Tuesday, August 24, 2010
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by
Bud Hilton
I wish I had coined this phrase but I can’t take credit. My son, who has spent 16 years or so with our company and is now our President, made this statement one day when I said to him, “I wish we could get through the maze and find out who, at this particular company, can approve our project.” He simply directed me to not look for the one who can say “yes” . . . find the one that is saying “NO” and impeding the search. The more I thought of this the more I knew he was right (darn, that was hard to admit).
It’s true, but hard to swallow, that in most corporate structures you can find a lot of people that will agree to the need of many products and services that are presented. Their jobs are to take their well-researched recommendation to their bosses for approval. You have probably been caught in this triangle of “pending forward movement” many times. Most times the one carrying your story to their boss does not even want to tell you WHY they were unsuccessful; so knowledge of the real decision to decline “rests in that limbo world.” Really brash salespeople try to uncover the real decision maker by leading with that always-dangerous question . . . “who will make final decision on this project?” Right off, you are telling your first line of contact that you do not believe they have much power.
The best line of attack to determining the final “NO Chief” is to develop a series of questions to arrive at who possibly could “own” certain areas that are impediments to your success. Once you have identified corporate hurdles, you can fashion certain questions to gather your information and thus narrow down your winding paths. So, let’s look at some obvious things that create NO answers:
WE CAN’T AFFORD THIS! - First glance says this is a “Finance Department” issue. Not always true. Budgets for expenses are many times owned by other department heads in Sales, Marketing, Procurement, etc., and can be “swapped” internally if logic becomes a prevalent issue. Many large companies “budget for spend” but may not budget for ROI-oriented value. In other words, if your project comes with a potential Return-On-Investment that is greater than its expense, you may have a fighting chance to sell its value. Presentation of “more money” is always a good thing to arm your buyer with. At least you might get closer to finding out who is wielding the NO axe.
ISLAND GUARDS – Some companies are loaded with Island Guards (IGs) whose main goal in life is to maintain their island and all the report-ees that live there. If benefits, of your product or service, are at the expense of replacing what has become comfortable to the IG, then your chances are slim and you MUST seek a higher level of potential “NO Gods.” You will have to develop your own tricks to circumvent the IGs and retain your head.
STATUS QUO – This is a tough one. Why are these folks seeking a better solution if an SQ situation exists? Yeah! You are peeling back the onion, now. In many cases this area may bridge over from the IG situations, mentioned above. Some companies place responsible people in buying positions that simply believe OR are led to believe that they are not doing “too bad” now with their current way of doing things. Wow, that “too bad” area is usually broad and cloudy. The killer question(s) to explore is something like . . . “what is your current incidence of experience in qualified numbers?” Of course you will not get the right answer but may get some folks to thinking. Try to ask these kind of questions when the “bosses” are around. Quality managers do not normally like answers such as “pretty good,” “not too bad,” etc.
IT IS HARD TO HEAR THE NO PERSON – You can’t hear them because they are generally shielded by the YES folks and it is your job to uncover them. So, rather than taking you on too much deeper of a dive, I think you get the idea. Stop looking for yes people and make your plans to find the one that is saying NO.
Bud Hilton
Chairman/CEO Genesis Group Inc., Answers Systems
Friday, August 20, 2010
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Not only do we have an economic downturn, but today's businesses must navigate a number of major issues from heightened competition to a demand for more customized product. Even in tough times, a successful company must deliver on the bottom-line. There is a tendency and a mindset with most every company that to increase revenue, you just need to move more product out the door. In a challenging economic environment, the pressure is especially on to increase sales.
The obvious problem is that
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
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by Greg Hilton
“A computer, is like a bicycle for the mind,” Steve Jobs, Founder/CEO Apple.
I always liked that quote. Humans have a difficult time keeping up with the other creatures that inhabit this earth. Thanks to opposable thumbs, our early ancestors could grasp a wooden club and “evolve” to create more advanced technology through the ages. What sets us apart from every other known species is our ability to build tools. These mechanical extensions make difficult jobs easier and make
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
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by Tracy McQuilkin
Distributors deduct because they do not get paid quickly enough. The biggest cause of claims not getting paid on time is because of "pendings."
