GABE GOTAY
Welcome to Promo Perspectives, a podcast presented by SAGE dedicated to giving promotional product suppliers and distributors tips, tricks, and insights to help grow their businesses. I’m Gabe Gotay, senior marketing coordinator at SAGE. This month, we’re going to spend a few episodes talking about how you can use SAGE Stores to grow your business.
For those of you not familiar, SAGE Stores are an e-commerce platform that lets you offer your client a quick and easy way to order their branded merch online. In a previous episode, Chris Jordan, SAGE account advisor, gave the SAGE perspective on how you can identify the right clients to sell more stores. But recently, I sat down with Brad Gooch of Ideal Incentive to get the distributor perspective on how to sell more stores and build a sustainable business model using e-commerce. My interview with Brad is going to be split into two episodes. In this first episode, he’s going to tell us a bit about his history in the industry, and we’re going to talk about some fears that distributors have when it comes to SAGE Stores. Finally, he’s going to talk about some of the different ways that he’s positioned SAGE Stores with different clients. At the end, we’re going to touch on the rise of the internet, Amazon, and e-commerce over the time that he’s been running his business and how that’s changed expectations for suppliers, distributors, and end-users when ordering merch online.
To start our conversation, I asked him to introduce himself and his company.
BRAD GOOCH
I started in the industry a few years ago, 1989 to be a little more precise. So in starting Ideal Incentive, the key part of that is it starts just in the name itself. So there’s a reason why it’s Ideal Incentive and not Incentives, because we don’t consider ourselves a company that sells products that would be incentives, as promotional products equals incentives. We are about incentive, which essentially means to induce action. So it’s all about objectives and solutions and our expertise and so forth and how we can identify any issues that are going on with the client, why they’re approaching us in the first place, and then provide the best possible solution for them. So that’s really the key. It starts right there, that we say eventually we fill in with the products, but it’s the last part of it, which is a little bit different, I think, than how a lot of distributors view it as what’s the latest and greatest tote bag and this item and that item. We don’t care about the product. We care about what our client’s trying to achieve first, then we fill it in.
GABE GOTAY
I asked him, in conversations that he’d had with other distributors, what were some common fears that he’d encountered when it comes to implementing stores, how could he overcome them, and what were some misconceptions that he thought should be cleared up?
BRAD GOOCH
Well, the first one revolves around identifying their cost. The products, as usual, are simple, but it’s everything else, and the everything else is a lot more. So what are those costs, and what of those costs can they, should they pass along to their client? So those are the first two big ones: what’s the cost, how do I pass that along? Another fear for some of the distributors is just learning the platform in and of itself. So it can be, it’s like anything, once you know the ins and outs and how to navigate it, it’s like, oh geez, this is easy peasy, but at first, you’re like, oh, I have no idea where to even start. So that can be that fear of the unknown.
Another one is, okay, how do we convey the value of this to the client? This isn’t just for their employees to go on and pick the shirt and the logo and send it wherever. It’s far more to it. So it’s a matter of how do we convey that to the client so they see the value in it. When they see the value in it, that’s where the price of it will increase, and as it should. The other two are handling inventory. That always comes up, the inventory, the fulfillment, and so forth. And I think there can be a pretty big kind of disconnect where people are thinking, oh geez, I need to hold inventory, I need to get warehouse space, you know, what’s close to me, and they take it to such an extreme, and it really doesn’t have to be that way.
Because when you really think about it, when you’re selling, or when a client purchases, we’ll say, some Bluetooth speakers or some golf balls or whatnot, the odds of every single one of those being given out in whatever they were purchasing it for is relatively slim. They’re going to have extras. Where do those extras go? They go back to Patty’s office. They go into what we call the disappearing closet, and now it’s like a mishmash of stuff. She has no idea what’s there. The CEO comes in unannounced, as I’m taking a few guys out to golf, give me some Pro-V1s. She doesn’t know where they are. Oh geez, there’s only two. He’s not happy with her. It’s just one of those snowball things. So, hey, hold the 12 dozen Pro-V1s, hold the 12 extra speakers or whatnot. It doesn’t, even if you’re a home-based business, it’s not like some crazy amount of space that you need to get started with this stuff.
