“How I Did It,” Material Handling Version
Earlier this week, I sent an e-mail to every MHEDA Member who I know earned a “Top Dealer” award from a material handling equipment manufacturer in 2009. Now is the time of year when those lists start making the rounds, and once again, they are littered with MHEDA-member distributors. (If you won an award but did not receive an e-mail from me, that means I don’t know about it! Send me a message at editor@themhedajournal.org or leave a comment here to inform me!) It is our goal in the July issue to highlight some of those dealers who were able to acheive success in 2009 despite the conditions.
In the e-mail, I asked distributors how they did it? What was their strategy going into 2009? How did they implement it? How did they meet the award criteria? A smattering of the responses so far:
- “Our strategy was to keep all our salespeople and push service and units in stock for sale. We maintained stock levels in parts and rental fleet. We made ourselves a ‘one-stop shop’ by adding additional product offerings.”
- “We changed our sales force structure to an account management basis with each sales rep being assigned a minimum of 150 customers and target accounts. For each account, they developed their strategy to support the accounts. We provided incentives to our sales staff for doing new business, including equipment and aftermarket sales. We provided special service packages to our customers to assist them during these recessionary times.”
- “We simply listened to what customers needed to have done on their projects and made sure we met their goals with our finished prducts. We were not worried about meeting any special criteria, just stayed focused and kept everyone in the company busy.”
It’s all sound advice. Congrats to the winners, and I’d love to hear from even more of you! There’s still time. Now’s your chance to be included in the “How I Did It” issue of The MHEDA Journal, coming soon to your mailbox.
Tags: best practices, economy, material handling
June 2nd, 2010 at 2:49 pm
[...] responses continue to roll in from MHEDA Members listed on manufacturer Top Dealers list. To add to my list from last week, here’s a couple more strategies from MHEDA members who were able to achieve some success in [...]