Opinion - Sales in the 21st Century

By Rick McCarten

With the advent of the Internet we can now see three distinct forms of sales: retail sales, Internet sales and relational selling. Which form will dominate this century? This will depend on how each form adapts and utilizes parts of the other forms.

Retail shop sales: Get a building, stock it with products, and advertise to your customer to come in and take stuff off the shelf. You save costs by forcing the customer to incur travel costs.

Internet sales: Similar to the first, your product is on a shelf in a building, except your advertising is to get your customer to visit your Website—not your building. You save on costs for fancy buildings and knowledgeable staff on hand to assist, but you pay for the product travel costs.

Relational selling: This concept is where you and your staff go to the customer with product knowledge and high levels of service; you essentially build a relationship with the customer. Relational selling is the basis of our industry’s sales model; it entails three important constituents: manufacturers, distributors and reps. Relational selling cannot compete with the other methods when selling a product to a customer. Where this form competes is in the high volume, rapid product turnover market, where complex items are bulk ordered and jobs require multiple product groups to be coordinated.

In the book, “Dealing with Darwin”, author Geoffrey A. Moore states that though it has been tried many times before, you have to make a choice with your company. Either you are in retail or you are in relational selling. Companies that try to do both often fail. He argues that retail and relational selling are inherently two different disciplines that require conflicting expertise. The latest large company to try to do both was Home Depot; they ended up selling off the “relational” side of their business.

Since that incident, retail and relational selling have gone off and done their own thing… but then along comes the Internet seller.
It remains to be seen if retail sales can be complemented by Internet sales. Both involve advertising and require customers to visit—whether in-store or online. Clearly however, Internet sellers can interfere with retail sales. Look at records and books as front leaders. Retail sees the Internet sellers as a threat to their market. Most large retailers are going after the Internet with their own version.
Recently, Internet sellers have started to go after the traditional relationship sales territory. Amazon has added close to a million Industrial supplies SKUs to their Website. Prices can be greatly reduced as there is no “service” attached to the item.

Approximately ten years ago, a new method of buying was introduced; it was going to be the next big thing. It was called “reverse auctions”. Customers let it be known what products they wanted, and companies bid to sell it to them—with the lowest bidder getting the order. Most customers tried it once and found that the lowest bidder could not preform the services required that intuitively went with the product. Reverse auctions died shortly after as a bad idea.

The electrical industry’s ability to continue improving relational selling techniques will depend on our willingness to adapt the positive customer aspects of the Internet with our understanding of the relational value offered to customers. Done properly, it cannot be beat.

Rick McCarten is Vice President, Electrical Council, Electro-Federation Canada.

New Reality… “Keeping up with the Administrations”

By Carol McGlogan

EFC kicked off 2021 with an outstanding webinar featuring Janice Gross Stein, renowned Canadian political scientist, founder of the Munk School of Global Affairs and recipient of the Order of Canada. Ms. Stein has spoken at previous EFC conferences, earning many accolades, and this session was no different as we learned what to look for as the Biden Administration takes hold of the White House.

Our close economic ties to the U.S. means that Canadians must “keep up with the Administrations” to survive. Janice focused her discussions on industrial policy and climate change within an active intervening government.

Canadian Business Counts, December 2020

Canadian Business Counts - December 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic continues to alter the business landscape. Some businesses have closed permanently, some have grown and others have been temporarily closing or reopening. In October, for example, the number of business openings (41,910) exceeded the number of business closures (32,420) for the fourth consecutive month.

As a result, the number of active businesses in October edged up 0.6%. Despite the slight increase, the number of active businesses was down 6.7% from February 2020.*

In This Together — Manufacturers and Reps

By David Gordon

Gene Biben, formerly President and CEO of Biben Sales, joined Channel Marketing Group earlier this month. Gene’s avowed desire is to “give back” to the industry, to help people work together. He will help reps achieve their goals and manufacturers optimize their performance, and relationship, to and with manufacturer reps. He’ll additionally support Channel Marketing Group clients’ research needs.

While Gene is well known by many manufacturers, we thought it would be interesting to ask him to consider changes he has seen over the years.

Ticket to Learn: The First Year as an Electrical Apprentice

By Darci Spiteri

This past month marked one year since stepping onto a job site and starting my electrical apprenticeship. Little did I know 2020 would throw in some curveballs, but it was a pretty fantastic year for self-development when I sit back and reflect.

Enter Pandemic, worldwide lockdowns, and my Jobsite shutting down for a month. Losing hours was a downside and with my apprenticeship being based on the number of hours worked, moving onto my second year will take a little extra time.

Electricity Human Resources Canada Awards ...

Electricity Human Resources Canada (EHRC) announced the recipients of their Awards of Excellence ...

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