And then the last part of it is how to protect themselves. And that goes into the agreements. You want to have these things in writing. You want to have as much, kind of, CYA, if you will, to the whole process, because you just never know, and your contact, who knows, they might not be your contact tomorrow, next month, next year, and you need to have yourself protected. So those are the things: costs, selling, learning the platform, conveying the value, handling inventory, and how to protect themselves. Those are the things that a distributor does a lot of times, you combine all those, like, ah, I’m just going to sell pens. So it’s not hard. We’re talking about solutions. And that is the operative word: solution. So what are we solving? If you aren’t identifying this upfront, then your mind can really play tricks on you, and it’s, oh, well, what if they want this, and they might not want that, and so forth, and then you get in your own head. So back away from it, take an aerial view, and talk with them and say, okay, what are we trying to solve here? I’ll list off some examples of what might come up.
So, is your client tired of different departments and individuals going to their guy, and the result of that, when they’re going here and there and so forth, may very well be an inconsistency of their logo, and that’s not a good thing. So we’ll bring it all in. We know what your branding guidelines are, and corporate is real happy with that, so they know that we’re matching color or not violating any rules.
Are they tired of trying to keep track of that disappearing closet? That can be a real easy pitch. It’s like, Patty, let me take this off your hands. We’re going to bring it in, we’re going to keep track of it. You can look online, you can see the real-time inventory, and she’s like, oh my gosh, yes, please, we love you, please do that.
Is it a pain to capture sizes, say, for an event? The infamous spreadsheet that’s going around to 212 people, and it’s just time-consuming for them, it’s a pain for them. The lack of time, space, expertise, if there’s any type of fulfillment involved, that’s a big thing. This is what we do for a living, and we’ve had it a few times where we have done a project for a client, and then at some point, somebody came in and said, oh no, let’s not pay Ideal to do that. Let’s do it ourselves. And we kind of chuckle, no problem, drop ship the products in.
Every single time once it’s finished: “Don’t ever let us do that again.”
Don’t want to say I told you so, but it’s just not what they do. This is what we do for a living. Let us do it. How are they trying to monitor their reps and how they’re using their branded items? Are they missing opportunities to follow up with clients based on some reporting that you can do? This is, this person ordered this item, they sent it to this client, this was the custom message. Managers can use that to measure the effectiveness of the program of the purchase and so forth, could be pretty powerful. Do they need to identify movement and popularity of branded items, or is it going to just sit in that disappearing closet?
Their pain points in allocating expenses, we’ll have clients that want to split up those expenses, so different divisions, departments, and so forth. And so there is a really clean and slick way of doing that with the SAGE Stores that can identify who’s ordering what from where, so that when we do our billing, it’s very clean for them. Accounting loves it.
Are they looking to create any kind of fun competitiveness amongst the revenue generators? Are they trying to provide incentive to employees to stay healthy, to stay safe? Are they trying to generate revenue pipelines, like a referral program? Referrals are massive. That’s like the golden egg. I could tell you, hey, we’re great at something, but if someone else tells you we’re great at it, that’s even more powerful. And lastly, how about anniversaries? You let them choose from an array of options instead of giving them the plaque that they’re going to use at the next campfire. So there are just so many different reasons why they would want to do this. And Step One is identifying where their pain points are, what they feel, their objectives are, have that conversation, and then before you know it, they’re like, yes, please, can we have this tomorrow?
GABE GOTAY
Taking a look at Ideal Incentive’s website, it stuck out to me that the dropdown options in their nav menu weren’t categories of promo. It wasn’t pens and notebooks and water bottles. It was solutions and different scenarios in which a SAGE Store could be beneficial to the end client. He was selling solutions, not products. I asked Brad if he could share what he thought were some of the most effective ways to position SAGE Stores to different kinds of clients and maybe some unique and creative applications for stores that he’d seen.
BRAD GOOCH
I mean, the bread and butter is the inventory fulfillment. Naturally, that is our big one. But from there, it can be used in terms of special events. So your client has a 5k, or they are celebrating or acknowledging Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and they want all pink items or whatnot. So you can have, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a pop-up store, because sometimes that’s how a long-term story gets started, with just that we have a specific event, and then it’s like, oh, wait a minute, let’s keep this open and move forward with it.
