> Reflecting on EDS 2018

by David Norris
Norris & Associates, Inc.
ERA President
dnorris@norrisrep.com

As crazy as the week at EDS can be, and it’s as draining as a triathlon, it is an almost unique opportunity to “touch” most of your business partners.

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As I write this, we are all recovering from EDS — arguably the most taxing and rewarding week in our annual business calendars. EDS brings all the stakeholders in our industry together in one of the tree major industry events of the year.

ERA and ECIA are the sponsoring organizations that own and manage the EDS Summit and as such, work together to insure that EDS continues to evolve in support of the ever-changing needs of our constituent member firms.

I can admit to recalling those earlier EDS shows when manufacturers would highlight new products with the expectations of booking special stocking packages from their distributors at the show. Back in the day, the reps role was more observational with plenty of emphasis on the “social” aspects of EDS week. Oh, the stories we all could tell! There was actually one year when EDS was moved to New Orleans; probably the only other city that could make Vegas seem tame!

EDS 2018 followed a structure that has morphed over the past number of years where the week has extended on both ends and now includes rep/manufacturers QBRs, sales meetings, industry overview breakfast sessions, golf events, and other on- and off-site gatherings, to take advantage of the fact that we are all together in one place at one time. As crazy as the week at EDS can be, and it’s as draining as a triathlon, it is an almost unique opportunity to “touch” most of your business partners.

The EDS Summit creates this opportunity through the support of the member firms of ERA and ECIA. Manufacturers, distributors and representatives invest time and resources through their team members who actively participate in the extensive planning and preparation required to make it all work. The day after EDS 2017 concluded, work began to put shape to EDS 2018.

Those many volunteers from the three constituents of our EDS community deserve our thanks for a job well done! By most reports, it was a pretty seamless EDS this year, which requires a great deal of behind the scenes efforts to make that so.

The Spark initiative brought together a few dozen participants representing the best and brightest from our member firms. As this program continues to grow, the Spark attendees and alumni are building their network which will, no doubt, be a foundation upon which the future of our industry builds.

This year there was an APAC session helping our attendees from Asia better understand our ecosystem and how to get the most from their investment at EDS. We hope to increase the attendance next year for what turned out to be a very worthwhile effort.

Each morning as I sat in one of the now traditional breakfast meetings, whether hosted by TTI, Digi-Key or ERA/ECIA, I was reminded how valuable having this time together can be. Beyond all the individual, supplier specific meetings, these “community gatherings,” thanks to our various host entities, bring us together to learn, exchanges ideas and prepare for the future.

Many thanks to those who support EDS each year by not only coming to Vegas, but by joining us at the EDS venue as on-site participants. Your continued commitment to EDS and the herculean effort to ensure its success allow us to deliver the value our attendees have come to expect.

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> EDS 2018: Were you there?

by Walter E. Tobin
ERA CEO
wtobin@era.org
T: 617-901-4088

The measure of success of any meeting or conference is pretty simple: What is different 30 to 90 days afterward? If nothing changed, it was all a waste of money and the most precious commodity we all have — TIME!

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All of us are back from EDS. We have files to unpack, business cards to file, action items to follow up on … all to be done while trying to get caught up and get back to the day-to-day activities of our business. Whew — finally, things are ALMOST back to normalcy!

But wait. Why did we go to EDS in the first place? Wasn’t it to meet NEW people, to seek out NEW manufacturers, NEW technologies, and learn NEW stuff from the many breakfast meetings, the manufacturer breakout session, the reviews conducted in the suites, or from the new folks met at casual “run-ins” while at breakfast, lunch, dinner or after-dinner drinks? Isn’t all of this beloved chaos and madness exactly why we went to EDS and why we love it? Despite the common complaint, “EDS is such a death march,”and telling everyone how much we hate it … we really DO LOVE IT!

We love the action, the thrill of the hunt, meeting new folks, doing deals and seeing old friends. It is in our DNA — if it is May, it is EDS in Vegas!

So what now? What do we do with all of the “stuff” from EDS — brochures, pens, handouts, thumb drives with presentations, business cards — all with notes on the back to follow up when we get home?

Most of us have a tendency to put everything in a corner of our office, get back to our normal jobs, and “as soon as” we get caught up, dig through the stuff and begin to follow up.

Does this sound familiar? Is this YOU? It is certainly true for me. It is human nature to go back to our comfort zones, our day-to-day normalcy, and do our job. After all, it is what we are being paid to do! Or is it?