A status of "pending" occurs when the contract we have on file does not match the claim we received. Why is that? Why are customers given different contracts than what are input into the ContractPro® application? Those ContractPro clients that have fewer pendings have fewer deductions. Pendings and deductions go hand and hand.
Did you know when a claim is paid by deduction an additional six hands have to touch that claim? To change this we need to make sure that distributors get their contracts prior to their program starting and use the ContractPro contract letter to communicate with the customers. If the claims match the contracts we will have far less deductions causing a lot less work for both sides.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
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by Brian Maloney
It’s almost impossible for manufacturers and distributors to keep track of all the locations in the foodservice industry and which Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) each location may/may not belong to today…and that’s hoping each location belongs to just one GPO when it relates to foodservice purchasing.
The issue is so mind boggling at times that whenever the topic comes up, everyone just shakes their heads, agrees that it’s a big problem, and then they move on without even trying to figure out possible solutions.
Here’s a solution . . . .the Foodservice Industry needs One Source that maintains all the GPO’s and which locations link to each one. This One Source would be independent of any distributor, manufacturer, or operator. Anyone in the industry that needs to know location-level information by GPO could go to the One Source and that’s it.
Let’s use an example: Manufacturer A wants to set up a contract with Novation and Premier. The deviated pricing will go through Distributor B. The distributor is handed these new agreements and instead of trying to figure out what locations in their system they should link to these two pricing agreements, the distributor simply pulls this information from the independent One Source of information. The GPOs know they must continue to load their location lists into this One Source. That’s it.
If there are times when a single location is showing up on more than one GPO’s location list, that location is flagged and it won’t funnel into any distributors systems for pricing until the GPOs can agree who owns that location. The One Source company would be responsible for catching these and working with the GPO’s. The way this has to work is that a major distributor or set of distributors and/or manufacturers must agree to this concept and then mandate to the GPOs that they load their location lists into this independent One Source company.
It would work. So what distributors and/or manufacturers are ready to solve this?
Monday, July 19, 2010
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Is spending in our foodservice industry on its way back? What could postpone the return of restaurant spending, once the economic conditions begin to loosen up? Can the really smart marketers help to promote the return of spending in foodservice locations? The answers lie in understanding what we did to initially promote spending in a more prosperous economy.
In much better times, when marketers pushed to redirect consumer dollars from retail grocery stores to eating out, we were successful
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
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by Greg Hilton
In the short time that I have had an opportunity to serve as President of Answers Systems, I have been reminded (from this new perspective) of the exciting destination that Answers Systems--and the customers we serve--are heading toward. In an industry with so many complications and challenges, it is important to reflect on the vision on which our our team is focused.
The Answers System’s Vision . . . To provide critical information to the Foodservice Industry with easy-to-
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
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Getting Started with submitting Electronic Billback Reporting for deviated billbacks . . .
Many distributors are unsure of where to begin. When I talk to them about sending a data file for their deviated billbacks rather than emailing a static report format, distributors are sometimes hesitant because they want to make sure one solution and the same file layout will satisfy every manufacturer trading partner’s requirements.
The good news is there are easy-to-adopt industry standards for
Thursday, July 08, 2010
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We are always looking for ways to do things better, more accurately, and more timely within the Settlement department. We are working on testing an enhancement for claim verification that will do all of these things. Our current process for e-claims works pretty well to resolve contracts/trade spending agreements. We are going to use this same process on paper claims.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
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If you do not want to know what happens for most foodservice manufacturers concerning ineligible deductions read no further.
Unless a manufacturer has a very quick way to validate, reconcile and process claims, in most cases a request for payment from a distributor will turn into a deduction. In fact, here at Answers Systems we find that an average new client is settling at least 80% of their claims by deduction and some 20% by check. Our Distributor Liaison Team and Settlement Group know th