Distributors Helping Distributors (vol 43) – What Biz Model Best Suits Your Needs?
Previously on DHD we hosted two industry titans, Jo-an Lantz, CEO of Geiger, and JoAnn Gilley, CEO of Overture Promotions. We learned best leadership practices, business models we can plug into and partner with, and pitfalls to avoid when scaling our promo businesses. There are lots of ways to position your business for scale, and to run your operations in a way that works best for you.
Below are a few key takeaways from our discussion with Jo and Jo-an:
- COMMUNICATION IS KEY – proactively communicating with your team (or your clients) insures you know where everyone stands. Being transparent and managing expectations builds trust, and helps create long standing, loyal relationships.
- VALUE YOUR TIME – when outsourcing or plugging into a partner, the question often asked is “why do I want to give up so much of the gross profits”. While there is a balance here, the metric often not valued is our time. When you run your own show, that means your time is spent dealing with operations (managing people, tech, accounting, etc), taking away your time spent on building sales and relationships. Consider the amount of time you will get back by outsourcing or working for a company, allowing you to focus on revenue generating activities and relationship building. That’s why we do what we do right? How much is that worth now?
- GROW & STAY RELEVANT – while this means different things to each of us, as the old saying goes “If you’re not growing, you’re dying”. If you are focused on growing your sales and swag biz, you WILL learn strategies and best practices to increase your sales. You will position yourself to stay more relevant (and maybe even cut the production lines) with suppliers. What’s your strategy for growth and how can you best position your business to grow … will it be setting up your own systems and teams, or partnering up with another company? Pick a path that speaks to you and the watch your sales and joy in this business scale to new heights.
>>YOU CAN WATCH FULL RECORDING HERE!
>>LISTEN TO THE FULL RECORDING HERE!
Hope you pull a nugget (or two!) from this workshop that will help you start to scale your swag biz beyond you…
Josh Frey
The Swag Coach Program
p.s. Need help with your swag sales? Tell us about your distributorship … click here: Get Help from The Swag Coach
