PCA Magazine 2022 Show Issue

PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG VOLUME 2 2022 | PCA The Magazine 51 relationships: Show up, don’t be a d***, and ask to do something for the customer. Let me break it down. Show up . This means going to a retailer, visiting with their customers and staff, and being reachable and proactive via phone and email between visits. Showing up is more than just walking in, smoking a cigar, and saying see you in 6–8 weeks. When I spend time in cigar lounges onmy own recognizance I am very often astounded by the sales calls I see retailers putting up with. Reps come in, sit down, drink their coffee, smoke a cigar and shake hands before leaving often without asking a single question about the store, sales, or opportunities to work on growth. This isn’t showing up for the retailer. Reps don’t have a punch card that gets hit every time they go to a store. They don’t get paid in visits. If reps are visiting your store and not asking about your business then they aren’t a rep. If a mechanic went to a garage and sat next to a car for eight hours without turning a wrench, are they even a mechanic? Retailers shouldn’t be teaching their reps how to call on them correctly, but this is a relationship business, right? There’s nothing wrong with leveling with your reps right out of the gate. Do you prefer appointments? Do you want to see specific reporting during each visit? Do you prefer that the rep doesn’t sit down in the lounge and talk business in front of customers? Setting clear expectations with sales reps helps to grow the relationship organically by eliminating the ” T H E I N D U S T R Y “If your rep treats you fairly, with respect, and is conscientious when it comes to your business and customers, you will be much more likely to build on that relationship and grow the brand in your store.” frustrations stemming from a rep violating expectations that they didn’t know existed. While the rep should be asking the retailer these questions in the first place, there’s no nobility in suffering through a lack of quality support for years when the problem could be addressed in a sentence or two. Don’t be a d*** (sorry lol). This doesn’t just cover being rude or ignorant or disrespectful (although the rep shouldn’t be acting like that anyways), but it also refers to doing what’s right for the account. If your rep treats you fairly, with respect, and is conscientious when it comes to your business and customers, you will be much more likely to build on that relationship and grow the brand in your store. Nobody wants to maintain a relationship with someone who mistreats them. If a rep pads their orders without your knowledge, doesn’t show up on time, never acknowledges the store staff, doesn’t mention new product or promotions, leaves their product a mess in the humidor, or sits in the lounge on their phone during an event or during your wholesale call … they’re being a d***. Nobody likes any of that, and it’s the fastest way to ruin a relationship. Ask to do something for the retailer. This one is the most powerful because it encapsulates the whole of what the relationship should be in a nutshell. The rep should be asking to help. Period. How can I reach more of your customers? How can I drive sales when I’m not here? Can we plan an event to move through this inventory? How can we make more money together this year? What do you need me to do to keep driving business? How can I help? Questions like those create opportunities to get creative together, grow your partnership and build a relationship with a foundation of shared goals and specific steps to take to achieve them. If your relationship with your reps doesn’t look like this, how can you change it? Talk to them. Set clear expectations and follow up on them. If a rep doesn’t do what you expect, call them out. They should want to add value in the way you expect them to and they won’t be able to do it if you assume they know what you expect. Reps are a retailer’s greatest resource for selling product, and allowing your resources to remain undeveloped and unfocused is as much a sin of the retailer as it is of the rep. They should be trained well enough to do these things without instruction but if they’re not doing it, and it’s affecting your ability to sell the product, the only one who suffers with your silence is you. The strength of a relationship between a rep and the retailer has an almost linear relationship with sales of that product in the store. The rep should be selling out at every opportunity to build on that relationship and the retailer should establish clear expectations and be consistent about enforcing those expectations. When everything clicks and comes into focus, things get easier, business happens organically, and both parties grow and develop. Instead of shaking your head thinking about how your relationship with that rep could be so much better, let them know. Your relationship with them, the brand, and your customers will thank you.