The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests
Welcome to The Third Growth Option, where we're not just talking about growth—we're making it our mission.
At TGO, we understand that success isn't a fixed destination; it's an ongoing journey with twists, turns, and unexpected detours that take us to new places. Those moments are our Third Growth Options, where we throw away binary choices to create our own path.
Hosted by Benno Duenkelsbuehler, O.G #GrowthNerd, we're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside of business, one episode at a time. From humble beginnings to Fortune 500 companies, our stories are not just about business—it's about the relentless pursuit of greatness in every aspect of life.
With each episode, we don’t just want to share insights—we want to empower business owners across all frontiers to carve their own path to success, their way.
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The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests
Adapting to Change: Navigating Multi-Channel B2B, with Lisa DiCostanzo
Are you looking for a Third Growth Option ℠ ?
In this episode, sales and marketing expert Lisa DiCostanzo breaks down the transformation of the retail landscape, especially in the gift and home decor sectors, into a complex, multi-channel experience. Key insights include:
- Omni-Channel Strategy: Retailers are merging online platforms with in-person events like trade shows to create seamless shopping experiences. Vendors can support this by turning their websites into powerful resources that help sales teams become trusted partners for retailers.
- Digital Shift in Customer Service: With traditional customer service evolving digitally, Lisa shares how this change impacts buyer-seller relationships and how companies can successfully blend online and personal interactions.
- Leadership Through Change: Guiding teams through nearly two decades of industry shifts, Lisa emphasizes the importance of leadership in adapting to meet new customer expectations.
- Pandemic-Driven Innovation: COVID-19 spurred independent retailers to adopt new sales approaches, ultimately creating benefits for both retailers and consumers.
Tune in to learn how to stay adaptable and competitive in today’s ever-evolving retail environment.
Always growing.
Benno Duenkelsbuehler
CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN
Hey, welcome to the Third Growth Officer podcast, where we talk about all things growth, yes, even and especially those hard parts where you shed some skin and pick yourself up by the bootstraps. Hey, I'm Benno Dunkelspüler, growth sherpa and OG hashtag growth nerd. We're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside the business, one TGO episode at a time.
Speaker 2:Hello, my name is Lisa DiCostanzo, calling in from Nashville, career-long sales and marketing guru, and look forward to speaking with you today.
Speaker 3:Lisa, I am so happy to have you here. You and I have known each other for almost two decades.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Haven't killed each other yet.
Speaker 2:We started very young in our careers.
Speaker 3:That's right. I'm Benno, the host of Third Growth Option Podcast. We're recording this from Cincinnati, ohio, today and I am excited to have a conversation with you, lisa, about the multi-channel world and specifically, we're going to be referencing the consumer products world, gift and home decor products, world gift and home decor vendors, uh, and sales agencies and retailers that are all interacting with each other. Yes, in, in different ways. Right, there's a million different channels on the retail side big box, specialty, mom and pop. There's to the trade, design trade, um, there is home and garden stores. There is online, fair Amazon, wayfair, wayfair, unfair, fair, right, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:Whatever it's called, yes, yes.
Speaker 3:And then brands and vendors have their own websites, and then sales agencies have their own websites, and you have been I. You have worked uh many years for cr gibson, venerable stationery uh and gift company. Um. You have been working for a wall decor sign company, uh, primitives by kathy and a vp of sales position, and you're now with uh, sullivan gift yes, actually just rebranded. Is it still called Sullivan gift? Just Sullivan's?
Speaker 2:Okay, I thought we have different brands under our umbrella, but it's the Sullivan's brands.
Speaker 3:Right. So, lisa, um, yes, talk to me a little bit about how. What challenges do you run into with retailers wanting to buy different ways? Right? Retailers want to buy on the road from the rep, they want to buy on fair, they want to buy from your website. They each want it their own way, right? And how do you meet the customer where they are?
Speaker 2:It was interesting that you talked about the career and where I started. I think one of the things that has changed over the years is retailers did not Early in my career there was just a few ways, and now it is so complex because they're busy, they have different options and they want to take advantage of all of them. By definition, the omni-channel should be that you are providing the same customer experience across the platform. It should not be different.
