We created a series on PromoStandards to help distributors and suppliers understand the potential it has for each of our businesses. We broke the series into three parts: PromoStandards: Here’s Why the Hell You Should Care; Suppliers: It’s Not the Big That Will Eat the Small; Distributor: 6 Out of 10 of Your Orders Are On Hold. Here’s How to Fix It.
But nothing is more important than to hear about the power of PromoStandards from distributors and suppliers themselves. The following is a conversation with Brandon Samuel, a Distributor at Red Hot Promotions, on the impact PromoStandards has on their growth and future potential; on Facebook Brandon commented:
Brandon, you made this comment on facebook - How is this benefitting you as a distributor?
We need to be able to compete in the world of Amazon, where things are instantaneous. We and our customers want the same experience. And since everyone processes things so differently and we all have so many different systems, Promostandards flatlines the data and gives us the ability to compete in a world that’s going faster and faster all the time. I’m super excited about the progress but also just as impatient as everybody else for as many suppliers as possible to get on board.
If you had the majority of your suppliers fully integrated with PromoStandards, through to the ePO phase, what would this do for you? What will this free you up to do more?
We just had a meeting about this the other day, I mean, the value that we bring as a company to our clients are the ideas. We all know the industry, we all know the products, but everybody knows all that stuff. So, the thing that sets us apart is our creativity and using it to help the client achieve their goal, whatever that may be. By having PromoStandards in place, we won’t have as much of that back and forth with the manufacturer, and we’ll have the confidence that what we ordered is right. It eliminates so many variables, streamlines the process, and allows us to think creatively and sell more, which is what we are better at.
So, the ability to think more for your clients and spend more time on the client-side as opposed to the production-side?
Yes, exactly. You know, we have a great production team that keeps an eye on everything as it goes through, but just being able to flatline that means that we would be able to work on other priorities or even more projects, with the confidence that everything is to the spec of what the supplier needs and there are no missing details. Distributors are always juggling 10 or 15 projects (or more) at once and also focused on future selling, we’re not always there on the details.
What do you think would be a practical step for distributors to help their key suppliers understand the importance of this? Is this just a matter of reaching out and you know, just keeping the conversation alive with our key supplier partners?
I think this is about suppliers seeing the future and actualizing it by making the investment, rather than settling for the status quo. I mean, we’re their salesforce and as distributors, we need to remind them that we need this for the simple reason that we can focus on more sales. I think some suppliers have lost sight of this, that we’re their salesforce. We’re overloaded with admin details, which is not what you want your salesforce doing. Some suppliers just think of us as “middlemen” and not partners, or as a vital part of their sales potential. We’ve got to come together and understand that we’re in this together.
Right, I think there's a distinction between some suppliers (thankfully few) who recognize distributors as a necessary evil versus suppliers who recognize distributors as their legit salesforce. Once your salesforce is freed up with PromoStandards, they’re liberated from shuffling paper and babysitting orders, they're going to sell more. The savviest suppliers get it and I think it's a matter of making it a priority.
Regarding my comment about Starline, I'm really excited about it, I see it as a tipping point, and I don’t want to ruffle any feathers, I'm very loyal to our industry and the suppliers in it, so I rarely single out people but I was like, you know what? They have made a significant investment in making my life easier and therefore our business more successful, I'm going to get on board with them as much as I possibly can, and I want to share that message with everyone. So, when suppliers can free us up to sell more, we’ll continue to grow this industry. It seems like there's some new momentum with it and I'm going to get out there in front of it, I'm going to try to push our relationships and everybody on the same page. I'm super excited for the future. I think that this is really going to be a kind of a tipping point.