Why did you or your company decide to make a HUGE investment in your attendance at EDS? Is it so that you could return and do the same things over and over? NO.

You went to EDS to learn about new technologies, to meet new people, to see how you can do even better for your existing partners, so that you can return to the “real world” and craft NEW PLANS for your companies. Plans that will take you and them into new (and perhaps uncomfortable) areas. This is the only way to continue to remake yourself and your company, and to remain relevant and forward-thinking in these ever-changing times.

Your job as the company leader is to position your company to “Skate where the puck is going,” not to where it is now because, when you get there, you might find out that the puck (the market) has moved on, and you and your company are left behind.

I can almost guarantee you that, in all those folders and business cards, there is at least ONE opportunity for your company that is waiting for you to follow up on. Don’t let another rep, manufacturer or distributor who also met with that company BEAT YOU TO THE PUNCH and follow up first, so when you finally get around to following up, you are given “the Heisman” and told that the opportunity is gone.

Some may say, “Oh well … it is not my fault.” Or is it? The measure of success of any meeting or conference is pretty simple: What is different 30 to 90 days afterward? If nothing changed, it was all a waste of money and the most precious commodity we all have — TIME!

So . . . put down your coffee (After you read The Representor of course!), and dig out your EDS 2018 folder or box. There is gold in there. You just need to find it before your competition.

I also need to dig out my own “stuff” from EDS and do my own follow-up. My apologies to all of you to whom I said: “I will email/call you when I get back.” I hope the opportunity is still there when I do.

ERA at EDS

EDS 2018 was a huge success for ERA! We had more than 600 people at our ECIA/ERA breakfast who came to listen to Liz Laderman of the Federal Reserve Bank talk about the Fed policies and their impact on our day-to-day lives. Many thanks to all who attended!

The Connections Café was alive and had a real “buzz” this year. Did you feel it? I did. There were almost no seats available at most times. We welcomed many companies BACK to the Mirage who had stayed “off property” in the past and made folks walk the famous “Las Vegas Block” to meetings off site. As you all know, the walk “next store” takes 45 minutes and prevents you from booking a meeting just prior to or right after the off-property meeting … so, thanks for staying at the Mirage and truly becoming a part of EDS!

Our ERA Business Center was always jammed! It was great to see so many ERA members and sign up new ones, to have you meet our great staff and celebrate together the great organization that is ERA. Both of our conference rooms were booked almost 100 percent by YOU for private meetings. We will have these two rooms again in 2019.

As you noticed, we had stricter enforcement of your EDS Show Badge credentials to access all of the venues at EDS. In today’s times, we need to ensure the safety of all attendees while at the show. All of us at ERA appreciate your support of this heightened security as we continue to work hard to put on a great show in a safe environment.

On a personal note, I want to thank all of you who stopped by to say hello. Your membership and support of ERA and our team is most valued and never taken for granted.

Now, let me get to those business cards from EDS and return those calls!

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> From the Top – Bringing value and resources are key to customer access and engagement

by David Norris
Norris & Associates, Inc.
ERA President
dnorris@norrisrep.com

More and more are either outsourced or consolidated to shrinking internal resources. It is the classic story of being asked to do more with less, and in many instances, for less!
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There’s lots of talk these days about the extinction of the field salesperson. The premise for this argument rests on the customers’ apparent ability to find everything they need on the internet, eliminating the need for a salesperson to call on them.

Most field salespeople would likely agree that customers can be “less accessible” than they once were, but that’s not because they don’t “need” us any more. The voice of the customer will suggest something quite the contrary, in fact. We just need to listen in order to understand the key to customer access and engagement.

Talk to your customers, and most will agree that the internal resources available to them at their companies have been reduced. With consolidations, restructuring and the incessant drive for bottom-line numbers, everyone is feeling the pinch. Where once OEMs were quite vertically integrated and staffed across the disciplines needed to design and produce their products, today’s model is quite different. More and more are either outsourced or consolidated to shrinking internal resources. It is the classic story of being asked to do more with less, and in many instances, for less!

It’s no wonder that our customers are more discriminating as to how they use their time and how much, or little, of it they make available to salespeople. That said, they are desperate for resources to help them achieve their goals and objectives. Where once those resources were internal and readily available, in today’s world of more with less for less, those who bring resources to the table have ready access to their customers as they are seen more as collaborators than simply salespeople.

It’s difficult to establish that type of relationship with the customer because you must have some access to get the audience, to understand the customers’ needs, and offer your resources and solutions to those needs.