Speaker 2:I feel a little bit that some even from maybe the vendor perspective, there could be, and one of the things I try to be mindful of is not to think that you should do something different based on the platform. So, for example, you don't want to do something different on your company website that you might do on fair or you might do at a show. It's trying to have it be consistent because the challenge is that same customer may go to all of those different places. So if you're not offering that consistency, then there might be looking at your brand and saying, hey, I just don't feel I'm getting that same experience. How do I know I'm getting the same opportunity financially, whether it be a promotion, dating, discount, whatever you're offering over here, when I'm ordering there versus here. So I think I see that as one of the biggest challenges maintaining the continuity of what you're offering across the platforms so that customer feels comfortable.
Speaker 2:Because you have to offer that today, you have to be present in all of those places to be able to reach not just your existing customers but new customers, because there are certain customers that are buying in only one way or another, just based on their preference or business model.
Speaker 3:Right, so. And then you have sales agencies, of course, wanting the opposite sometimes, right, so. And then you have sales agencies, of course, uh, wanting the opposite sometimes, right, like they're like, hey, uh, give my sales. You know, you're asking, uh, us to represent you with, you know, 10 sales reps across three States, or a couple of hundred sales reps across 50 States. You're asking us to go be in front of the customer and represent you, um, but then they can just go to fair, they can just go here, they can just go there and they can get the same thing. So how do you deal with that? Right, because they they want, yes, we're asking sales agencies to train sales reps to be the favorite rep of that retailer. Right, that's what we're asking them to do.
Speaker 2:We are yes, for sure.
Speaker 3:But then are we tying their hands behind their back a little bit.
Speaker 2:I don't believe so at all. I think, as a vendor, there's a couple of things that we should do, and things that we do here and I did previously is, first of all, say, a company website. We train our sales teams how to use the website as a tool to help grow their business, and the other aspect of that is using that website. We know that there are retailers who want to order and just they don't have the staff in the store. That's a challenge that we have to deal with today is, retailers struggle to get people to work in the store, or could be. You know economic conditions.
Speaker 2:So if you're a good sales rep, you are using a company's website to maybe put an order in a cart and email that buyer and say, hey, you know, I put some suggestions in there for you. Take a look tonight when you're ready and when you have time, and you know what A lot of websites today like here and my prior company, the sales rep could act on behalf of the customer and push the order through. So if you are using a company's website, you are still, I like to say, influencing the sale or influencing the buy, and still helping that retailer to make the right choice and maybe it could be focusing on bestsellers or something they need and the value add that a salesperson brings by using that website is recognizing that the retailer does not maybe have the time or maybe it's in between visits, and using that website, that company website, as a tool to help the customer.
Speaker 2:And what retailer would not appreciate that value add in terms of hey, I'm too busy, can I throw a few things on there? Would you take a look at it and then you know when we're done. Okay, that's great, push the order through for me. And then, as it relates to fare, you know there's been a lot of that over the years and truthfully, I held off at my last company for a while but then decided to join that as an opportunity. What I have seen at two different companies at Primus by Cathy and here at Sullivan's is the majority of the customers who are buying on FAIR are new customers. They're not necessarily the same customers.
Speaker 2:That our sales reps are calling on, so that's an advantage for them.
Speaker 2:Additionally, the buying habits of the retailers on unfair or different, they're going to buy a little bit smaller and closer to need, so that's also a different model.
Speaker 2:The other thing I've seen is we at my last again speaking for myself, and I've talked to a number of other vendors are sharing those leads with the sales reps and I've actually seen in the last couple of weeks where reps have said hey, I've connected with one of my customers on fair and we're going to start working together. And even at Primitive Spacathy we were at the Dallas show and a customer came in and said hey, I started to order from you on fair. I wanted to see everything else that you have and, by the way, do you have a sales rep who could now call on me? So it's. It's one of those again. If you using it as a way to expand your business, to accept and acknowledge that a retailer wants to order in a certain way and then adjust your sales approach to say I can still help you, how can I help you in terms of where and how you want to order, then it becomes again for the sales rep using that omni-channel approach to really drive and grow their business.
Speaker 3:So you're really talking about. I mean it's interesting because, as you said earlier, 10, 20 years ago there were three ways to buy right you can buy in the store with a road rep. You can buy at the showroom in Atlanta or Vegas or High Point or whatever, or you do a phone or fax. Phone or fax yeah, right. There used to be a thing called fax, A fax yeah, a fax simile machine, yes, way back when.
Speaker 3:So those were the three ways. And then all these other channels and opportunities came in and everybody was kind of threatened by it, confused by it, like, oh my God, they're moving my cheese, are they going to eat my lunch? But what you're talking about is really, you have figured out how to make all the different buying. I call them digital touch points, right? Yes, there's digital touch points and there's analog touch points, right? The analog is face-to-face and in the showroom, on the road, you're making all of those touch points work for each other so that even a rep can utilize the website and even fair can help a rep, right? So it's coordinating all of those different touch points.
