TED Magazine - February 2017

CURRENT / CHANNEL ISSUES
28 the ELECTRICAL DISTRIBU TOR • Feb. 17 www.tEDmag.com
get discounts, or other benefits. It’s important to make it clear: ‘You are still a highly valued client to me and I want to bend over backward to make sure you still have the service you deserve.’ “The benefit is if a business can get its customer to think of it as a partner, it has a much stronger relationship,” he added.
The Role of Exclusivity Another factor to consider in the partner vs. customer debate is how exclusive—or not—some of those relationships are. Dobski questioned how many part- nerships a manufacturer can truly have. “If there are three, or five, or 10 distributors per vendor in any market, is that really a partnership?” he asked. “If a market is overdistributed, that can have an adverse effect on partner- ship and what it means. Conversely, if I carry four or five competing or over- lapping lines, am I really ‘partnering’ with all of them?” Spurgin agreed that partnering with nearly everyone weakens the bonds that a company is trying to strengthen by using that term. To be a partner, some exclusivity is neces- sary. “We practice somewhat selective distribution, meaning that we don’t try or want to sell to everyone in each market,” he said. “We can’t be every- thing to everyone, but we can be a lot to some.” Exclusivity is a fine line to walk no matter on which side of the transac- tion the company is. “Every distribu- tor would want some level of exclusiv- ity as part of a partnership, but when looking at this from the manufactur- er’s viewpoint, they’d want as many of those relationships as possible,” said Dobski. “It’s similar to the situation distributors find themselves in with our own customers. We’re afraid of jeopardizing our own business by be- ing partnered with a vendor that isn’t preferred by the customer. No firm wants to lose a sale because it doesn’t
have a relationship with the right com- pany at the right time.”
Partnership: Show, Don’t Tell It is safe to say partnership—as a term, a goal, and a business strategy—is here to stay. But we have seen that both sides of the relationship need to feel like they are in a real partnership to get the benefits we seek from using the term. To do that, a partnership has to be something worked on every day—not just an announcement fol- lowed by business as usual. “You can find yourself in a situa- tion where a partner- ship has been set at the national level but it hasn’t trickled down to the local level yet,” said Dobski. “It takes time to build those relationships between people. “For vendors that we feel we have a partnership with, there is some earned trust and we are more open in our dialogue and the information that we share. And that goes both ways,” he continued. “Oftentimes, it’s really driven by the individual with whom a partnership has been formed rather than the company. The adage that this is still a people business is very true, and if the people you’re dealing with on a strategic basis can’t be trusted, then the groundwork for forming a partnership becomes very shaky. There has to be some kind of demon- stration that they are looking out for our business. At some level, there has to be some trust built first.” The partnership debate aside, as a practical matter, manufacturers can- not always provide the same level of service and commitment to every transaction. “Partnerships sometimes have different levels of commitment,”
said Spurgin. “The company that gives us 90% of its business may require additional services over one that gives us 60%. We should expect the level of service to be matched by the level of commitment.” Goldberg agreed that day-to-day interactions and personal rapport are vital keys to building a partnership. “If there is a disconnect be- tween how manufac- turers mean ‘partner’ and how distributors see it, that is largely the fault of the sales- person,” he said. “We need to make sure that we understand the ‘what’s in it for me’ of our partnership because we may have different ideas of what that means. “A salesperson should spell it out: ‘I’m going to do XYZ for you, and I expect ABC from you,’” he continued, adding that com- panies might want to formalize the partnership to some degree as well by putting expectations in writing. When all is said and done, and no matter what terms companies choose to use to describe them, it all comes down to the strength of those relation- ships between people and companies. “We all have to agree on what a partnership is,” said Dobski. “In real- ity, we all have a mutual customer, and that’s the installer or end-user. Both manufacturers and distributors have to make sure that’s where their focus is. Manufacturers have to ap- preciate the risks and liabilities the distributor has to take on, and the dis- tributor has to appreciate the costs manufacturers incur in bringing their products to the market. We’re all in this together.” ;
Katarsky is a freelance business writer
based in Philadelphia. She can be reached
at ckatarsky@gmail.com.
If a market is overdistrib- uted, that can have an adverse effect on partnership and what it means. Conversely, if I carry four or five competing or overlapping lines, am I really ‘partner- ing’ with all of them?
—DANIEL DOBSKI,
Connexion