Industrial Distribution

I read the other day that in the last recession 15 percent of companies that had not been industry leaders before the recession vaulted to those positions during the recession. No doubt it had to do with business practices, management and preparation. But I do believe part of it had to do with attitude.

I know from our own research on tough times that half the battle is in your head and the other half on the streets. To win the battle on the streets one first must win the battle in one’s head. To excel one must first believe one can excel.

That some thrive in tough times while others merely survive fascinates me. It seems to validate something I read years ago: Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals character.

Comments (1)

I wonder how many companies need to raise prices now because their costs have increased due to soaring energy prices. But they have this great fear that you cannot do this in tough times.

When your costs increase and you fail to pass this along to customers, you have effectively discounted. This may even be a compound discount—the customer negotiated sharply a lower price to begin with, you threw in some value added to sweeten the deal, offered payment terms which they take advantage of but don’t comply with and you forego the increase. How many ways can you discount and stay in business?

There may be a more fundamental question to ask before raising prices: Are there unprofitable customers to whom we could reduce the number of services that we offer to stop the bleeding? I call these customers profit piranhas—customers that chew away at the botto...Read More

Comments (0)

We are neck-deep in political advertising. And it will be this way for several months. Whew! That’s a depressing thought. As a sales trainer, watching political ads is a real challenge. Why? Because of the negative ads.

As someone who is committed to teaching salespeople to take the high ground and not bad-mouth the competition, it is frustrating to watch candidates for the highest office in this land trash the competition. The reason they do it is because it works.

Before you burn up the keyboard disagreeing, let me share something with you. I didn’t say viewers like the ads. I simply said the ads work. They work because researchers have discovered that viewers remember negative ads more than they remember positive ads. So, for recall purposes only, negative ads are more powerful.

...Read More

Comments (0)

Does your company suffer from market-share mania? This is an excessive preoccupation with market share. Maybe it’s driven by your suppliers, who are constantly pushing you for volume because they have capacities that cannot idle. Maybe your management team is focused on growing by acquiring new markets. Maybe it’s simply a source of pride to say that you’re the biggest in your marketplace. All of these seem reasonable. But what happens when your preoccupation with market share prevents you from capturing full value from your existing base of business?

Consider a distributor that keeps prices at a lower level out of fear of losing some market share by raising prices. The question that distributor must ask is, how much more value could we extract from our existing customers by raising prices, but we’re unable to extract that value because of excess...Read More

Comments (0)

I have finally joined the smart phone age, not that I’m a technophobe. I use technology and a lot of it.

It’s just that I have always been a scribe. I love writing down things in my organizer. I run my business out of it and that’s the problem. It’s gotten out of hand—an 8 ½ x 11, four-inch thick, five-pound anvil that I carry everywhere. Add to that a laptop, travel files, casual reading material and my briefcase feels like a bag of bricks.

My wife, who is a technophobe, said to me, “Aren’t you tired of carrying all that stuff?” Yep, I’m tired of carrying it all.

I bought smart phone, linked it my ACT database, calendar, document files for all my business stuff, entered all the contacts I could ever want to call, figured out (after 8 hours of trying) how to get e-mails from bot...Read More

Comments (2)

The stock market is crazy (crazy good and crazy bad), banks are suffering the effects of bad loans and the media grubs this stuff up and serves it to the public as a daily dose of doom and gloom. The problem? Some people start believing we’re headed for another recession. Heck, I’m writing about it.

I work across industries and the only soft spot I see right now is housing starts, but housing retrofit and rehab is a boom business. The auto industry always has soft spots, so if it’s down that’s not news. Harley Davidson is shutting down for two weeks to control supply so that demand can catch up. Having worked in that industry, I know that it always slows down this time of year. RV sales are down. Hello! Oil is at $100 per barrel.

There are some soft spots, but this is not a soft economy. The majority of industrial suppliers I work...Read More

Comments (1)

Giving salespeople the authority to change price is not the way to improve margins. Numerous studies, including my own, have demonstrated that salespeople will discount when the buyer says, “Your price is too high.”

Over the past 18 months I have studied top-achieving salespeople, those in the top 10 percent of their company’s sales forces, and found that nearly half of them will discount when the buyer resists. In a separate study I conducted of 1,769 general-population salespeople and their managers, nearly 70 percent cut the price when they encountered price resistance.

Soliciting input from the field helps in pricing. Teaching salespeople and field-level managers how to develop a discount discipline is a good move. But deluding yourself into believing that salespeople will protect margins is naïve and dangerous for your profitability.

Comments (5)

I hear a lot of complaints about online bidding and reverse auctions. It’s got me wondering: Is it really worth it? Do you really want to give the world a look at your bottom-line price? Maybe it’s worth it if it cripples your competition, but that raises the question: Are you in business to destroy a competitor or to better serve customers?

I think if I were faced with this business decision today I would have to ask myself some questions:

First, do I want or need this kind of business?

Second, how much energy do I want to put into this low-margin business?

Third, what is the impact of this on my other business and on my ability to serve other customers?

Fourth, are we set up to handle this type of business? Is our infrastructure built on an operational efficiency model which enables us to sell profitably to price shoppers?

...Read More

Comments (1)

You can’t judge a book by its cover—or can you?

As someone who has been in the business of selling books for the past 20 years, I can tell you that covers do influence potential buyers. The same thing applies to salespeople and dress.

The casual movement in business attire has devolved into flip flops, tee shirts and shorts. I’m not kidding. In one of my recent seminars, a young salesman showed up in this attire. I thought he was there to clean the windows. He was sharp, as his participation proved, but he always looked like the guy that was there to clean the windows.

Like it or not, buyers judge books by their covers. Perceived value, dress in this case, influences expectations. Why not use it to your advantage? Dress to the top of your market, not the bottom. Dress for the job you want, not the one you have. Dress for the image you wan...Read More

Comments (4)

So what’s in a sales blog? It could be a clearinghouse for information, an exchange of ideas or a bully pulpit. This one is for salespeople. I will offer some ideas, musings and maybe vent or lament a bit as it relates to sales. I’m eager for ideas, so don’t be a stranger. Contribute. E-mail me. Suggest topics you would like me to cover. My intent is to publish this twice each month. So, what’s for number one?

What a great profession we work in. Think about what we do for a living. We are hope merchants. We take hope to our customers. We help them find a better way of doing something and after we help them, they pay us. Imagine that. Getting paid to help people. Sometimes they pay us better than other times.

Think about what our companies offer—a chance to run our own business with their money and inventory. This is one of the things ...Read More

Comments (4)