Speaker 2:Yes, because if you're going to continue to go down the path of the old three places you're going to get left behind because that's not where the customers are anymore and there's definitely been. I mean not even just on fair, but company websites was seen as also competitive. And, in all fairness to the sales reps, I think a lot of vendors for a while felt like, well, if the customer orders on a website or origination for the order that the salesperson can take advantage of, level that playing field, that becomes another tool in the toolbox. And that's why I feel very strongly that you cannot just rely on the road or the show and you have to help your customer by saying hey, I know you're super busy, why don't we put an order in? And my philosophy is, no matter what channel or what touch point, that is, if the salesperson is involved that customer will purchase more and also make better choices, because they're facilitated by the sales rep.
Speaker 2:So I think that's where we have to the salespeople and all of us just have to be able to and accept all of the different channels and ways that a retailer can and wants to shop.
Speaker 3:And that is absolutely true and I believe that from the bottom of my heart that as wonderful as digital touchpoints and websites and user experience on these various websites, as wonderful and as important as they are, when enhanced with human interaction, a salesperson, the interaction becomes more valuable Absolutely For both sides, right For the buyer and for the seller, for both sides right For the buyer and for the seller and if you're the other word I coined, I love to use, is adding value.
Speaker 2:And you know, in looking at different industry studies and research, the salesperson is still very, very important to that buyer. You're bringing things like product knowledge, trend information, and it's important for vendors to make sure that we are providing that to our sales teams. What's trending? Why are we doing something and bringing that to the salesperson so that they can bring that to their buyers? Because, let's face it, you're not going to see trend information on FAIR. You're not going to see trend information on the website. That is still going to be facilitated through that partnership with your sales reps and your retailers. So the more we give them information, they help their buyers make better choices.
Speaker 2:And when there's no question. Whenever you have that sales rep intervention in a buy, the retailer will make good choices and I think also helps facilitate a strong relationship and a strong partnership between the salesperson and the buyer.
Speaker 3:So, like, everything we're talking about here is sort of is more pre-sale than post-sale, and what I mean by that is right. You're showing the product online and in the store face-to-face website. You're showing the product in order to make a buying decision. Once a buying decision has been made, an order has been placed. Right Now, the order is placed in the vendor's order processing system.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And then in the post-sale world, from order placed to order shipped right, and that can be a black box.
Speaker 2:It could be yeah.
Speaker 3:Right when customer service gets involved and the buyer has to call in hey, where's my order? Hey, it was supposed to ship yesterday. Is it shipping? You know? Maybe a chip, whether chipped on time or late? Once it's in the store, there could be claims issues, there could be, you know, quality, a quality concern. I have to return some, you know, return to vendor, whatever, right, all of that stuff is very messy it's messy.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's gonna happen and I think there the game has changed a lot too with digital right, Because now more and more vendors are using customer portals where all of the invoicing, shipping claims, stuff is accessible to the buyer and the seller and the customer service person and the sales rep. Are you guys or have you had good or bad experiences with digitizing that in a portal?
Speaker 2:No good questions, good points, and where we are, yes, very positive in terms of making sure that things like that are accessible both to the salesperson and to the customer, where they could see past orders If they need to download a copy of an invoice to get UPCs or whatever it is that they need. Again, that goes back to our website and our company's website. The Omni channel isn't just to sell, it's also to provide service the customer experience, and multiple ways.
Speaker 2:Because what if it's seven o'clock at night? They're, you know, in their store working late and they need to get something. It goes back to what we said earlier years ago how could you get that information? By only calling customer service, making a phone call? Now it's, it's accessible and it's on demand, and that's all part of adding value and also having a positive customer experience.
Speaker 2:The other thing that does is when you talk about adding value for the salesperson, let's say they walk in, it gives them great information to go to a website. A customer walks in and goes gosh, I don't remember if what I ordered last time or I'm not sure I got. This Sales rep could easily access the same information. So it goes back to what we're saying through our entire conversation is is everything available in all the platforms and accessible by everyone? And so the salesperson can access that too and say I can get that for you here. Let's take a look and then use that information to help guide either new purchases, reorders, et cetera. But it is making that information equally as accessible as ordering anytime, anywhere that you want to do so.
Speaker 3:So it's funny how you and I again going back over the last almost 20 years now.
