Are You Building the Relationship that Customers Expect?

Jobbers across Canada must become more aggressive and focused in thinking when it comes to building professional relationships with their customers.

I have heard time and time again from jobbers that their customers are not interested in a “professional relationship,” but this is not what I hear from the shop owners who attend my management classes. Perhaps it is time for jobbers to sit down and think about how they define a professional relationship. Too many jobbers think bringing in coffee and donuts to the shop when they are out making their rounds defines a relationship, and then wonder why they don’t have first-call loyalty. Well, those jobbers are right. That practice does define a relationship, but it is not a professional business relationship; it’s a “thank you for the coffee break” relationship.

The best shop clients desire a proper business relationship. Increasingly however, shop clientele see the benefit of a professional relationship with a jobber as a “quid pro quo,” an exchange. Shops are asserting that a relationship is the exchange of information–information that will help you deliver more value to them.

Too many jobbers misinterpret what relevant information is and proceed to flood the client’s e-mail with marketing messages, which very frankly is not a service to the shop owner, and certainly no reward for shop loyalty to the jobber. The shop owner gets turned off because the marketing e-mails become a nuisance to deal with.

The shop owner will only perceive e-mails as a genuine service when the jobber uses his knowledge of the shop owner’s needs and interests to send information that the shop owner truly cares about.

Consider our industry’s history.

Some loyalty programs across the land try to reinforce or modify the shop owner’s behaviour, though not with the core values of the product, service and value, but with extraneous rewards. This method of relationship building has produced an expensive black hole for the industry to fill, as the shop client then comes to expect rewards as an entitlement, which reduces their effectiveness.

It becomes expensive in terms of man-hours and physical cost outlays in hard-core products to outdo the last performance. All these costs must be factored into the cost of the products sold. Consider the longevity of this line of thinking and action, when we are now in a new world economy in terms of price/quality competitiveness, with the pricing and quality of products from the Pacific Rim gnawing away at jobber volumes and margins day in and day out.

With this in mind, the WD and jobber must rethink their strategies to ensure they reflect the future.

Shop clients are already changing their values and priorities. Their business is becoming one of the toughest businesses to run today in the retail market.

Shop clients yearn to interact with those they trust, and who trust and respect them.

Shop clients are seeking value, simplicity and ease today from their jobbers. They don’t want to be put into a position where they have to examine each transaction and each service relationship to ensure they are getting real value. They want trust. They want to work with a jobber who has developed the six-word culture of “I will not let you down.”

That is the culture these shops are developing with their clientele, and these shop owners know this type of statement says it all.

It is the right path to success today and will secure all the business from their client. They want the same from you.

This trust becomes the brand, if you will, of the jobber store. It is the promise that the shop client can trust the jobber company, and a well-conceived, well-executed approach to building client loyalty delivers on this commitment.

The bottom line for our industry is that it must truly examine traditional client loyalty programs. Those that were so revolutionary 20 years ago have begun to outlive their effectiveness. If the industry keeps clinging to them, the message to the shop owner really is “same old, same old.” The industry must start communicating to shop owners that “same old” is not the way to proceed into the future. We must change together.

It isn’t just about a new set of trinkets. Some 30% to 40% of jobber revenues are generated by businesses that are not profitable. You need to ask whether they can be made profitable and focus on those things which will help reach that goal.

Costly, irrelevant programs must give way to a more functional relationship between the shop owner and jobber. The important thing to acknowledge here is that today the shop client is in the driver’s seat. The jobber’s commitment to do business with a shop owner must be guided by that reality.

The facts have proven that the comparative position of a jobber business and its relative profitability is tied directly to the cumulative data it maintains on its clients. Do you as a jobber know enough about each client you do business with? Your relationships are best managed through knowledge and insight into your shop client base. Your business, and its profitability, goes up in direct proportion to the quality of the relationship you have with your shop clients.

To achieve the quality relationship required today, the “quid pro quo” statement falls directly into place as jobbers must start to recognize this business trend within their own marketplace. Your jobber business brand must be trust. However trust cannot be developed without the exchange of relevant information, backed up by relevant value delivered to the shop owner.

Continuing with programs that develop entitlement is too costly for any WD or jobber to persist with. It is not the answer for our industry.