Targeting Accounts - A Specialist’s Role

I attended a day long distributor planning session, a sales meeting that ended with a “round-robin” planning session.  Vendor salespeople and Distributor Specialists were assigned

tables around the perimeter of the meeting room.  Salespeople spent a few minutes at each table talking about existing opportunities and future targets.  After eavesdropping, I noticed salespeople discussing accounts where they felt additional actions could push the selling process forward. 

Soon after the meeting, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Salespeople knew their assigned accounts but didn’t fully understand the targeting process.  At the end of the day, nearly every salesperson listed the same three or four accounts as their targets – the same accounts and contacts were given for a diverse group of products and technologies.  Later, I asked a couple of salespeople and their managers to define “target” – the results were interesting:
·         “A target account is a new account”
·         “exploratory” 
·         a target should be “one of my top 5 accounts.”

All answers came from the same sales team, same management, attending the same meeting.

Vendor salespeople were no different.  When asked for a “target” for their new product line, one district manager rattled off:  Forest Products, Mining, Food Processing, and Automotive Industry.  Why was this particularly bothersome?  The nearest Forest and Mining businesses were thousands of miles away.   To a salesperson thinking about targets, this sends two messages, “My vendor doesn’t even know a target for my territory” and “this product may not deserve my selling time.” 

Proper targeting is the key to successfully launching new products.  Human nature drives a desire to produce fast results.  Dr. Robert Atkins, inventor of the Atkins Diet, stressed the need for an initial quick success in weight loss to drive future behavior over a long period of time.  Dr. Shinichi Suzuki discovered that children who experienced quick success in music were more likely to continue their

studies, even once practice became routine.  Specialists can drive a result by “stacking the deck” for early success.  This creates the initial one or two wins that build long term success.  Since you are responsible for getting the new products into your company’s sales pipeline, time invested early thinking about targets pays important dividends. 

For each new product answer the following questions:

Which customer types would best benefit from the product?

This should be answered in as specifically as possible.  A bad example would be General Motors – a good answer would be the painting department of a large metal assembly company (General Motors) where explosive paint fumes create the need for tools with special arc proof coating.  This opens the door to thoughts about a number of different companies where the environment is similar.  Vendor partners and nationally based organizations like to use SIC codes to make these decisions.  Unfortunately, the SIC registry is not an exact science.  I suggest you put your personal knowledge and your team’s knowledge, to work in developing a short list.

Who at these companies is most likely to understand the impact of the benefit?

Hopefully your salesperson has multiple account contacts.  Careful thought should be given to selecting the right contact.  If your product has a safety feature, showing it to a maintenance person may prove to be disastrous.  She may judge your product based on it being difficult to use rather than the importance of added safety.  This is as important as selecting the client company.

Do you (or the vendor salespeople) know of companies experiencing success in some other part of the country/territory?  What drove their success?

Nothing can jump start the success of a new product like an introduction to the local plant of a company that has already experienced success.  Before adding these people to your list, it is important to know a few details.  What were the situations leading to the use?  What went well?  What was learned?  How well has this been publicized to the company in general?   Make contact with the key decision maker at the remote location.  Call for these details to make the success story more valid for local users.

Once you have this information and the opportunity presents itself, Specialists can gain buy-in from the salesperson.  Discuss your ideas for quick successes.  Whenever possible, overlay your choices with her own top accounts.  It is easier to sell more to existing accounts.  When you are finished with the initial process you should have the following information:

• Target Account names: No more than 6
• The right contact: By name or Title
• Proper collateral materials: Literature, demos, samples, joint call dates
• A few specific bullet points to use in selling the product: Remember salespeople have dozens of accounts
• A mutually agreed upon time frame for initial contact

Targets need to be revisited.  After the salesperson’s first

customer meeting, the Specialist can help fine tune the Targeting process by discussing the high and low points of the call.  If new collateral is needed, it can quickly be brokered to the salesperson.  If the demo didn’t go smoothly, a personal tutorial will rebuild confidence and drive better demos at the next Target.  If this meeting produces major discoveries, i.e. the competition has the same thing at 10% lower price, adjustments can be made for the entire sales organization. 

Targeting accelerates business growth, but is this worth the effort?  Here is a parting thought; new research indicates that organizations who are great at targeting are 47% more effective than those with average targeting skills.  Specialists are uniquely qualified to make an impact!  Good luck and happy targeting.

Product Training or Sales Training?