Speaker 2:A few years yeah.
Speaker 3:A few years, almost 20 years now. A few years, um, no, I have um watched the industry industry change, um, and we've had had to and, you know, sometimes wanted to, and sometimes had to change along with it. And you know I I'm spending a lot more time, you know, these days helping companies grow by figuring out the digital infrastructure of how digital and analog touch points and interactions work with each other. How do you coordinate that? And you know it's never easy, it's usually painful, but the reward is so high when you create a fairly seamless way to interact buyer to seller, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It is, and change is always hard, regardless of what it entails Only wet babies.
Speaker 3:like change.
Speaker 2:Yes, because you know that it's always a resistance to change, which is what led to the website issue or the fair topics.
Speaker 2:It's also change and it's how you react to it. And then the other thing I look at, you know, as the sales leader. How am I then? I have a responsibility. We, as sales leaders, have a responsibility. How are we going to train, educate on what we're doing, why we're doing it and also what is the benefit for them and their customer? And if we're just changing and throwing it out there without that explanation or education, then we're not doing our jobs as leaders. So it's part of any change is starts with the leadership in terms of how we're going to frame it and show our teams how to use it and how it could be a benefit for them, because we're all on the same team.
Speaker 2:Our goals are the same. It's not just to drive the sales, it's to create long-term relationships. Is to create long-term relationships the days of walking in and just selling something and leaving and expecting the customer to be gone? It's about relationships and this industry in particular is built on relationships and it's about the benefit of the long-term health of that relationship and all of the things we're talking about, whether it's providing the sales or the trends or the invoices, whatever that customer needs, that's what builds that positive relationship and you have to. If you're not going to embrace those, it's tough to move forward. Think back to just COVID years. It really was, I feel, like quite a pivotal change for the independent retailers, who did not were not used to as much of the social media selling or curbside pickup and, frankly, the independent retailers were in a far better position to adapt than any sort of a mall environment.
Speaker 1:Where how?
Speaker 2:could you possibly do curbside pickup and those that really embraced and adapted, that are still. That was big change. And if they didn't have a website or didn't know how to do social media selling, they picked it up quickly.
Speaker 3:They learned how to do it.
Speaker 2:They had to learn really quickly and you see that most of them have maintained that because they saw the advantage.
Speaker 2:So it actually has permeated not just from, say, vendor to retailer, but retailer to consumer, Because they have also had to adopt if you will, an omni-channel approach to their business, whether it be drop ship, where vendors offer that opportunity, or social media selling, selling or shipping whatever it is that they need to do. They had to adapt to. So it really kind of transitioned across the entire chain in terms of what had to happen then and that did force. That was a situation that really forced change versus having to sort of slowly adapt progress.
Speaker 3:right, we did sort of five years worth of progress in five months or in five weeks or in five days. Yes, exactly it sure did.
Speaker 2:Now, we just count down how many years ago is that? But it is nice to see that the successful retailers have continued with that and I think the other piece of that is consumers liked that those they adapted to the change and embraced their ability to buy how and where they wanted to. So it was also something where I kind of need to maintain this, because now my customers are looking for that from me if I'm a retailer.
Speaker 3:Are you ready to learn how to evaluate like a Sherpa so you can build new revenues like a Sherpa? Introducing our growth evaluation workshops where you will learn about growth evaluation concepts and methodologies, problem definition, growth killers, opportunity scoping and goal setting, case studies and group discussions, applied learnings cross-functionally. And get a certificate while you're at it, for you, for your company, for your growth growth evaluation workshops. For booking, contact Alexis at realignforresultscom. It's interesting, I think you're absolutely right that, um, you know the shit of covet right like now, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think that forced a lot of positive change it, it did, and you know, and the other way that I think you and I are comfortable, maybe more comfortable with change than most or than many, is because you and I both are very I think we're both quite skilled at, and comfortable with, and even passionate about, imagining what that future state could look like and then describing it to everybody in a way that everybody goes oh wait, there is this other world out there. I can see myself in it, let's go there.
Speaker 2:Let's go, as opposed to I'm afraid of it, right, yeah, in it, let's go there as opposed to I'm afraid of it, right? Yeah, I think it's thinking of whatever that concept is.
Speaker 2:I like to say 30,000 feet in the air first and okay, what is that going to look like? What is it going to mean? How do I frame it? How do I position it?
