The world is almost completely connected electronically now. By any yardstick that’s a good thing, and I’m just as plugged in as anyone else. But it’s important to remember that there is still no substitute for face to face interaction when it comes to building and maintaining personal, not to mention professional relationships.

As you know, I now work as the Territory Manager for a mobile accessory company. Being a rep is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and in a lot of ways my career in CE has been leading me to this point since the beginning. I absolutely love it, and am excited to get up in the morning at get to work.

The two things that I love most about it are the travel, especially after four years working at home doing freelance writing for the CE trade media. Most of all though, is meeting and developing relationships with my dealers. Over the course of those four years I hadn’t realized how much I missed getting in front of clients until I was back in the salesman saddle again.

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And that’s where the core of this blog post lies: getting in front of your clients.

As I’ve learned in my travels, the province of Alberta is a very big place. Geographically it covers 255,541 square miles, but only has a population of 3.7 million people. The primary economic driver is oil and gas, and since not only does the oil industry need voice and data, they work in remote locations. Consequently my mobile dealers work in remote locations, which mean that I have to drive a long way to meet them.

Granted, a huge portion of my job can be accomplished with phone and email, but especially since I’m new on the job (well, still sort of new); I think it’s imperative that I meet everyone.

Also, dealers really do appreciate it when you bust out your sample case and show them cool new products they haven’t seen before which are relevant to their business.

When I first met one of my dealers, whose office is a three hour drive from Grande Prairie, which itself is a five hour drive from my home in Edmonton; he laughed and said “You know, you could have just called me.”

I replied, “I know, but I really think it’s important that I meet you, meet your inventory manager, and understand what your business is, who your customers are, and most importantly, what I can do to in order to best benefit you.”

I really do talk like that in real life by the way.

My entire sales career, and my writing career too for that matter, can be summed up by the Dickey Fox quote from the movie Jerry Maguire: “The key to this business is personal relationships!” If you take care of people, they’ll take care of you.

Granted, thanks to technology I don’t have to visit my most far flung dealers in person very often. I spend most of my time in the economic centers of Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, Grande Prairie and For McMurray, in that order. But I do go visit them. In an age when by all accounts manufacturers and distributors have fewer feet on the ground covering sales territories that’s a huge service differentiator.

And believe me; dealers appreciate knowing they have somebody looking after them.