Written by: Robin Currie
I hope you’re all enjoying your summer. Below is a slide that I recently pulled out of my Currie Sales and Account Management presentation. I decided to share this item as another free download from Currie.
The concept of a unit sales as a “loss leader” has been quite controversial. Of late, we have had some robust debates about it in dealer group meetings and Currie Model public seminars.
Are we a retail distribution model or an industrial distribution model? Loss leaders have been more widely accepted in a retail environment. As a graduate from The Prince Program in Retail Management, from Simmons College in Boston, this was an important part of the data and trends that we studied and analyzed.
But in the industrial world, this has always presented as troublesome for me. Under the industrial model, consider the following factors:
- High cost to the end user
- Complex sale
- Matrix dealership structure, especially for my Phase IV and Phase V dealers
- Future consumption of parts and labor
After noting these, and other requirements to secure the sale of industrial equipment, is the loss leader approach appropriate? Tell me your thoughts.
Click here to download the Currie Truths for the Sales Department graphic.