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Years ago, a very good friend provided me with a rather unusual New Years greeting. While his exact words escaped from my memory, the thoughts continue to resonate some 30 years later. Here is the essence of his questions:
- What are you planning to do in the coming year that makes you more valuable to your customers?
- What are you going to do to make it harder for your competitors to take your business?
- What are your plans to improve your own professionalism and elevate your status within your own company?
- How will you make yourself better as a person?
Let’s look at each of these one by one.
#1. Create more value for your customers.
Many would call this solution selling. Unfortunately, this term is overused and most sellers in our business already believe they are solution providing guys. While you might be great guiding your customers through a maze of catalog items, there are internet-based tools popping up everywhere which provide just that feature. There’s more to it.
Sellers need to understand their customers’ business. This means trends in the customer’s industry, regulations affecting the customer, specific pain points in the process, and the long-term strategic goals of the customer. On a customer specific basis, this means understanding the technologies and processes they are exploring for the future and being a guide along the way. As the seller learns about new products, the question “how could this new gismo help my customer improve?” becomes a North Star for discussions with supply-partners and others.
#2. Make it harder for a competitor to take your business.
While continually adding more value to your customers will serve as a roadblock to competitors, a seller should their sights on more. Evidence indicates that sellers who insert themselves and their companies into the customer’s internal process are more successful in retaining customers. What is this inserting thing? It need not be technically complex. For example, managing customer inventory in a storeroom creates a roadblock to competitive attack. Kitting products establishes another barrier. Moving forward, a subassembly which consists of multiple products sold under a special part number makes simple cross referencing and price manipulation very difficult. Participating in customer planning sessions moves your status from simple vendor to valued partner. The list is nearly infinite.
Another point which enhances your rock-solid position comes from understanding the economic impact of your work to the customer. Taking a value-metric approach to the work you provide allows a seller to measure the results of their efforts in dollars and cents. Measured results allow you to communicate your real contribution to the customer. On a side note, one distributor we worked with was able to prove that his $1,500 solution paid for itself in the first week of application and continues to bring value to the customer at a rate of over $50,000 per year. Can a competitor say the same thing?
Extending this “competitor proof” thought, understanding your value allows for strong talking points to the customer’s upper management. Research indicates that many non-traditional competitors are taking a top-down approach in their sales activities. Because most distributor salespeople do not maintain strong relationships with their customers’ C-Suite big wigs, their efforts create devastating results. Check out this article we did about W.W. Grainger’s efforts which were documented in The Challenger Sale. https://thedistributorchannel.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-attack-cfo.html
#3. Plans to elevate your professionalism and status in your company.
Growing your sales numbers year-over-year is probably the most common response to this question. Some focus on this metric exclusively. However, I believe there is more to be considered. Here are a few other points to consider:
• Be on the cutting edge of new product sales. Companies invest heavily in new products and then sit back and watch. Sellers with less acumen often do a poor job of getting these products out to their customers. Be the first.
- Follow company directives to a tee. This includes some little things like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) usage, and cooperation with key suppliers.
- Gain recognition with supply-partners. If you are seen as a person they can go to with questions about the industry, your status and professionalism increases.
- Develop relationships with other departments. Salespeople who build informal teams with inside sales, customer service, and technical support groups are viewed as leaders.
- Fully understand your company’s strategic direction and align your own approach with the direction.
This allows you to create more value for your company, and be seen as a person who not only understands sales but also understands the dynamics of our industry.
#4. Make yourself a better person.
Under the heading of true confessions, this one has been the toughest point to comprehend. What did my friend mean by better person? After thinking about this off and on for nearly three decades, I still struggle. However, I will toss a few of my most recent thoughts.
Mentoring others has provided me with a great opportunity to not only help newbies in our industry, but to learn more about myself in the process. Taking time to understand the issues others face causes a person to reflect on their own life. In another article, I pontificated about the value of planning for business, but that’s not enough. Planning for important things in our personal life creates an environment where a person can do more for and with their family, community and others.
Getting involved with your community is both rewarding and it helps create a sounding board for your ideas. The process pushes a person outside of their daily routine and enhances their ability to see the world through the eyes of others. And proving that our world revolves in circles, community involvement often places you side by side with potential customers and other business contacts. You grow personally and professionally in a single action.
Thinking back. I don’t know if these four points were the result of my friend’s creative mind or something they heard along the way. I take no credit for the thoughts but can say -- I am glad the seed was planted. I do my best to ask myself these questions at the start of every year and sometimes at random times in between. I would encourage you to safely store these in your own mind.