When I ask the question “Do you have sales meetings?” most often the answer is to the

Without teaching about the
science of selling,
your meeting room
may as well be empty

affirmative.  Weekly, monthly, quarterly or something else is the standard answer.  But when it comes to content, a few follow up questions are often needed.  That’s when the truth comes out; distributor sales meetings are rarely about sales.  Oh, sometimes the numbers are reviewed.  Goals are generally discussed near the beginning and ending of each year.  And occasionally, distributors talk about the need for results on some supply-partner’s new product line.  Rarely, if ever, do distributor leaders actually talk about the science of selling.

Over the past few days, I have participated in over a half dozen conversations (phone, email and social media) on the topic of sales meetings.  Allow me to highlight.  In one conversation a manufacturer asked one of their top distributors if they did sales training.  Immediately and with great pride, the distributor manager launched into a conversation on the product technology training his team had covered over the past few months.  The manufacturer tried to steer the meeting back to selling skills with the mention of the Strategic Account course they recently put their team through, but the conversation immediately turned to product details. 

Just this morning I received the following message from a new LinkedIn.com connection: 

“I enjoyed the article you posted on selling.  I am always interested in what’s happening in distribution sales, as it is a pretty unique type of sales.  Most of the information I get is product based, so I always find it refreshing when I see something that addresses the type of selling I do.”

This is not an isolated situation.  Over the years I have heard this comment from distributors in the Industrial, Safety, Automation, Fluid Power, PT and Electrical markets, as well as the Irrigation, Automotive Parts, Sporting Goods and Motorcycle parts industries. 

Considering distribution is an industry which is primarily a “sales function” driven business, I believe this is both a threat and an opportunity. 

If you are a long-time reader, you probably realize we cater to distributors who are knowledge-based and solution selling organizations.  Most of us pride ourselves on our product and application skills.  We add massive amounts of value to our customers, but the customer has to get to know us first.  Further, our industry is ever being squeezed to be more efficient.  For distributors, 60 percent of our budget is spent on our people and salespeople represent a large share of the outlay.  Developing, refining and growing selling skills serves to address both the speed of relationship and sales efficiency issues.

Why do we continue to ignore the sales skill part of the equation? 
Here are some possible answers:

• Managers believe their sales teams are already seasoned veterans and training would be a waste.

• The manager’s mistaken belief that professional sellers devote time to improving themselves through books, tapes, podcasts and online programs.  (My apologies and best regards to the one percent who actually do this stuff.)

• Salespeople resist training especially if they believe management will require changes in activities

• The “salesmen are born not made” theory which still persists despite research to the contrary.

• Cultural tradition – they didn’t have sales training back when I was a “rookie” and I turned out all right.  (Maybe you’ve heard me reference “dinosaurs” in previous entries.)

• A belief that sales training doesn’t work for our industry

• Training is expensive

We wrote this in an article published by “The Distribution

Center Magazine” a publication dedicated to the HVAC/R distribution industry:

“… people are our greatest asset.” Yet, according to research conducted by Jonathan Bein, Ph.D., of Real Results Marketing, only 22 percent of distributors have a learning management system.  Sadly, distributors struggle to fund skills-based training for their organization during tough times. 

This will sound strange coming from a guy who offers training for a fee, but I would much rather see distributors spend 20 minutes a week reinforcing sales or leadership training than put their teams through a two-day session without follow-up.  Training can be part of your culture for next to nothing.

Sales meetings with selling skills content can be part of your culture. Every month, hundreds of great ideas are published in trade publications and in online blogs.”  

Why not take 20 minutes from your sales meeting to discuss one sales related topic?  The sales manager can provide personal examples and challenge the team to try something for the next couple of weeks and report back to the group.

Keeping with this theme and using “The Distributor Channel” blog as a reference, here are a few topics to explore:

What do you know about your account? 

To have a real strategic plan for our accounts we need to take inventory of what we know now and what we should learn in the future. Our plan must revolve around positioning ourselves to really be solution providers. In some instances, this means understanding that providing solutions to the customer is a poor use of our resources.

Sales Question: How Long Do I Chase an Account?

After nearly a year of calling on a couple of major accounts, orders still weren’t flowing.  As our day wound to an end, he asked me point blank, “How long should I pursue an account before I give up and move on?”  Here are some thoughts for you to consider.

A Pricing Tale: Old Joe

From where I sit, standardized pricing, or whatever you want to call it, is destined for failure in our business. Our customers are tight with their money. They don’t want to pay more, they want to pay less.  This is a great introduction to using a pricing process.

