Way back in the Stone Age, when I spent my time in the retail trenches, a regular feature of the work week was visits from the brand reps. And it wasn’t just consumer electronics. I got my start in sporting goods: bike shops in the summer, and ski shops in the winter. The area managers for the brands were always in the stores: doing product knowledge, getting us excited about their brands, and generally doing their job, which was to get us to sell more of their stuff.

You didn’t ask, but as a kid, I was entranced by the life of the regional brand reps, whether they were corporate or contractors, and as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be one of them. It sounds weird to say it out loud, but it’s been a quarter-century since I left retail, and I still remember quite clearly the relationships I had with some of those brands and their reps.

Some of them were great reps, like Gordie from Salomon, Larry from Nordica, Gene from Panasonic, Chris from Denon/Marantz. However, many more weren’t very good. I won’t name names, but even bad reps can be positive role models: I try to NOT be like them! I’ve lost touch with so many, and many more have passed away, like Tony from Toshiba. But I still do my best to be as good as the good ones were.

The other week I was on a Teams call, and the client thanked my company in general and told me to extend his thanks to my director in particular for still having reps on the ground. Lots of companies don’t anymore. This one particular client made a point to tell me about another distributor. He’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with them over the years. But as he told me, their attitude has changed, and no one who’s still there is responsive anymore, so he’d rather work with partners who are.

And I hear this a lot, actually.

I have one address on my roster that houses the locations of not one but two of my dealers. I know that sounds strange but it really isn’t: You see, Dealer A was there first, and owns the building. They sold off one of their divisions to Dealer B, who now operates one of their branch offices out of the left side of the building, while Dealer A is still there, their remaining two divisions operating out of the right side of the building.

So when I roll up on that location, I can’t just visit one dealer, I have to stop in and say hi to both.

It was just last week when I had stopped in Dealer B first to rally their B2B team, and then walked next door to Dealer A to chat with the owner, his office manager, and most importantly to pet their office dog. During that visit both owner and office manager commented that they never see any other brand reps than me, and no brand reps ever visit their neighbors next door either.

There are quite a few good reasons to do in-person visits with your clients. But I’m running long here, and I’ll just focus on one reason: People tell me things to my face that they thought were not important enough to call or email me about. Most of the time the intel I pick up in person is minor but sometimes it’s really important.

For example: a couple of weeks ago I dropped off coffee and donuts to the head office of one of my accounts, and I discovered that my primary contact, whom I’ve dealt with for more than a decade, had retired. In her place were three new senior decision-makers I had never met. So the reason why my self-appointed job description includes being a coffee-delivery boy is because this is the only way I learn anything important. Showing up in person is the only way I find out about the dirt/gossip, and let me tell you, this business runs on dirt.

More importantly, it runs on relationships.

And on the Teams meeting with those three new senior decision-makers, I had the opportunity to build new relationships: tell them who I am, learn who they are, and most importantly learn what challenges they’re facing that I can help them with. And they appreciated it. All of them were thrown into a situation they weren’t trained for. And finding out that their vendor contact isn’t just a sales guy, but is HELPFUL goes a long way.

And making the effort to build strong in-person relationships makes it easier to keep rival vendors away from my accounts.

This is why we do this.