Posts By Robert Kelley

Customers segment distributors much like distributors segment customers. Because of this, customers don’t typically think beyond the products they already buy from you. This article examines how distributors can expand what they sell to existing customers by uncovering unexpected cross-selling opportunities in their transaction data.

As consumers, we routinely experience cross-selling by retailers. It can be as simple as “Do you want fries with that shake?” or in more complex e-tail environments: “Customers who bought X also bought Y.”

Companies who do this well include Amazon and Netflix. In fact, Netflix thought the problem was so important that they setup a contest with a $1 million reward for anyone in industry or academia who could create …

Distribution executives’ beliefs about the best segments to go after in their markets may not be accurate. Blending internal transaction data with data that provides a more complete, demographic view of your customers is the best way to better understand your markets. This article examines how customer segmentation can highlight markets where you may be missing growth opportunities. And it provides examples of where previous assumptions about growth segments were called into question by actual data.

When we ask successful distribution company executives about the sweet spots in their markets, they readily provide a confident answer. The problem with the answer is that it is usually incorrect or at best partially correct. A detailed, analytical look at their customer base shows that some market segments are overrated, some underrated, and others are ignored or undetected altogether.

While these executives sincerely believe their answers, there are several reasons why they don’t match data about the customer base. The first is …

When it comes to positioning and messaging, the overwhelming majority of distributors in a recent MDM survey featured in the July 25 issue say they value similar things: product selection, training and technical support capabilities, among others. But when their websites are put to the test, online messaging on those important attributes often fails.

In this article, part two of a two-part series, Jonathan Bein, Ph.D,and Rob Kelley, CFA,  of Real Results Marketing explore the gap between the value and the message and how distributors …

When it comes to positioning and messaging, the overwhelming majority of distributors in a recent MDM survey have three things in common:

About 90 percent of distributors believe that they deliver more value than their competitors for a comparable price.

More than 88 percent of distributors place a large emphasis in their messaging on a handful of features: product selection, availability, speed of delivery, pre-sales technical support and professional sales representatives. If everybody is messaging on the same items, it means that nobody is really differentiating.

Nearly 70 percent of distributors use informal methods for positioning and messaging.

This article, the first in a two-part series, explains why distributors hold this belief about their value and shows how they can develop differentiated messaging around a broader set of features.

Real Results Marketing in partnership with Modern Distribution Management conducted an online survey of more than 175 distributors to better understand their marketing practices. This article, the second in a two-part series analyzing the results, explores how distributors use different marketing vehicles such as email, the Web, catalogs and more. The first article looked at how marketing channels are used by different distributors.

Historically, distributors were limited to in-store marketing vehicles such as print flyers, catalogs, some telemarketing and tradeshows. Marketing vehicles that have become prevalent in the past five years include email, search engine marketing, increased telemarketing and social media.

Of course, the marketing vehicles are linked significantly to the marketing channels chosen by a company. As noted in Part 1 of this report, published in the May 10, 2011, issue of MDM, many companies have outside sales and inbound telephone sales channels. Fewer companies have a transactional website. Companies without e-commerce will make only token efforts in search engine …