Does Competition Matter? Starting Marketing and More

Continuing my plan to answer questions that have been posed to me recently, and over time, as well as share some concerns, let me share thoughts about

• Competition
• Starting a new marketing role
• Work from home and
• Industry involvement and staff development.

Questions

Competition

An electrical distributor that competes with me in my local market just closed their location. Should I celebrate?

My first inclination in responding to this question is to stay away from speculating on the reasons why they closed. And certainly, I would never discuss their closing or the impact on the marketplace with my customers or my suppliers. That conversation can never lead to a good outcome.

My own opinion is I get upset when my competition leaves the market for whatever reason, justifiable or not. The logic here is that electrical distribution as a channel generates a specific amount of revenue and occupies a specific amount of market share in each timeframe. As time goes on, from a dollar standpoint’ the overall market itself’ regardless of the channels participating, will increase. The question we must look at is does the share that goes to electrical distribution increase proportionately to the market increase?

Every time an electrical distributor goes out of business our channel gets weaker. Our customers have less choices in the market when it comes to electrical distributors.  It also means we attract less new talent.   It also opens wider the door for our customers to move to, explore, and develop relationships with other channels.  So, the guy on the other side of town goes out of business, the big-box stores, niche channels, Amazon and a lot of others start licking their chops. They are not concerned about the guy who went out of business, they are focused on the opportunity to take business from you because the other guy went out of business and in their eyes that makes you an easier target.

Get to know the other electrical distributors you compete with, and I do not just mean who they are and where they are. Trade organizations provide great opportunities for developing good relationships within our channel. And we need to protect our channel.

Starting a Marketing Leadership Role

I have just taken a position as marketing director with a new company. I am being told by the folks that hired me prior to my arrival there has not been a lot of marketing activities going on. What are my first steps?

Let me put this response in some sort of numerical order:

1. DO NOT do anything! Well at least until you talk to people beyond those who interviewed you. They have their perspective, but you may find people in the organization who do in fact believe there was some, to a lot of, marketing going on.  If you’re tempted to sweep history aside and do it your way, the hill (challenge) you face ahead just got a lot steeper to climb.
2. Go on a listening tour. Talk to everybody you can, the management, the associates, and the suppliers. Especially have a long conversation with whoever had the marketing responsibility, even part time, to get their point of view if you can.  Talk with the CFO, the sales management, and the logistics folks. When you are done with them go see the counter people and do not forget to talk to the truck drivers, inside sales, commercial quotations and will call folks. Truck Drivers see your customers a whole lot more than your outside salespeople.
3. Introduce change carefully. Pick your top priorities. That could be a promotional structure, getting a handle on vendor funding, or maybe forming some sort of marketing advisory council internally.
4. Sell your proposals. Once you have completed the listening tour, then go on a selling tour, articulating the goals of your proposals of how we get there. You need ADOPTION in the field if you are to succeed.  That term “adoption” is very important. A gentleman I used to work with years ago, who was more of a mentor to me than he ever realized, used the term “drinking the Kool-Aid” a lot. What he meant was if you are the only one or one of the very few that is on board, or if your programs are top-down mandated, you are doomed before you ever get out of the gate. He was absolutely right!
5. Ask for help. Do not think you have to personally know it all. No one’s going to believe that anyway so do not try. Involve people in the planning process, get buy in (Adoption) and become part of the family. And above all work hard but have fun with these people and compliment them a lot, reinforcing their value, not yours, to the organization.

Concerns

Working Remote

If you ask 20 different managers, you will get 20 different viewpoints. Keep in mind everyone’s viewpoint is valid if to no one else but to them. We had remote working long before the Covid 19 crisis. That crisis did raise the level of communication and discussion to new highs, and we will never be exactly the way we were before and, in all honesty, that is a good thing.

My own opinion, is it is very difficult, bordering on impossible, to develop and execute marketing programs remotely. I believe there must be face-to-face communication with the people in the field and a lot of it. I think marketing people need to be physically present at the events that they are responsible for. Some things can be done remotely, so maybe a compromise is in the future.

So, to be clear, in my opinion, most functions in our business do not lend themselves to working remotely.

Supporting our industry.

I believe that in many cases, probably most cases, electrical distributors do not take advantage of the organizational resources that are available to them. I am talking about everything from NAED to marketing groups, electrical contractor associations, electrical leagues, trade apprenticeship programs, and the list goes on.

All this is time consuming and expensive, and you cannot do everything with everybody all the time.  The alternative of doing nothing or only token participation is detrimental to both your company and the electrical distribution industry.

Your company needs a (written) plan, simple and to the point, that prioritizes the opportunities and how you will take advantage of them. Some of the opportunities today are virtual, and many are free of any fees.  You still must evaluate the costs of pulling your people out of the business routine even for half a day or more as it relates to your ability to meet your customers’ expectations.

Who gets to go to, or participate, in any specific event or activity is a real balancing act. It is great you and your senior people may be attending. It is a sin if you leave the younger folks behind. Going to an event is a much bigger deal to them than it is to you and gives them a much wider perspective of how the industry really works.

Staying on NAED for a moment, take a hard look at programs like the AdVenture Marketing awards that are done on an annual basis. It is nice to win but it is much more than that. It is advantageous to your company to have your marketing and sales team go through the process of developing and submitting entries because it forces a review of what they have done and generates thought focused on the future. Also, I am also a strong component of entering your people into various recognition opportunities like the NAED 30 under 35 program.

I have gotten one piece of negative feedback occasionally from distributors that I want to address concerning exposing younger people to these types of organizations. That is the concern that this experience will either cause them to leave your organization for greener pastures based on somebody they meet or interact with a competitor, or they will start receiving phone calls offering the same type of employment opportunities. I will make this simple, except in a very rare case, if those issues I just outlined cause you to lose people, you have already lost them anyway it was just a question of time before they leave. If you think you have got somebody at risk, and you do not want to lose them, make sure you pay enough attention to them and their future career path. Keeping them sheltered from the industry is not the answer.

Your thoughts? Let me know.

Ken