Manufacturers’ representatives have a unique advantage as they can engage with the customers’ design teams on many levels with a variety of resources from their principals that apply to the customers’ needs. Once the connection is established based on delivering real value to the customer, the rep can build on that access as a collaborative resource.

There is a caveat, however, and one we all need to remember as customers grant us access based on a sense of perceived value. It is critical that we take the time to understand their needs and bring real resources to the table each and every time we meet.

As we plan our customer visits with that next principal coming to town, we all need to keep that in mind. Our customers will welcome us back, and in fact, pull us in, as long as we do just that! They need outside resources to make those bottom-line numbers, and the field salesperson is the one who can deliver those resources. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

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> Executive Commentary – The rock is back at the door!

by Walter E. Tobin, ERA CEO
ERA CEO
wtobin@era.org
T: 617-901-4088

When I was wearing a young(er) man’s clothes and was on the road selling electronic components, I would work hard all month to hit my budget. I would track my progress each week with my sales manager to assess my progress and get his/her advice as to what I needed to do better to hit my goal and achieve success for the month.

The month would end and, voila! I hit my budget (OK, sometimes I missed it but work with me here!) … Whew! Success! I can relax and bask in the glory of success!

However, I had this one sales manager who would review my performance for the month, hand me my sales budget for the next month, and tell me: “The rock is back at the door.”

All of my hard work and pushing that rock (my sales budget) up the hill for a month and achieving success, now meant little if anything. It was a new month and a new budget — another new, and perhaps, larger rock to push up the hill! I was allowed no more than a day to relax and bask in my success before I had to get back to work.

I never forgot this analogy. Success is fleeting, and there will always be new and bigger rocks that need pushing up new and steeper hills!

ERA just completed a GREAT conference in Austin. It was a HUGE success! Our many conference volunteers and sub-committees, under the leadership of the Conference Chair Rick LaPiana, rocked the house! They owned that rock and drove it up a huge hill …

So … what’s next?

The rock is back at the door!

We have already begun to plan for 2019! ERA has renewed its contract for the AT&T Conference Center in Austin, Texas, for Feb. 24-26, 2019. Mark it down. Write It Now (WIN). We want to make 2019 an even better conference with YOUR help and involvement … BUT we will need your help to push this bigger rock up a steeper hill!

Our membership expects a world-class event for sure.

John Hutson, CPMR, president of MacInnis Group, is the 2019 conference chair. He is putting together a team for the various committee chairs and subcommittees. Raise your hand up and let me or John know that you want to help us “push the rock.”

In addition to the conference, ERA is heavily involved with ECIA in planning the EDS Connects Leadership Summit 2019 event in Las Vegas on May 15-18. We have booked an exciting speaker for the ECIA/ERA breakfast session on Thursday, May 17, at 6:45 a.m.

Elizabeth Laderman, senior outreach economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, will deliver a presentation entitled “Recent U.S. Economic and Financial Developments and the Outlook.” I am confident that her presentation will prove to be most timely and very helpful for all attendees.

EDS is a great venue for all of us to meet with our rep, manufacturer and distributor partners to share best practices, make new friends and reconnect with old ones. The Mirage Hotel is a great venue for this event — exciting, fast-paced and lively for sure.

Stop by the ERA pavilion to meet our great staff, have a coffee and use our area as your base of operations. We would love to see you!

All of us at ERA will look forward to seeing you there … And remember: The rock is back at the door!

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> From the Floor – Productive paranoia: Understanding what customers value

by Tom Wichert
Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing
TDK-Lambda Americas

Tom Wichert, executive vice president of sales and marketing at TDK-Lambda Americas, has extensive experience in managing a complex multi-tiered sales channel, as well as executive experience in international and domestic sales. He specializes in strategic relationships, business plans and new product development.

Wichert enjoys managing and mentoring people to perform to the best of their abilities. He has an MBA in marketing from Hofstra University and a B.S.E.E. from West Virginia University. You can reach Tom Wichert at tom.wichert@us.tdk-lambda.com.

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The phrase “trusted advisor” has been used frequently. It takes the value of a salesperson well beyond just selling products and makes him or her indispensable.

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“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” It’s a famous quote by Andy Grove, one of the founders of Intel Corporation. He described “inflection points,” the key points when your business model changes. These transitions could be driven by technical shifts, social forces, economic conditions or service disruptions. This voice of paranoia was extended and evangelized by author Jim Collins, described as “productive paranoia” in his book, “Great by Choice.”

