Episode #176: TRADE SHOW OBSERVATIONS OFTEN CONTAIN VALUABLE TAKEAWAYS!

Today our “3 Biz Tips in 5 Minutes” show takes a quick look at some of the interesting advice we can bump into while at trade shows. Enjoy hearing a great suggestion form a Montana store owner, as well as a compliment directed to the owner of a software company in a neighboring booth. Finally, a few Account Managers share some sage insight about the two-way street necessary for high-performance, Vendor-2-Customer partnerships.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

All right, Mr. Simple Biz Show.

Speaker 2: 0:10

Hello everybody and welcome to the Simple Biz 360 Podcast. My name is Jeff Mason. I'm your host. We've been at this since, uh, mid-October 2019, and we are recording at Half Coast Studios in St. Louis, Missouri. So if you're ever in need of a recording studio and you're in St. Louis, please get ahold of either Matt or Alex, and they'd be glad to help you. So, uh, we're in the throngs of what we call this Three Business Tips in five minutes series. We take a look at, you know, three, uh, concepts and, uh, just kind of give you something to think about at the end of, uh, the session and kind of inspire you to think about if you want to change your company or make some modifications. So today is trade show takeaways. I love trade shows because these trade shows allow us to kind of have this collective where we meet with customers, we hear some of their philosophies, we meet with industry, uh, neighbors and, uh, competitors and just, you know, people with serving the same community of customers that, that we are, and we get to learn from them. So I love, you know, I'm not trying to eavesdrop at all, but some, sometimes you hear what's going on the booth next to you, it's kind of quiet and you just hear it, uh, and sometimes you're told things directly. So I wanna start off by, uh, telling you about a store chain I met with, uh, or a store I met with rather from, uh, Montana husband and wife own the store. And they were telling me that, you know, they were explaining the difference between good and great customer service. And the woman said, you know, the difference to me is the great customer service providers are those who give the customers what the customers deserve. And in my mind, I said, bingo, you know, if you've guys have ever watched or listened to our podcast, we have this mindset that we talk about from time to time called Serve to Deserve. And we feel the same way. Yeah, needs are important. Wants are important. Bake it in there, but then make sure you serve to that deserve level. So she got it, she understood it. I didn't even ask. And, you know, just great affirmation when you hear it. Second thing is, I overheard this, uh, gentleman come over to the software company next to me and say, Hey, are you the owner? Yeah, I am. I just have to tell you, we love your rep. This gentleman comes in, does a great job training, but most importantly, you know, he answers questions before we even ask them. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I said, this is great. Right? This is exactly what we love to talk about. Get to the customer before they get to you. There's, we can answer so many questions from a customer service vantage point for customers before they ever ask. Bake it into your operations, and then you can end up with customers that have that same, you know, good fuzzy feeling. Um, you know, just tingly feeling that this gentleman had him. He went out of his way to make sure that the owner knew that he as a customer appreciated that level of service. So think about that. And then the third thing was just, you know, this whole concept of of vendor relations, we got to ho knob and rub elbows with other industry associates and on the vendor side, and we were talking about what, you know, what are really good vendor customer partnerships? What do they look like? What are, what's baked into this healthy vendor relations, um, mindset from the customers that we serve? And we really, you know, as we talked through it, we really ended up landing on some, um, some issues that were troubling to all of us in the vendor community. And that's where, you know, when we run into a, what we call a one way partner, instead of one that embraces this two-way street, this two-way partnership, the one-way partners that don't answer phone calls, they don't, you know, pick up their phone, uh, they don't answer emails. They leave us in the dark. They don't tell us what's selling and what's not selling. They don't tell us what's behind decisions. They don't engage with this. They don't, you know, let us come in and see them. Everything's electronic. And it's, it's those relationships that are fractured to the point where we as vendors can't give a healthy enough return on investment to that company where there's so much more that we can give to a, a partnership that really, um, embraces this two-way street, this 360 degree vendor relations concept. So we just, I, I leave you with this thought if, if, if you're a company and you're not embracing this vendor relations, if you don't understand it fully and you, you haven't really, um, you know, looked at your own employees to see what, how they're dealing with their vendors, I encourage you to do so. It's a healthy exercise and I think you will end up getting more bang for your buck in your vendor relationships. So we're gonna dip back to a great, uh, rock and roller. Uh, unfortunately, uh, he left us way too early. January, 2023, we lost Jeff Beck, one of the most innovative guitarists there ever was and ever will be. Probably, uh, he started with the Yardbirds or followed Eric Clapton. Played with Jimmy Page at the Yardbirds and, uh, Jimmy. And, and he and he got together at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a number of years ago. And this is a compilation of many of, uh, three of, of Beck's, uh, great, uh, rock and roll contributions. Enjoy it. And we will see you in 168 hours.