The Soft Pitch

Well maybe not much, but after spending the weekend at Taiyou Con  helping sell  “The Art of Samantha Gorel”   (yes, my daughter the artist) at an anime conference recently, I realized just how much a helping hand can mean to a business owner. 

It was her first “con” as an artist selling prints and original art, and I was her designated “minion” – aka gopher, business coach, and financier. I sat with her for three days, marveling at the kaleidoscope of anime characters on parade and how little we knew about the business side of selling art.  Fortunately, being in marketing, I’ve done my share of trade booth duty, so I coached her in getting business cards, brochures and a banner poster made for her booth. My daughter and I as her helpful minion, approached the whole event as a learning experience – from the baffling need for two different businesses licenses to how much to charge for a print of her original art (turned out $6 was about right). Over and over she kept thanking me and admitted she hadn’t had a clue as to where to start (at 17, that was an amazing thing to hear coming from her).

But I realized, being her minion, coach and even financier, is not all that different from what we do at Avnet to help our customers be successful. So, here’s my take on 5 things a distributor does to help customers grow.

5 Ways a Distributor Can Help You Grow Your Business Faster

In business, it’s all about the value you deliver.  You can buy something cheap, but that’s usually what you get, something cheap. Our value comes from helping customers grow their businesses faster.  How do we do that? We focus on the things that we can do with scale more efficiently than our customers can do for themselves.

1. One stop shopping.  As a distributor we have multiple product lines and know what products work with what.  Our components business, Avnet Electronics Marketing calls this “Support Across the Board” and Avnet Technology Solutions heralds this as the basis for solutions distribution. The interesting thing is that it’s this depth of knowledge that helps our customers grow faster because we can help them understand and buy the technology; that way they can spend more time selling to their customers.
2. Marketing services. Most resellers already know this, some don’t take advantage as much as they could.  Others maybe don’t know or think what Avnet provides as marketing services are the same as others offer, but it’s very different. Avnet Technology Solutions helps value-added resellers develop and execute full marketing plans on their behalf.  It starts with specific market knowledge, reseller capabilities and end-customer needs assessment.  This isn’t just a direct mail and calling campaign. It includes business planning and follows through to lead nurturing, even services like maintenance contract renewal management.
3. Knowledge sharing.  Two of our most successful customer programs focus on sharing our knowledge of product and design; and specific market opportunities.  X-fest has helped thousands of customers learn about a broad range of new technology components that function together and then explore hands-on using that technology for their own products.  SolutionsPath educates customers on the opportunities in a vertical market, the specific challenges of that vertical market and how to sell to that vertical market. Initially launched several years ago with HealthPath, it’s been so successful for customers that it’s been expanded to include education in government, financial services, retail, and other vertical markets and technical specialities.
4. Outsourced services.  Programming components; integrating computer technology; managing repair and reverse logistics. These are just a few of the services we provide customers cheaper and faster than they can do for themselves. They save money and get to market faster, meaning competitive advantage.
5. Managing the supply chain. What technology products do you need when and where and at what price? Will you have enough components on hand to build your best-selling device for the next 6 months and meet demand? What takes manufacturers bundles of time and resources, we can do easily and at less cost because we have the scale and vision across the industry to see trends and plan for them. We help customers avoid product shortages, downtime and redesign.

By the way, for those uninitiated (as I was), an anime con is similar to a Star Trek conference or comic conference where the hive of activity centers around the cos play  i.e. the dazzling array of costumed attendees – not unlike a masquerade ball.  Colorful and energetic doesn’t quite capture the mood – it was like stepping into a sparkling carnival on another planet.  And lest you get the wrong impression – these are not “just a bunch of dropouts with nothing to do.”  Most of the attendees were smart college kids with a wild dose of creativity. I met one pre-med student, two who had recently graduated with business degrees and had started their own businesses, and another student who will be starting law school in the fall. And they were savvy about how we could make money at the con and what would sell. And of course, my daughter’s ready to do it again!

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