PPB July 2015

IRST IN A TWO

PART SERIES

DEBUNKING THE MYTHS ABOUT SELLING PREMIUMS & INCENTIVES

JULY 2015 •

PPB

• 53

Roark:

Often premium incentive items are

name-brand goods, which are sold through many

marketplaces such as catalogs, department stores,

even direct from the manufacturer. Some supplier

sources for those products also sell through more

than one pipeline. Consequently, in some cases,

those suppliers may have a competing sales channel

that might sell directly to your customers. However,

I have not found this to be a significant conflict over

many years of dealing with such companies. In fact,

this type of situation is a regular occurrence for us in

our promotional products business. For example,

when we sell wearables, several of our favorite dec-

orator sources are actually competitors in the sale of

promotional products who do great screen printing

and/or embroidery for us, while our orders are a

symbiotic plus for them by filling their excess in-

house decorating capacity. So, why would I deal

with them? Simply put, I have an agreement in

place with those screen printers/embroiderers that

they specifically will not sell to my client if I bring

them an order from that client.

Another wrinkle to this question is: What about

buying name-brand items from a reseller that might

actually call on my client? There are two answers

here. One, if this issue is important enough to you,

make a non-compete deal with that incentive com-

pany similar to what I have made with my competi-

tor/decorators. More often than not, though, you

are going to find that your sourcing rep is out to

support you rather than undercut you, which brings

me to my second answer: This whole concern is

moot if you sell solutions rather than stuff. The

value I add as a consultant pretty much makes

sourcing merchandise somewhere else a non-issue

with my clients. My customers are virtually never

shopping on price; they want to know the watch is

going to be in a great presentation box, all

wrapped up and in their hands, prior to Bob’s

retirement party. I do that for them, meaning they

are buying a solution from me, which happens to

include the merchandise I sell them. They can’t

shop the merchandise separately and still get the

solution, and they don’t want to.

As far as the aggregators and reps I buy from

are concerned, most name-brand product suppli-

ers would much rather expand their sales volume

by having folks like you accessing end-customers

that they never have to contact, while they develop

their own channels.

The Experts Say:

Hendrickson:

You might be surprised.

Depending on the brand attributes of your client,

they might very well want to co-brand to further

reinforce their brand messaging. Cadillac and

Lexus will want to associate with a high-end brand

that also appeals to their audience.

Knollenberg:

Not all companies who put

together incentive programs want the premium

(the award or gift) to have a corporate logo on it.

The majority of awards that are earned in incentive

programs do not include a corporate logo.

Wearables are certainly an exception to the rule.

For example, if an award recipient selects an out-

door grill as his award from a potpourri of awards,

that individual remembers what they had to do to

get that grill and it certainly does not need a cor-

porate logo displayed on the grill as a reminder.

However, when an end-user company wants its

corporate logo on an award, they want to make

sure it is on a brand that is quality and aligns with

the image of the company. Most companies want

to be associated with quality, well-known brands.

Landry:

That’s no problem. You would be

amazed at the product that I sell into this channel

with no logo whatsoever. Keep in mind that a sig-

nificant amount of our world is pure corporate

gifting. All the right reasons why you might put a

client’s logo on a product might be all the wrong

reasons to do so when it comes to an upscale cor-

porate gift.

Mitchell:

I often tell distributors a story about

$100 pens. When you get your first $100 pen, you

remember two things: 1) where it is (my first $100

pen is in a hotel room in Chicago); and 2) how

you got it (mine was a speaker gift at a national

“

”

What Distributors Believe:

MY CLIENTS DON’T WANT

TO CO-BRAND (E.G. ADDING

A CORPORATE LOGO TO A

NORTHFACE JACKET).