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Highlights from the Small Distributor CEO Summit

"Together We Can Climb to the Summit"

The Small Distributor CEO Summit held February 10th-13th at FormStore Incorporated in Fenton, MO had 22 attendees from D1 - D3 distributorships across the country. 

"This meeting was the best distributor related meeting for
 substance I've attended in the last twenty plus years."
-Dick Gray, Xtension Technologies, Inc.

Attendees of the conference flew into St. Louis on Sunday, the 10th. Meetings were held at FormStore's facilities on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday they took a tour of Jerome Group's facilities in St. Louis. Discussions during the summit centered on the future of the industry and how small distributors need to position themselves to ensure the success of their companies.

According to Mark McKinney, of Celtic Marketing, Inc. in Dayton, OH and co-organizer of the event, "This whole market has changed in the past six or seven years." McKinney said that he was eager to attend the summit because "I'm looking for help in how to grow."

Sessions held during the summit focused on better ways to service the customer, new avenues for small distributors to pursue when developing their marketing efforts, and suggestions for defining and developing sales strategies.

"The candor and contribution of each of the participants only added to one of the most informative sessions I have ever attended."
-Rich Stienstra, Bridge Information Systems 

Successful Partnerships
Paul Keith led one session with a proposal of a new small distributor alliance. In the proposed alliance, forms distributors would create an organization where they could plan strategically to lower costs, learn, share, and grow together. Keith, of Best Business Systems, in Bowling Green, KY, suggested that the new alliance would find ways to utilize, develop, and capitalize on the strengths of each distributorship to become one marketing force. With such an alliance, members would have access to more ideas, more products, and more services. For more information, contact Paul Keith at paul@bestbusinesssystems.com or 270-781-3129.

"It was an event that I know will shape my future in many 
positive ways."
-Jamie Mentzer, Mentzer Printing

Success on the Web
On Monday afternoon, Christi Fentress of Response Builders, a web site development firm, led the discussion of how to develop, design, and utilize a web site successfully. Christi tasked each attendee to ask themselves what would make their web site successful, emphasizing that a successful web site might mean different things to different distributors. "Do you want your clients to be able to go online and check their orders?" she asked. "Do you want them to be able to download information from your web site? Should they be able to send a quote or a sample request to you from your web site?"

When planning for a web site, Fentress said, "Identify your target audience. What does your audience want?" Donald Wenk of Business Printing Plus, Inc. in Owossa, WI added that he surveyed his customers prior to building his web site so that he would get a good idea of what his customers were looking for.

Fentress and the Response Builders team also discussed their 
Web Sites for Distributors program. Through this program Response Builders develops specially designed template web sites for business forms distributors. 

Before the conference, Response Builders sent a survey to each attendee asking them to rate their own web site. Of the 18 responses received, only four people mentioned they thought their web site was a success. Some attendees realized that not having a web site would quickly become a detriment to their business if they didn't get on the web soon.

Other items discussed during the session centered on how to choose the right e-commerce solution for your business, differences in capabilities between some of the online systems, and how to keep your web site current. "No one wants to keep reading the same issue of a magazine over and over," reasoned Fentress. "highlight a different product each month, put a monthly newsletter out there, or add some links. Give people a reason to keep coming back to the site."

"I have already started to implement a couple of changes to our web site in response to what I learned from Christi and others."
-Douglas Tucker, Kelty-Best, Inc.

Successful Vertical Market Strategies
 Starting off the sessions on Tuesday was Paul Edwards, President of FormStore Incorporated and sponsor of the Summit. His discussion was called Rapid Distributor Growth Using Key Vertical Market Strategies. "The key to rapid growth," stated Edwards, "is to pick a product and get really good at it."

"When picking a product to focus on," Edwards stated, "pick something new and exciting with value added that not everyone else has. Make sure it's something they're going to want to buy again."

After choosing a product, Edwards suggests building a knowledge of the product. "Visit the manufacturer. Get out in the plant. Go to his web site. There's a ton of information out there. Then review the process so you can learn how to build things into the process that not everyone else does."

Edwards also emphasized other important steps such as developing a sales plan and sharing successes with customers. "Establish responsibility for following through with the plan. Set deadlines, and develop reporting systems." Then, "Email your success stories to your other customers. Share your best practices and neat ideas with them."

Successful Techniques for Maximizing ROI on DMIA Membership
Dick Gray's discussion focused on utilizing the return on DMIA membership dues. Gray spoke about the most efficient way to find new sources. He also spoke about different ways members can utilize the DMIA web site, such as finding new product ideas. There is also a marketing library available on the web site to help members create their own marketing materials.

Gray also discussed the new online education and training modules called the Print University, as well as the Print Buyers Search, which is a database on the DMIA web site that lists distributor capabilities. He emphasized that distributors who don't list their company in this database are selling themselves short.

"I want to thank Dick Gray for helping me to use the tools that have been at my fingertips (the DMIA and web site) without my even knowing about them."
-Robb Tipton, Star Business Products

The Future of Digital Printing
Bosy Colak, an expert in the future of digital printing, led the final session on Tuesday with a discussion of the future of digital printing. Colak discussed the graphic arts marketplace and the blurring of boundaries between vendors, superstores, commercial printers, and service bureaus. He noted that traditional printing has shortened its production cycle by days, but digital printing has shortened its cycle from days to hours.

According to Colak, the capabilities required for digital print to grow, include more flexible large format printers, more inline finishing capabilities, more light weight paper capabilities, and inline punch and perfing capabilities. And "this is where the big companies are investing the money."

Colak also discussed variable information and 1-to-1 marketing where "variable data is the key." He also emphasized that currently there are not enough applications developed out there for digital. "You have to sell total solutions."

"When you are trying to grow a small distributor into a big one you tend to feel isolated. We all don't have that feeling anymore."
-Bill Lampe, Lampe Graphics

Success of the Small Distributor CEO Summit
According to Dick Gray, "Words cannot do justice to what we accomplished in two short days…Listening, sharing, being open to improvements in ways to grow our Distributorships and how we can improve our relationships with our manufacturing partners in DMIA were the norm."