Jason De Quadros

During the early 1990s - I worked at McDonald’s . Being in Grade 9 - I was invincible - and of course too cool to be working at Rotten Ronnie’s . Nonetheless it was a Part Time job - and I was earning $5.20 an hour . My store location was labelled as a “poor performer” - and based on the amount of store managers that rotated through there - it’s wasn’t hard to see why . One week-end I was introduced to Ming - the new store manager . He was apparently a great “organizer” - and was sent there by Head Office to turn around our store . It was a challenging weekend as 3 staff members called in sick - so Ming turned to me and said: “Jason - I need you to run a birthday party.” This sent shockwaves to my teenage brain . I was only there to earn enough money to buy Nike basketball shoes and Nintendo games . I told him I wasn’t trained - to which he replied: “What’s there to know ? It’s a birthday party - you take food orders at the beginning - deliver the food - and light candles on a birt...

  Everything you do for your distributors benefits you as well — your relationships deepen, and you gain more of their business, as turning to you continues to become more convenient and cost-effective.   Greater efficiency in working with distributors translates into lower costs of doing business and higher margins for you. Automated information helps drive add-ons, opportunities for cross-selling, and potentially broader product sets (because they’re more visible to distributors), as you and your distributors expand the market and revenue. Another key benefit is the usage data you’ll be able to gather. You’ll learn more about how your distributors work — where their interests (and those of their customers) lie — and be able to use that information to continually optimize distribution and sales. Best of all, it’s a win-win arrangement. Both you and your distributors are more successful — and with happier customers to boot!

  When pitching to a distributor - it’s important to always ask yourself : “How is my brand / product / service going to improve their portfolio ?” A Handy Checklist To Consider (Prior To The Sales Pitch) : Am I willing to let a distributor autonomously represent my brand for me ? Do I have enough resources to support the distributor with time, money, and product / inventory to help generate sales ? Am I able to identify my brand and have I listed its key competitive advantage assets ? Do I have an actionable / actioned strategic marketing strategy ? Do I have a complete range of products / services ready for commercial sale ? Do I have the volumes of products/ services available for consistent, uninterrupted supply ? Does my company have the capacity to product products / services of consistent /improving quality - production run after production run ? Are my product’s / service’s priced appropriately for their target market - factoring in the distributor’s margin ? H...

  Common Problems: In some cases distributors didn’t know how to grow their market, and they didn’t invest in business growth. Ideal Distributor Market: A market with many small customers and where the level of sales service required is high. Some Key Points In Managing Distributors: 1.    Make sure to ask your distributors for detailed market & financial performance data. 2.    Always treat your distributors as long-tern – not short-term partners. 3.    Support your distributors by committing proven marketing plans to help them sell more. a.    Educate your distributors about your products. 4.    Try and find distributors who are capable of developing new markets. a.    Distributors who specialize in a narrow field sometimes tend to be the most successful.

One thing that has always helped me gain killer sales at all my sales jobs was the creation of a “scratch sheet”. Essentially it’s just a huge Word document (or a plain document using your word processor of choice) where you type ALL your daily notes as you work. Seems simple - but it’s something few people remember to do. Imagine a day where you answer incoming sales calls, make outbound sales calls, and process customer service calls - but track all your discussions down as you type. One key benefit of this is that you gain the ability to “search” anything from your past discussions. You also gain the ability to “copy” and “paste” anything from a past discussion into a current discussion. EXAMPLE 1: RFQ / IN GUTTER INSTALL / MR BOB SMITH / SMITH CONSTRUCTION / SITE: 1234 CHERRYTREE LANE / WVAN / 604-123-4567 / bob@smithconstruction.ca OK - given the example above - you installed gutters for Bob Smith - at one of his sites - a year ago. Fast forward to 2021 - and one of the homeowners...

  Inside Sales Reps Sending Out RFQs (REQUEST FOR QUOTE) To Outside Sales Reps: THE RFQ is sent to the sales rep via EMAIL . The text is added directly to the subject line - and inside the body of the email . EXAMPLE 1: RFQ / IN GUTTER CLEAN / MR JOHN SMITH / 1234 CHERRY TREE LANE / NVAN / 604-123-4567 /  johnsmith@google.ca In the above example - the customer called in looking for a gutter clean . Fairly straight forward - it was a single homeowner looking for some work done on their house . A small job like this could be closed by the inside sales rep . If the inside sales rep emailed it to the outside sales rep - it should look like : From: Inside Sales Rep <insidesalesrep@guttersareus.ca> To: outsidesales rep <outsidesalesrep@guttersareus.ca> Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2021, 08:39:00 PM PDT Subject:  RFQ / IN GUTTER CLEAN / MR JOHN SMITH / 1234 CHERRY TREE LANE / NVAN / 604-123-4567 / johnsmith@google.ca RFQ / IN GUTTER CLEAN / MR JOHN SMITH / 1234 CHE...