Both authors emphasized a productive paranoia approach, where awareness, preparation and proactive activity helped their companies not only stay ahead of the changes, but gain a better position for their companies as a result of them.

For sales representatives, to truly understand the value they bring to customers has been an area of continuous change over the last 30+ years. These changes have been driven by the market inflection points Grove described in his 1996 book, “Only the Paranoid Survive.”

For evidence, one only needs to consider the shifts in the way we communicate and interface with customers. Frequent and welcome in-person visits have morphed into text messages. Friendly lunch-and-learn visits with engineers have dwindled in favor of independent surfing of the web, scouring the sites of high-service partners late in the evening to discover new products and study their specifications. Product cost has become the top priority, with product design features second, and supplier credibility lagging behind, a distant third.

Furthermore, larger customers often employ a team of supplier commodity managers, many of whom hide behind “strategy”and create barriers. These impediments block technical experts and supplier advocates from engaging directly with suppliers. This behavior causes these relationships to become transactional and impede the one attribute all good salespeople bring to a customer — trust.

This weakened bond between sales and end user has its drawbacks for customers as well. A lack of commercial and technical support may strike during times of crisis, reduced expediting and delivery support may materialize when markets swing from down to up, and there may be a failure to adequately share detailed product roadmaps or collaborate to identify and support technology trends.

So how do salespeople manage to stay in front of their customers and demonstrate their value? The need to do so is great, but the challenge is formidable.

Design engineers, huddled in their cubicles, are hard at work. Management requirements for blazing speed and minimal cost can cause engineers to miss essential specifications, cut design and testing corners, and choose lowest cost solutions without fully factoring in end environments or product life cycles. An engineer in a pressure cooker environment will not make time for a sales call, but he or she will make time for a trusted advisor.

The phrase “trusted advisor” has been used frequently. It takes the value of a salesperson well beyond just selling products and makes him or her indispensable.

For sales representatives to build customer trust, they must expect and prepare for change (technical, social, economic or service). Salespeople must adopt a “productive paranoia” approach and embrace change by monitoring and adjusting their traditional ways of doing business. It is crucial for representatives to address key elements within their control: collect cell phone numbers of key contacts; support engineers outside of core business hours; highlight only those products relevant to the engineers’ needs; demonstrate the ability to pull in the second wave of field application engineers, suppliers’ design engineers, quality group or other reinforcements as needed, to solve a problem; provide facts and quantitative data regarding the value of longer-life components and cost of ownership; ensure your sales team is trained and highly knowledgeable on products; understand your supplier’s escalation procedure; and communicate the status of your project to your key contacts.

Finally, anticipate your customer’s engineering development and production needs based on your history with the customer!

The last item is essential and highlights one of the bigger benefits of the sales representative model: a local relationship with knowledge of the customer. Your commitment can and will help them be successful.

An interesting example from another industry where local customer knowledge helped a small company achieve success against a large company, can be found in True Value Hardware’s comeback against Home Depot and Lowes. Home Depot and Lowes are big-box retailers focusing on cost. True Value Hardware made a conscious effort to focus on service. It hired employees who deeply understood their products, had local customer knowledge and relationships which allowed them to anticipate their customers’ needs. True Value Hardware used this model to out-service the large chain stores and achieve success.

The visionary ability to prepare for the unexpected is what separates a great selling organization from the mundane. What never changes are the two essential characteristics found at the core of every successful selling relationship — trust and commitment.

For the representative sales model, a rapidly changing environment of technology, service and social disruptions will continue to occur with little warning. Grove’s and Collins’ messages still prevail and offer up this great business advice: Beware. Only the productive paranoid will survive!

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> Off The Shelf – Our industry is transforming. Are you?

by Phil Gallagher
President, Core Distribution Business,
Avnet

Phil Gallagher is president of the core distribution business for Avnet. He leads the company’s broadline distribution business globally with three regional presidents reporting to him — spanning the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Gallagher began his career with Avnet in 1983 and has held executive leadership positions in sales, marketing and operations during his 30-year career with the company. He has served as president of both of Avnet’s business operations, the electronics component business for the Americas from 2004 to 2009, and the IT business globally from 2009 to 2014.

A past president of the National Electronic Distributors’ Association (NEDA), now part of the Electronic Components Industry Association, Gallagher received one of the organization’s highest honors, the Gail S. Carter Award, in 2009.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Drexel University.

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… the Internet of Things and the multitude of innovative capabilities born of “computing at the edge” will be the key to generating the kind of disruptive transformation needed to drive long-term business growth and deliver truly differentiated customer experiences.

