Has A Distributor’s Role Changed?
Monday, December 20th, 2010As 2010 comes to a close, we at The MHEDA Journal are already trying to get a head start on 2011. We’re brainstorming article ideas and calling members to find out the hot topics that are out in our industry that we should be writing articles about. (The list isn’t complete yet and we’re updating it all the time, so if you have any topics that you think MHEDA Members would gain value in reading about, let me know by leaving a comment below.)
One idea I did find intriguing came from a manufacturer of overhead cranes who I spoke with last week. (I’ll withhold the name for now since he doesn’t know I’m talking about him.) The topic was also broached my some distributors in our 2011 Industry Forecast (coming soon – look for it in January!), so I’m pretty sure it’s worth discussing in further detail.
The gist of the topic is this: How has the role of a distributor changed in the end-user’s eyes as a result of the downturn? As the manufacturer I spoke with said, “From an end-user’s perspective, they’ve hired distributors to do stuff, but my observation is what they hire them for is different now than it was five or six years ago. I think distributors are getting sharper and clearer about what exactly their customers are hiring them for.
He continues, “If I’m a distributor salesperson, I am a consultant. If I called myself a consultant, you’d pay me an hourly fee. But I don’t get paid an hourly fee, what I get is a commission basically if you buy my idea. I see end-users that don’t really recognize it for that. They put mileage on distributors for ideas and then they take those ideas and shop them all over the place. It’s gotten to the point where some distributors say, ‘I’m not going to go out to XYZ customer and specify all the equipment and then get my price hammered down because it’s not worth my time.’ But I think the issue there is what an end-customer is really hiring a distributor to do and I think it’s different than before. I think that end-users are hiring distributors to do way more things than just sell equipment these days.”
What do you think? Has a distributor’s role changed? If so, in what way? As I mentioned, we touch on this topic in our upcoming Industry Forecast, but if I get some feedback, then maybe we can turn it into a longer article. Any help you can give is appreciated!





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