The longer I am in this industry – and the more catalogs and vendor flyers that arrive in the mail – the more challenging it gets for me to focus on the here and now, while those glossy catalogs emphasize wonderful offerings for upcoming seasons/holidays/events three to four months down the road when I will constantly have to remember to stop writing 2015.
As I write this just prior to Thanksgiving, there are just a few customers who have yet to pull the trigger on their holiday orders. Time is short, fellas. As with many of my customers (is it just mine?), some tend to pass the ideas around a large group for feedback and consensus. If you take the time for consensus, your order won't be placed until your company is paying tons of extra money for expedited shipping. Consensus within a small group, maybe two or three total people, often works the best. You and I know that. But that's another subject.
During the past month or two, while I have been trying to nail down holiday, employee gifts, calendar, and other orders to expend the remainder of annual marketing budgets, beautiful catalogs have been arriving via the grumpy postal carrier (so many heavy catalogs!), giving previews of spring and its new and exciting products.
It's hard not to get excited about all the new and fresh ideas and items. I want samples of them all – now! But it gives me a time-warp feeling when I look at the new 2016 stuff as I plow through customers’ needs when the leaves are falling off the trees in the autumn. We haven't even had our first snowfall yet! (Apologies to all distributors who are digging out of a foot of snow.)
Wasn't it just this past summer when the temperature was hovering around 90 degrees that the calendar and holiday chocolate catalogs began arriving at my door? I laughed and put them aside, yet kept them in mind, for the time was actually very near, when my customers needed to be reminded that their own customers depended on those annual printed calendars on the refrigerator. What would happen if their calendar order was later than usual? Perhaps a competitor's calendar would finally find its way to holy refrigerator (or office or desk) real estate.
So I find it a juggling game, thinking and acting on what customers are looking for right now, as opposed to keeping in mind and reminding them what they will need in the near future. What is available now to meet their current needs (calling vendors to inquire on stock quantities) while wondering and considering which new items will meet their future needs.
So deep breath, Annette, remember what my customers need today, while planning for their needs tomorrow. And have an extra helping of dessert, folks. We all deserve it!
Annette Kurman, an award-winning writer, holds bachelor degrees in journalism and nursing, an MBA, and Accreditation in Public Relations. She has been a newspaper reporter, director of public relations at several non-profits, a senior living administrator, and is a registered nurse. She recently joined Allstates Business Solutions and is learning - and living - the life of a distributor. She can be reached at akurman@allstatesbs.com.