The Gross Margin Equation - For the Record

This seems a bit silly, but I keep running into people who talk Gross Margin without really knowing the formula.  If you’re anything like me, this is a huge pet peeve.  BTW: this one is great for your suppliers too.  They clearly don’t teach this equation in most MBA programs.

A Challenge for my Friends…

Spend a little time thinking about the half dozen issues you, your coworkers or maybe your team have in the selling process.  It might be setting appointments, breaking past voicemail, getting customer time, establishing new accounts or a rash of other topics.  Jot them down and determine how you could introduce the subject into your next sales meeting. 

A Post Card from Iowa

Send me the ideas for your next sales meeting along with your address and I will send you a genuine post card from Iowa.  For one lucky reader who sends an idea, I will provide a customized PowerPoint covering your selected topic along with discussion points.  That's a minimum of 15 minutes of sales training for your team…

Inside Sales in Tough Times

If restaurants can upsell, why can’t we?

After a whirlwind trip around the country and a couple dozen meals in places ranging from pizza to posh, I want to share an observation:  Restaurants know how to upsell.

From the lowly “do you want fries with that?” to the more sophisticated and expensive, “at least let me show you our dessert tray,” food service folks have created a culture of upselling.

Aside from the pounds I’ve managed to pack on, I wanted to gain something from the experience.  How can restauranteers train surly teenagers making minimum wage to automatically upsell when we struggle to convince professional, commissioned inside salespeople to do much more than say “thank you” and push forward?

Thinking back, I don’t recall a single moment of agitation caused by this constant upsell campaign.  When poorly done, I simply smiled and said “no, thank you.”  But, getting back to the dessert tray, I was actually glad I was re-sold.

Distributors encouraging their inside sales or customer service teams to upsell, add-on sell, or otherwise pro-actively impact business, always get pushback.  Typically, complaints fall in to five major categories:

1. My customers don’t want to be sold.
2. Our products don’t lend themselves to upselling because they are too technical, too expensive, too bulky, etc.
3. Our people don’t know what to recommend as an add-on.
4. Our inside/customers service people don’t know how to sell.
5. Our customer service/inside people revolt whenever we ask them to sell.

Our attempt at an upsell...

A few weeks ago we wrote “Tough Times Call for Tough Love.”  I believe now is the time to determine why your team isn’t upselling.  If your company falls into category five, something needs to change.

Some Thoughts on Starting

Start simple.  Instead of asking for a product sale, ask if the customer is aware of some new program, training event or if they receive the company newsletter.

Develop a list of add-on, lower cost commodities.  For example, electrical distributors might want to consider asking for wire markers or the multi-color tape used for identifying cables.

If your computer system allows for “suggested other products,” invest in populating the data fields for your top 200 items sold.  

Hold a weekly “Inside Sales Huddle” to reinforce the need for add-on sales.  Ask each rep to share their successes.  Talk about the customer value of properly done suggested sales. 

Here are a couple of topics to discuss with your team:

1. The phrase “Would you like to supersize that order?” has been estimated as generating over $1.3 Billion in added sales.
2. Amazon recommends additional products (add-on sales) by saying “customers who bought this item also bought…” and lists other products.
3. The young lady in Chicago who suggested that I “just look at the dessert tray” ended up adding $14 to my bill.
   You'll notice these are all examples of painless ways to upsell.  They are not forced, but rather have a natural flow.

We need to begin the journey now…
Times are getting tough.  I just read a great report on the Electrical Trends Blog indicating the electrical market is trending downward for the first time in seven years.  For years, distributors have talked about getting started in with upselling.  A few have been successful.  Most have simply allowed the topic to wither on the vine.  Now is the time to make it happen.

What’s the story on your product lines?

Let’s start with two assumptions. First, your company sells solutions, not a hodge-podge pile of parts. Second, some of the products you sell fit together nicely to solve customer

issues. Some reasoning has been applied to the building of your product offering. As you set out to create solutions, you started assembling the right parts and pieces to address customer issues.

But I have a question. Are your customers connecting all the dots? Most of us assume our customers realize how all the stuff in those gigantic catalogs fit together. Experienced customers probably rely on you to carefully select just the right products for their particular applications and offer them up in a solution format. A few might bring you into the equation by sharing business concerns and problems before they have fully analyzed the whole situation.

