Your Meeting of the Year

When are you going to have your best meeting of the year?   Next week?  Next month? 4th Quarter?

I may have already had mine the day before yesterday.  I set out in 2013 with the goal of more coffee and lunch meetings with more creative people to network, brainstorm, and gain ideas from to help kickstart the year.  And my meeting with Nicholas McGill, an acquaintance I've not seen for several years, ended up providing me with more value and inspiration than I ever imagined.

We have the potential to help each other with connections, business opportunities, and personal goal achievement--and it made me wonder why I let several years go by without reaching out to him.  We have our next meeting already on the calendar to follow up on the areas where we might be able to help one another.

In case you're wondering, this extremely bright talented young man runs his own company here in Northern California, Heroik Media, and has a team working with him transforming businesses, people, and heck--who knows, maybe the world next.  Watch Nicholas' two-minute video introduction--you won't be disappointed and it might inspire you to:

• Consider how you tell the world who you are
• Consider who you are in the first place
• Consider reaching out to Nicholas via email
• Consider that next coffee or lunch meeting you schedule.

When will be your best meeting of the year?

Do You Have a "Dream Team?"

It's sometimes called a network, personal board of advisers, or mastermind group.  But I like this definition from Patti Johnson taken from the Success Magazine Blog site:  The Six People You Need on Your Dream Team.

1. The Pro
2. The Encourager
3. The Innovator
4. The Challenger
5. The Connector

Ooops, where's the 6th?

I'ts you.  But for most of us, we try everything as a solo-act.  Read the article and find the five people who will help you get where you want to go.

Why Do Manufacturers Use Distribution? Really.

As you may have heard me say before, manufacturers choose to use distribution for 4 primary reasons:

1) The distributor's knowledge of the market.

2) The execution of market and channel plans to get product to market thoroughly and efficiently.

3) Access to customers known by the distributor--where relationships flourish and penetration is deep.

4) The volume of business a distributor can deliver to a manufacturer.

But let’s add some of the more tactical issues to that list, shall we?

5) Distributors provide customer service and order fulfillment.

6) Distributors maintain inventories in the desired geographies next to the end-use customers.

7) Distributors provide logistics into the market.

8) Distributors absorb the credit fluctuations and the AR role throughout their markets.

Hold on—what’s wrong with this picture? How about this? Number 1-8 above can ultimately all be figured out and executed by manufacturer themselves. But before the customers of distributors get too excited about the possibility of “cutting out the middleman” and buying direct from manufacturers, we need to keep in mind that there are costs associated with all of these—at some level. So—the price is the price is the price. What an end-user pays for products will likely be the same whether they buy from distribution or from manufacturers direct—because there is a cost to all of these services.

Now, let’s look at the last two services distribution can provide.

9) Sales and Marketing, through excellent value-added sales representation and sales promotion into the market, and…

10) An unbeatable value proposition for customers. Distribution must create such a compelling reason for its customers to buy from them—that the customers could not even imagine carrying those particular products if it were not for the unbeatable value proposition the distributor provides.

These last two are the most challenging for distributors to figure out, design, pay for, and execute. But they are the key to a lasting dominance in the channel. And together, all of the areas above are a 10-point plan for sustainability and long-term success.