Everyone who has ever taken a sales training course has been taught this: Don’t pre-judge anyone. Get to know them, and without making assumptions learn who they are (and what they need and want), then sell to them accordingly. We’ve all heard it; yet it still happens. It still happens because people are people, and […]

I’ve talked before about how frequently I receive queries from end users. It’s because when people Google one of the brands we distribute our website comes up, and my name, phone number and email are right there. I don’t sell to end users. I have dealers for that. But I always take the time to […]

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the aphorism that “to the person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” I knew someone who had to read “Boom, Bust & Echo,” the book by demographer David Foot and journalist Daniel Stoffman, in college. After doing so, they related a factoid — no matter how […]

In my columns, I often write about how one should focus on what they can control (as opposed to trying to exert influence over what they can’t). There’s only so much someone can do, after all. So, I think we should worry about what we can actually do to achieve the outcome we’re looking for. […]

An important but seldomly acknowledged part of my job is to be a good listener. It comes with the territory as part of being a value-adding business partner for my dealer network. I like to joke about how providing unpaid business consulting benefits both my clients and me: If they’re successful, then by extension, so […]

I know that I’ve said more than once that companies in the same channel are typically more similar than different. Sports select for specific attributes in athletes, which is why you don’t see 145lb NFL linemen or 280lb gymnasts. By that same token, the demands of a given channel lead to business (the ones that […]

People often throw around the expression that “history repeats.” In truth, the original axiom — it’s attributed to Mark Twain, although I suspect it’s even older — states that “history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.” It’s certainly true that if you stick around long enough, you begin to see patterns — that what’s happening […]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s been a tough year for lots of companies, and indeed entire sectors. When business is slow, we’ve all got an imperative to look for new opportunities. But you have to be smart about it. In the past, I’ve seen manufacturers or their distributors see declining […]