Newer, and even some existing, customers are different. They may not fully understand your brand of solution selling. Some may not yet trust your suggestions. To these folks, it is important that you provide a story around your products and services.

What kind of a story? Let me give you a couple of examples.

Let’s say you are calling on a customer contact from a water treatment facility. Whenever showing off a new product, why not start off with details outlining a case study on how the products you are about to show make sense in the industry. How your Variable Frequency Drives are perfect for running pumps and how your flow products can be easily fed signal information to the aforementioned drives. Signals might be monitored remotely via SCADA products provided by another manufacturer and pull the data from the drives for easy monitoring. The product you sell are just “characters” in the full story of solving water treatment related problems.

Another example might apply to a safety distributor calling on a large end user facility where welding is a big part of the customer process. The story you weave outlines how an assortment of products from your line card all benefit workers in an environment filled with sharp objects, heat and hazardous gasses generated with welding. The “story” is we have more than just a collection of products, and we possess what you need to keep your work environment safe.

Your story has the power of connecting you with the customer; building rapport. When carefully constructed, the

process forces the seller to think more deeply into potential customer issues. Further, a well-told story places you in the position of being a specialist in the customer’s individual needs.

In the best of cases, distributors build a series of marketing materials matched against a half dozen customer types. One brochure showing a half dozen products focused against the backdrop of the customer environment goes a long way to illustrate precisely how much expertise the organization has developed in the customer’s domain.

But what if you don’t know much about the customer?
For some of the new folks reading this, you might find yourself scratching your head and thinking, “I don’t really know all that much about the operations of some of my customers.” Here is where research comes into play. The internet provides valuable insight into the issues faced by many industries. Going back to our example of water treatment, we discovered a wealth of information on our very first “Google search."  For instance, we found Treatment Plant Operator Magazine’s website and a quick review would provide dozens of applications to which you might match your product groups. While we are on the topic of trade publications, nothing creates a better story than an article which lists one of your products in action.

Combine stories with others on your team…
I believe it is a good use of time in a sales meeting to discuss the best “story” for various types of target accounts. What products work, which are viewed as likely solutions and how they interact with other product lines can become great fodder for future sales calls. And, in my opinion, this will produce greater results than mere product minutia.

Go forth and create a great story….

The Specialist – Expand your sales with the Niche

“Find a niche and work it!”

“We are a niche player.”

“Our niche is small.” 

Work in distribution for any length of time and you will hear one of these phrases bandied about.  Generally, when distributions hear the word – niche – they think of a small company calling on a very narrow segment of business.  To illustrate the point, here is what many people would consider a “niche”:  A distributor who works exclusively in providing lighting products to gas stations.   Small, very narrowly focused and expert are all descriptions that come to mind.

I suggest Specialists change their definition of niche.  What if we developed “niche products?"  We change the definition from customer types to product groups to achieve this new mentality.  When a full line Electrical Distributor takes on a product which has very limited application appeal, we have a “niche product."  The new niche would consist of products not destined to be sold to everyone - products served up to a very select group of customers, say 10 or 20 highly targeted accounts.

Manufacturers report that distributors traditionally don’t do well with this type of product.  At the root of the problem lies the very nature of most distributor sales organizations.  Products are presented to a group of salespeople and a number of generalized applications are discussed.  If the product doesn’t have mass appeal, it gets lost in the shuffle.  Within a couple of weeks of the product launch, the product becomes long forgotten somewhere in a pile of catalogs.  When stock orders are involved, it sits collecting dust in that special odd ball section of the warehouse.

Because niche products offer an outstanding opportunity to expand your business during these trying economic times, now is exactly the right time to change your thinking. Three very compelling reasons make this true.

Niche products earn high gross margin dollars

By their very nature, niche products are high gross margin items.   Limited competition and lack of buying history put these into a class all their own.  It is not uncommon to find gross margins which are double the industry average. 

Niche products provide extra value to existing accounts

Problem solvers that solve a specific problem best describe the product niche.  During poor economic times, customers appreciate your efforts in locating a “better mousetrap."  Because they solve a problem, eliminate labor costs, or eliminate the need for outsourcing, all of these create intrinsic value that can be measured in dollars.

Niche products are often purchased from no-service or low-service competitors

This type of product is traditionally not sold by a tough competitor.  Instead engineering and maintenance departments find them via “Google search."  And, often the product must be purchased with a great deal of hassle-factor.  Because this may be the only product of its type purchased from their current supplier, prices are high and service is marginal at best.

