoire of knowledge-based distributors.  One key point coming out of that research was this: Upper-quartile distributors used specialists differently.  They created a playbook carefully outlining key areas of the hand-offs between spe...

The State of Distributor Sales 2022 COVID-19 made its dramatic world debut in 2020.  When the subject of Global Pandemics comes up in some far-flung future dinner conversation, I plan on citing Friday, March 13 th as the day any normalcy slipped out of my life.  It would be an understatement to say, “A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.”  The Distribution Model has undergone a lot of external pressure. The past fifty years or so have repeatedly demonstrated a major point – distributors can change with their environment.  The distributor business model today bears very little resemblance to the business operated by my parents a half-century ago.  I started this project as keenly interested in exactly what has changed and established a benchmark for distributors to consider as they moved into the future. The result of the research concluded with a whitepaper and a presentation titled: 2022 State of Distributor Sales: Rewriting the Distr...