Another possible reason for sluggish distribution is poor time management. Since many businesses have discovered the tablet for their channel development needs, employees are required to enter their customer reports directly after an appointment. Reports used to be short, hand-written notes, passed on to the back office for completion. Now, you need to stop and take fifteen minutes to write a customer report directly after a meeting that probably took about an hour. You might have four other appointments to keep that day, so you need an hour each day to write reports – one less appointment per day; five fewer a week; 22 missed opportunities a month and at the end of the year you’ve lost 220 appointments. With an average 1:8 success ratio, taking the above numbers, this makes about thirty contracts a year lost to writing reports! Obviously, your Distribution department must be relieved of superfluous administrative tasks so they can spend as much time as possible with customers. Especially on Fridays. We often hear from our clients that their channel developers spend Fridays in home office, catching up on their customer reports and other administrative tasks they didn’t get to that week. Outrageous! Friday is the day for channel developers to spend with clients. It’s the most relaxed day of the week, with few or no meetings at all, and people have time for other things.
Some employees are more or less randomly transferred to Channel Development after spending a few years in another department. When a position opens up in Distribution, they are simply reassigned to fill the gap. This often works for a while, as long the company’s doing well and all distributors have to do is fill orders. Some companies do nothing other than buy, not sell, over years and decades, i.e. they are fortuitous dealers who don’t have to lift a finger to win customers. A comfy job for employees as well since the customers come to them without any noticeable sales or distribution effort. Maybe their product is the only one of its kind or they have such a powerful reputation that competitors don’t stand a chance.
Yet, the credit for successfully opening a new market as Vorwerk did goes solely to competent, motivated employees, that is, the right person in the right position. Errant personnel decisions that work during your heyday, are guaranteed to wreak havoc in a crisis. Then, at the latest, you’ll find out if your channel developers can do more than fill out order sheets.
An excerpt from the book “Leadership is More – 27 Questions We Too Can Answer” written by Gianni, Jan & Marcello Liscia, 2022