The Question

With all of these compelling reasons to get involved in niche products, why have distributors traditionally faired so poorly in selling them?  While a number of factors weigh in the answer to this question, solid evidence points to lack of a product-oriented targeting process.  Specialists provide the best and most efficient means for establishing a meaningful target process at this level.

Product Targeting is achieved when products, potential application problems and customers are closely aligned.  While most supplier reps understand the ins and outs of their products, they often lack a detailed understanding of exactly where the product is applied to the customer’s needs.  Their territory size does not allow for detailed customer level knowledge.  To illustrate this point, let’s imagine a new product designed for underwater lighting.  The supplier rep typically understands the product specifications – the ability to withstand water pressure to 30 meters, the ability to create 5 lumens, etc.  But he typically lacks the ability to tie underwater lighting to its useful applications in artificial crystal farming or some other local application.  Further, he knows very few details about the customers in your territory.  Any discussion of the product comes as a footnote in some larger product/sales meeting.  Salespeople don’t make a connection and no sales are generated.

Getting Started

As a Specialist you hold the key to making things happen – you provide a competitive advantage over other organizations.  By tying product, application and customer closely together, you can identify and close in on these opportunities during tough times.  They work best when implemented one-on-one with your salespeople.  Join me on the high rocky cliffs La Quebrada cove as we prepare our Acapulco-style swan dive into the process.

Step One – Identify the Product

Identify potential niche product targets from your existing lines.  Ask yourself, what cool product exists somewhere in the footnotes of the master catalog that might fall through the cracks – nearly every line has them but they never find their way into the spotlight.

Step Two – Brainstorm Potential Applications

Ask yourself these questions.  Where might this product be used?  Are there applications that fall outside the realm of normalcy?  How is the problem solved today?  Have I seen something similar but not as elegant?

Step Three – Identify Customers with Probably Applications

Explore potential customer applications with your sales team.  These often happen informally on the shoulder of other events such as joint calls, training sessions and trade shows.  A word of caution; your goal falls not on gathering dozens of customers but rather a small handful who happen to have special needs.  If a customer application is uncertain – move on.  This exercise works on quality not quantity.  Some salespeople will have no targets in their territory.

Step Four – Arm the Salesperson with Clarifying Questions

After selecting the product target customer, provide your salesperson with questions that can be asked during the course of normal business.  Things like; how is the problem handled today?  Or, does the customer still run his process in a particular fashion?

Step Five – Present the Product

Bill the presentation as the culmination of research conducted to add value, and you will achieve two things: a warm reception and good will even if the sale does not happen.   I recommend the Specialist participate in the first of these presentations.  Doing so will allow further refinement of the presentation and will allow you to gather potential competitive market information.  This may be critical to maximizing Gross Margin dollars.

Step Six – Document the Value

In tough economic times, documenting value only accelerates in importance.  If you were able to eliminate manpower, energy usage, outsourcing or something else, turn it into a mini-case study.  During a recession, customers want supply partners who improve their cash flow and eliminate risk.  Your efforts do both.

Ancient Chinese Proverb

An ancient Chinese proverb reads, “The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”  

During a recession, many distributor sales teams “flail around” chasing after every potential new customer they can identify.  It must be remembered; expanding your sales to existing customers is five times easier than selling to a completely new customer.  Plus, niche product targeting builds your value with the customer which makes it harder for another distributor to steal your business.

Product Training, Sales Training, Price Training?

It just dawned on me; the way distributors view training is skewed. After observing hundreds of confabs carrying the “Distributor Sales Meeting” moniker, I would characterize the content as product-centric community bulletin boards with an occasional dash of something else. Here’s my unscientific rundown of content:

49% New Product Introductions
Everything you ever wanted to know about some new product. Often these are conducted by Supply-Partner field sales teams with little grasp of the local customer mix, competitive landscape or the sales team’s technical abilities. Only rarely is customer application information discussed.

20% Existing Product Re-Launches
We started selling this product a year ago. After limited success, we decided some of the sales team didn’t pay enough attention to the product minutia shared last time. So here we are back with more information, only this time the sales guys ask a little better questions.

15% Delivery/Logistics Issues
Time is devoted to issues with long lead times, factory recalls and seasonal stock outages. These meetings are good because often they provide “work-a-rounds” to keep customer’s plants running and minimize damage.

10% Company Policy, Quotas, Performance

Everybody needs to understand the new benefits program and vacation policy. Meetings to discuss Quotas and annual performance are equally important and may be the only thing we’ve talked about that deserves to be part of a “sales meeting.”