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In our fast-moving industry with consolidation, margin compression, shifting line cards and expanding customer demands, companies that stand still get left behind. Fortunately, new opportunities are everywhere — from the power of digitization, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to low-cost support models and value-add solutions for customers of all sizes.

When you consider this burgeoning environment in the context of the current global economic landscape, with growth in 2017 estimated at 3.7 percent and 2018-19 forecasts of 3.9 percent, there are plenty of reasons for optimism in the global electronics industry. While everyone wants to take advantage of these brighter economic times, the question that we frequently hear is where do we invest to stay competitive and relevant as the requirements of existing and emerging customers continue to evolve?

At Avnet, we believe that the Internet of Things (IoT) and the multitude of innovative capabilities born of “computing at the edge” will be the key to generating the kind of disruptive transformation needed to drive long-term business growth and deliver truly differentiated customer experiences.

A trillion reasons to get excited

To appreciate the magnitude of these opportunities, let’s look back at some major technology shifts that have changed the course of the tech sector and, by extension, the global economy.

During the 1970s, IBM and other mainframe vendors sold tens of thousands of units each year. In the 1980s and 1990s, the market became saturated with personal computer manufacturers selling hundreds of millions annually. With the launch of Apple’s iPhone in 2007 and the first Android phone in 2008, we saw a billion-plus smartphones shipped globally each year.

Today, we are in a very exciting era with the global IoT market forecasted to grow from $2.99 trillion in 2014 to $8.9 trillion in 2020. Walking through CES 2018 earlier this year, we saw all kinds of amazing new IoT gadgets, and nearly every category of device got “smarter” thanks to AI and voice assistants such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. We saw wall-sized televisions, razor thin laptops, autonomous electric cars and the world’s first smartphone with an in-display finger scanner.

The number of electronic components in these smart devices is increasing dramatically, creating a whole new ecosystem for our industry. Each and every one of us has an opportunity to stake our claim. I feel fortunate to have a front row seat to all the innovation and transformation taking place.

From top supplier partner to fast-growing global customer

One thing has become abundantly clear — the traditional “swim lanes” that once separated the various players of the technology supply chain are defunct. A great example of the blurring of lines within the technology ecosystem is illustrated by one of our longtime supplier partners, Molex. Acquired in 2014 by Koch Industries, Molex’s new parent company transformed the business to extend a solution strategy in 12 industries. Today, with 72 factories worldwide, Molex is one of Avnet’s fastest growing customers. As a global provider of electronic solutions that are integral to a diverse range of end products — from smartphones and electric cars to robotic surgery tools and the Mars Rover — Molex seized IoT and computing at the edge opportunity to form a new value proposition and propel business growth worldwide.

Taking ideas from kitchen table to market

The latest technology innovations also have served as a powerful enabler of a new legion of emerging customers in the maker community. Some of today’s most innovative and disruptive concepts are being developed by “recreational” designers in garages, dorm rooms and the kitchen table. We are also seeing new revenue streams for our industry coming from organizations that have not previously employed electronics, but are now seeking to remotely measure, monitor or control something. Farmers, for example, who have seen the technology in their tractors and equipment evolve, are now increasingly leveraging IoT, using low-cost sensors, drones and machine learning algorithms to improve farm productivity, reduce spoilage, monitor supply chains, manage water and much more.

Winners in our industry will adapt to customers of all sizes, supporting them with tools and resources needed to scale and take their products to market, including financing and infrastructure. Our customer, PNDULUM, is a fully integrated, consumer product development and innovation company. They came to us at the prototype stage with technology for a smart, self-cleaning duffle bag that deodorizes, sanitizes and “anti-bacterializes” clothes, shoes and accessories. Through our partnership, we helped them bring their product to market in just six months, versus the two years that they had originally projected.

Start your transformation journey

Ten years ago, I would never have dreamed that I’d be sharing customer stories like these. We are living in a time with so much innovation that it’s hard to know where to go next. But, go we must. The time is now for new partnerships and collaborations. Smart people everywhere are finding new ways to solve business challenges and improve how we live by leveraging technology to make products and services more efficient, cost effective and, perhaps most crucially, more valued.

While we talk about edge computing, AI and IoT today, who knows where the next technology shift might take us tomorrow? One thing is certain: I’ll be ready to adapt and embrace change so that Avnet can continue to serve as a trusted partner to our customers and suppliers. I encourage you to do the same.

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