During years of editing this magazine and others in our industry, I’ve received various versions of this reply when asking a wholesaler for an interview: “We don’t like to talk about ourselves; we don’t want to bring attention to the business; we prefer flying below the clouds; or we don’t want to give away any secrets.” I’m a soft sell guy, and invariably my response was to say “thank you” and move on.
When people ask Mike Tinz if direct mail marketing is dead, he doesn’t get angry. He patiently explains that it can still produce booming results when correctly implemented.
DC Editor Tom Perić recently interviewed Chris DeBoer, HARDI's marketing manger, about the Sales & Marketing Focus Forum, slated for September 17 to 19.
Everyone sells no matter what you do. It might not be a direct sale where you receive a financial reward for “selling” something. But selling includes trying to convince to do something they might not have to consider or are in opposition to.
It was 2013, and the HARDI brain trust was mulling over a perennial chess problem. What type of programs could it offer its members that would benfit their financial health and success? Taking input from members and their own discussions led to, in hindsight, an obvious conclusion: the need for leadership training.
Executives in every industry are forced to confront the immediate future, and yet, they must ensure that the longer view — a strategic plan — is in the mix to ensure the business thrives. And the glue to all this planning is, unsurprisingly, the finances.
My stress arrives with figuring out what topics matter to my readers. I’ve repeatedly said we’re a business publication for owners and operators in the wholesale HVACR industry. I honestly pretend sometimes that I am the owner of a distributorship or maybe a hard-working middle management type. I ask myself: What do I have in common with everyone else and what can I do to make it better?
"Our biggest challenge and a goal I had set for the company was to shift as large a percentage of the new construction part of our business, nearly 95 percent, to the add-on and retrofit part of the industry. We have been very successful in doing so because 40 percent of our business is now retrofit and add-on."
