Your most profitable accounts determine the survival of your business. These critical accounts require dedicated resources and responsive service. Even if you pride yourself on customer interactions, your top-tier, A+ service is not for every customer. Instead, concierge customer service is a tool. Used properly, a concierge customer service team improves internal efficiency, customer and [...]
The nature of sales has changed. Face-to-face sales in distribution are not as common as they once were. We’re finding that more and more these days, those kinds of direct transactions are no longer a dominant means of selling a product or service. When there once was a time when a sales team was the [...]
Interaction and communication with customers today is difficult. While today's technology is incredibly beneficial in so many ways, it's also made finding or creating an opportunity to engage with a customer – to spend time with them –more difficult than it's ever been. Bluntly, your customers don't want to waste their time on you. They're not [...]
In a recent discussion with Randy MacLean of WayPoint Analytics, we examined the changing realities of messaging and marketing, and how things are changing so quickly. In the distribution industry, the need to communicate with your market hasn't changed, but the avenues of communication and the audience have changed, giving rise to a lot of us [...]
Delivery as a service opportunity: In the past, distributors could choose from just two delivery options. Either you could bring the product to the customer, or the customer could pick it up from you. Fortunately, you're no longer limited to that model today. https://vimeo.com/269901725 Having a problem viewing the video? Click here to watch: [...]
If you’re like most distributors, you’ve probably lost touch with more than a few customers as the first quarter of 2018 comes to a close. Here's an easy fix for customer churn in distribution. The key to retaining customers, acquiring more customers who are like them, expanding revenue per customer, and increasing your profitability is [...]
Obviously, it's easier to reducing customer churn than it is to sell more products, so where should distributors be more keenly focused? In a world where experts consistently say it is seven (or more) times more difficult to create a new customer than it is to sell more to existing customers, it's obviously easier to reduce [...]
Do you know how to give customers what they want? You might feel like you do, but look at the world around you. Things in wholesale distribution are tough these days — and they’re getting tougher. Traditional industry challenges like slim profit margins, poor interdepartmental communication, and lack of data accuracy are paling in comparison to [...]