5% Sales Training
Once every great blue moon, someone talks about how to better sell the company and products. Generally these come in half day bursts every 18 months or so. The rest of the time, there is no discussion of the company’s intrinsic value, no talk of presenting to customer management and no words on developing better questions.

1% Pricing
A rookie may receive misguided price training while shadowing a rock star salesperson on the road; however, this type of training barely makes list. If it comes up at all in a sales meeting, it generally follows a distributor association meeting where somebody does the “Power of One” presentation.

Why do I believe this is totally skewed?
First, we live in the age of information. Twenty years ago, distributor salespeople were viewed as important sources of customer information. Things have changed. Customers have access to massive quantities of product information. Raw product data presented by a salesman is almost viewed as a nuisance. What is valued is application support, tips on product interconnection compatibility and troubleshooting support.

Customers do value training; however, most distributors charge product specialists and application engineers with this task. On a side note, I believe salespeople can gain important understanding of customer issues by accompanying their customers to training and asking customer-focused questions about what is being discussed. But, this is not something for the sales meeting.

What should be covered in a sales meeting?
One major point is why a customer would benefit from the use of your product. This benefit question must be tied to value drivers. Labor savings, lower cost maintenance, better energy usage, increases in uptime, and improved operational efficiency must be studied in detail. Whenever possible, it makes sense to tie these to monetary values. For example, our product saves the customer $105 dollars during the installation procedure.

Distributors also add value via the services they provide. Just in time delivery, emergency back-up stock, parts kitting and application support join valuable yet mundane tasks such as locating and serving as a source for some obscure manufacturer.

A real sales meeting would stress the importance of the value the distributor provides to each and every customer. A real sales meeting would cover the questions needed to bring out customer-centric information which would allow for better solutions.

But what about Price Training?
Would it make sense that some distributor solutions are scarcer than others? With this in mind, the
distributor is entitled to charge more. The problem is, most distributor salespeople don’t fully understand the cost of handling the products. This could be part of price training.

A few of the products we sell are truly commodity-like. When commodities are sold, quantity and types of logistics required impact the price. Would it make sense to talk about precisely what makes a “quantity order?” Is it 10 pieces, 10 cartons or 10 pallet loads? Are the people in customer service aware of the price breakdowns? Are they measured by the way they adhere to management’s directive?

The sales team must continually review (and occasionally improve on) the following topics:
1. How was the system price derived?
2. What are the natural customer segments and how do they impact price?
3. What product types deserve a higher margin? And why?
4. How do we handle pricing exceptions?
5. How are market prices impacted by competitors?
6. The importance of understanding customer-based negotiations?

Based on my experience, very few distributor sales managers can answer questions arising from a discussion of this list. And, price training is not a place to stumble around in your response.
Here’s why:
Customers are trained (perhaps conditioned) to question our price. Many use price as an excuse for not doing business with us when the root cause is actually something else. It’s easier to say, “Your price is too high,” than it is to outline the truth, “We decided to go with your competitor because they out service you on routine stuff.”

The message is confused. Training is difficult. At the same time, it is an extremely important topic.

In distribution, a gross margin increase of just a couple of points stands to increase bottom line profitability by 50, 60, maybe even 100%. To achieve the same results by way of sale growth requires a near doubling of company size and that kind of growth can take years. Successfully impacting pricing can happen in a few months.

Price Training starts with a Pricing Process.
Developing a real pricing process is central to price training. The Strategic Pricing Associates (SPA) process uses scientific computer analysis of data pulled from your own past sales. Further, the process has detailed documentation designed to enable multi-layer training for literally everyone within the distributor organization (Sales, Customer Service, Purchasing, etc.) Finally, the SPA process has metrics developed to coach, help and manage the sales team into the future.


Strategic Pricing Associates has assisted over 350 distributors through the implementation of their process. Most SPA clients see results in 90 days. The results pay dividends. The typical SPA client sees a gross margin increase of two full points.


A final thought
Strategic Pricing Associates hosts several Pricing Strategy Seminars. These are a gathering of clients already using the SPA system, Industry Experts and companies considering a pricing process.  The seminars are thought provoking and powerful.  I have had the honor of speaking at a handful of these events and will be doing so again in Chicago on June 6th.

If you find that your company has not had price training since the days of the Carter Administration, I encourage you to attend. What’s more, attendance is free.  Click here for more information.