Spring Cleaning Your Compensation Plan: As we inch closer to summer, let’s discuss cleaning up your compensation plan. Huh? What does my organization’s compensation plan have to do with spring cleaning? The ritual of reviewing and editing your stuff, cleaning everything thoroughly, ensuring your lawnmower is ready to go, and starting fresh with the season makes sense. It keeps our homes and garages in good working order and feels good when it’s done. We should bring the same discipline to our compensation plans. Our human resource strategy and execution demand it. How you retain and recruit ideally aligns with your overall organizational strategy. Much of how your strategy adapts with the times, so should your compensation plan.  Why now? You have likely finished communicating goals, and your bonus plans to your teams. It’s not yet time for a mid-year review, so dust off your most recent comp plan, and get started. It’s important that you know how your pay scale aligns with the ma...

Check out Frank’s latest column in Industrial Supply Magazine Frank has questions and so should salespeople.  In his recent book, "The New Sales Guy Project," he dedicates significant time to the questions salespeople should be able to answer.  His most recent column talks about developing foolproof questions so no one is left asking the "dumb" ones! Read the article HERE. .

Frank’s work has been featured on the Distribution Strategy Group website.  Here’s what they are saying:  Distributors who once relied on poaching new sellers from the competition have discovered that option has dried up. Frank Hurtte recently embarked on a mission to learn what the life of a new seller looks like today – and how distributors can better support them.     Delve into it  HERE . .

The competition is trying to poach one of your top players. Another superstar is threatening to leave. Your top two are wrangling over territories and making the John Cena gesture at each other in sales meetings. It’s as bad as the recent NCAA drama. What’s a leader supposed to do? Well, there’s a lot you should be doing. Ensure your assigned territories make sense. ( See my previous blog post .) Align your compensation with your strategy and market. (That’s a future blog post.) Lead by example and behave professionally. (Hmm, let’s put a pin in that, too.) Enough of the shameless self-promotion, let’s tackle another aspect of leading salespeople to championship performance: Incentives and Bonuses. Salespeople are coin-operated. Not that other aspects of their role don’t motivate them, but money really motivates them. So does customer satisfaction, the thrill of the chase, and beating the competition out of an order. However, for now, let’s focus on Sales Incentives and best pr...

For years, friends and regular readers of The Distributor Channel have commented they would engage more if Frank made his work available in an audible, on-demand format.  This would make for easy listening during windshield time or even mowing the lawn!   A few weeks ago, Jim Lucy, editor of Electrical Wholesaling, interviewed Frank at length for a new podcast episode.  The podcast covers Frank’s thoughts on new salespeople and since Jim likes to know more about leaders in our industry, there is also some random discussion.  Catch this episode HERE or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts!     BTW – For years folks have told Frank he has a face for Radio--might be true. ...

  Two weeks ago we posted part one of this interview on compensation with industry experts Desirée Grace and Andrea Olson.  Hop on to the second part where they discuss changing and dividing territories and how it affects your salespeople and customers.  Learn how to take the emotion out of it and avoid confrontation with both sides during this stressful time. Check it out HERE.

My grandmother was the Spring Clean Queen.  About this time every year, she began a process that lasted several weeks. She started with her carefully curated and revised list from the previous year, a habit she had maintained for over 50 years of housekeeping.  Since I was Grandma’s favorite, I knew precisely where she kept the list.  When I was eight years old, I thought about adding my younger siblings’ names to a couple of tasks.  Two things kept me from doing this – fear and common sense.   At the time, I did not appreciate Grandma’s plan, but as the years passed, I realized it was a great tool for maintaining clutter and keeping her small house crystal clean, especially for impromptu visitors.   I decided to apply the concept to distribution, as well as to my workspace.  Here are some distributor-centric fundamentals to consider:   Declutter the office : ·          One distributor we know ...