I used to work in a computer hardware distribution company. I was the east coast region sales and purchasing manager. There has an mid-west office in Chicago but business was very bad. My boss sent me over there to find out what happened to that market.
When I was there, I visited the local distributors, customers and went to their trade show. I found out the mid-west market is very different from the east and west coast. There are a little behind and people take time to accept new product. In addition, customers don't keep a lot of inventory. They buy very little or they buy after they sold. The mid-west market is very small. My company made a big mistake, they shipped all the hot sales items in east and west coast and sell it below market price to get customer which was a wrong strategy. In east and west coast, average invoice around $10K but in mid-west average invoice only $1000.
A month after I was there, I changed the product line and bring in the product which local retailers needed (which consider outdated product in east coast). I increased the selling price to market price and improved the customer service. In mid-western, customer care more about customer service than price. If you don't have good customer service no matter how low you are selling, they are not buying from you.
After six months, I was able to increase the revenue from $50K/month when I went there to $600K/month when I came back to NY.
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2 comments:
I totally agree with you.
Especially these days, customer service is more creditable than the price.
The higher the standard of living,
the higher the customer's expectation for customer service.
You showed your potential ability as a manager through your Mid-Western Experience.
It's good that the business got on a track.
I think that was a great marketing strategy in order to increase the mid-west market’s sales. Customer Service is very important to attract new business and keep people coming back. Keeping the product line up-to-date for the specific region was an important factor in the success of this strategy.
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