Speaker 2:There's no question that every one of us in in whether in our careers or personal lives, any kind of change is, oh gosh, you know what is that going to mean for me, and it's scary. It's also scary. Can you imagine a retailer who didn't even have a website or didn't know how to even do a Facebook live session back then had to be like, oh my gosh, I need to figure this out right away because this is my way to reach my customers, or even more customers? That was probably quite scary to think. How do I do this? But you're right, it was absolutely forced change and that's not necessarily a bad thing, and so maybe does that. Now do we all embrace that change quickly and go well, we need to adapt. The other thing is, you know, to your point, we talked you and I talked earlier about what it was like way back when with the three models, the evolution of Omnichannel, or whether it be, the websites, or it be fair, and even a lot of our sales rep agencies or sales reps have websites themselves.
Speaker 3:Like sophisticated websites.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everyone has a website. Everyone's trying to engage, not necessarily just to sell, but there's also informational aspect of what you're communicating. I feel like it really has accelerated. Change has accelerated over the last few years more than it had for those many, many years that there was only those few ways to order.
Speaker 3:You can listen to episode number 100 that I did with George Chanis I'm hoping I say his name right. He is the former attorney general of the state of Nevada. A futurist wrote a fascinating book, the Millennial Samurai, and he talks about the quickening pace of change. Yeah, and you've just talked about it, sort of COVID, you know 2020. I mean the last four years.
Speaker 2:Four years yeah.
Speaker 3:Change has been much faster than the four years prior to that. Right, and I'm telling you, the next four years it's going to be faster than the last four years, with or without COVID. It's just because AI and technology is speeding up so quickly, that weird stuff coming down the pike two months from now, eight months from now, that nobody knows anything about yet and we better be ready for it. Or you know what? We cannot get ready for what we don't know, but we've got to be ready by being flexible. By being flexible.
Speaker 2:And AI is another that people it's what is it? How does it work? It's scary, it's going to take jobs, and not that I'm getting one. But I heard the new iPhone has got AI built in. I don't know what that means, but that's another example of something that is change and scary and what does it mean? And it feels to me like, and I know at some of the conferences, the industry conferences, we've had presentations about that and again I think it's what does it bring? And how could I best use something like that to I'd like to say not to my advantage, but how would we capitalize on what that delivers versus, oh my gosh, I don't, you know, I'm scared of it, I don't want to use it.
Speaker 2:It's more. How could we embrace?
Speaker 3:it Stay curious. Yeah and use it. Stay curious, friends.
Speaker 2:Right. What is that?
Speaker 3:No, I mean.
Speaker 2:It's true.
Speaker 3:I mean, look, there's growth mindset and there's conservative mindset, Not conservative in a political way, but conservative. You know. Conserve, you know, keep it to myself the fear, you know, make sure I don't lose anything. And growth mindset is abundance. What can I gain, you know. How can we? You know how can we grow this thing and how can we face change, accept change, go after change. Right, I mean. That, I think, is far more growth. Growth mindset and curiosity and flexibility and adaptability is the key skill that we've got to have in the next five years. More than 10 years ago, yeah, change is guaranteed.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:It's guaranteed Death taxes and change.
Speaker 3:Wish we could get rid of the taxes part, but yes.
Speaker 2:But I do think, in circling back to what we do in our industry is, first of all, I feel very strongly, as I said, we as leaders have a responsibility to really look at that change first. You know whether it was websites, AI, whatever. So how are we going to use that? And then how do we sort of frame it, pass it along and get everyone to embrace it? Because if we don't, then that's when you're going to get left behind and that's also going to lead to that unwillingness to embrace it, whatever the it change is. And we've seen that in our industry with, like the things that we've talked about today. So if you're not going to embrace the change, you end up getting left behind.
Speaker 3:I am going to say this is an excellent closing comment you just made.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I've so enjoyed this minute. It's been a great topic and I appreciate you inviting me on today.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I am excited. Thank you for coming on. I always enjoy my conversations with you. Well, the 90% that you know we end up agreeing on stuff, you know there's a 10% where we're we're on different camps or whatever.
Speaker 2:And we do get into some great conversations about it so that's okay.
Speaker 3:No, it's I. I love the fact that you, you, you are open, you are are open to the world and to to out to new perspectives and, you know, change and growth and all of that. And, uh, thanks for being on the podcast today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Ben. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Bye.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of TGO podcast. You can find all episodes on our podcast page at wwwrealign4resultscom. You can find me, benno, host of TGO Podcast, there as well. Just email, benno B-E-N-N-O at realign4resultscom. Let's keep growing, you.