For sales reps, kind of mentioned that earlier, it’s a very effective thing for us to give the reps a certain amount into their account, and then it keeps track of that. Safety programs, wellness programs, anniversary onboarding. Sometimes we see, and this happened recently, where the client, that typical end-of-the-year, use it or lose it budgets in December, oh, I’ve got x amount of money, I have to buy something. And we said, okay, try to go through the qualifications and idiosyncrasies and whatnot that were involved. Okay, so how about these items? No. How about this? No. This has been popular. No, this could be a good fit. No.
All right, so then we said, okay, let’s show them some causes. And then we pitch them on a couple of causes, and they’re like, yes, that we want. What kind of products can we get where the supplier supports that cause? And then they picked an item immediately. So now they want to communicate that to their clients and beyond, that by purchasing that product, they are supporting that cause. So that’s a much bigger element these days than it used to be.
And sometimes it’s just a way of having a nice professional way of capturing an order. Employee goes on, sees the sizes, looks at a sizing chart. It’s a good way to scrub a mailing list. It’s amazing, some of these big companies, these employees aren’t telling HR that they moved 18 months ago. And so then they take that list and they send that to HR, and they’re appreciative of that. Those are kind of the bread and butters. But then you said some creative ways. So a few different creative things. One of them is like a book of quotes. And so the store doesn’t need to be necessarily a store as you would typically think of it. It can be a means of them logging into that URL, entering their information, and then uploading some information as almost like an order form, if you will, but just a much more professional way of doing it. And so in this case, whoever has a favorite quote or their own personal quote that they like to use, upload that. If they want to provide a picture, or if, say, it was from a movie, if they want to have a picture of the movie with it, then we will consolidate that, have a cutoff period, put that book together, and then we send it to our client, and they have 300 employees with different quotes. It ends up being a pretty fun thing, because it’s like, oh my gosh, I had no idea you were a Gladiator fan, or whatever. And people razing each other at the water cooler type of thing.
So those are fun projects. Another one was utilizing images. So like one was a racetrack, and one was rockets, to illustrate leaders that were in a quarterly contest. So every Friday, it would be updated, and then they’d go on and say, where am I, and show the racetrack and where is their car, and so forth. And people are competitive. It motivates them. Managers like that their sales go up.
And then the last one, which is probably the biggest monetary element that exists in any of these things, is, I’ll use an example. Gabe, I want you to give me $100, and after you give me $100, I’m going to give you $500. So do you want to do that?
GABE GOTAY
Of course.
BRAD GOOCH
So you give me $100, I give you $500. And then what’s going to happen? You’re going to try and track me down the next day and say, hey, you want to do that deal again? And I’m going to say, yeah, I sure do. So what does that mean? That’s what a safety program is. So when a company, and I won’t go through all the intricacies of it, but when our contact gets a bill for the items that were chosen, because you can accumulate your points by being safe, and then it becomes a team element, because if I’m safe, and I’m making sure the other guys on my shift are being safe, then I get more points for that. And then, okay, I’m not getting the Bluetooth speaker, I’m going to hold out for that. It could be a pool table, it could be a cold plunge thing, it could be a jet ski. Some of the items that are in these programs are really, really nice. But the cost of those items are a fraction of what they’re saving in their workers’ comp insurance claims and their insurance rates.
So it takes a lot of work to get to that, to say, okay, this is the client, this is the industry, and so forth. But the bottom line is, for every dollar that they spend, they are saving significantly more. So a little more maintenance and some cerebral work in that. But if you configure that out, these safety programs are absolutely massive.
GABE GOTAY
Brad has been providing incentive solutions since 1989, well before the rise of the internet and Amazon. And I asked him how expectations have changed for clients and how he thought it was going to change with the future of e-commerce.
BRAD GOOCH
First of all, Ryan’s been in this industry longer than I have, so I think five years longer. So don’t let the… He’s been doing this since 1984. The internet, it’s crazy, and Amazon, and they’re ruling it. So expectations, that can be interesting. And so a lot of times, I’ll use analogies to try and express a point or get to what I’m trying to explain.
In this case, if you have heard the name Roger Bannister, for decades upon decades, no one had broken the four-minute mile. And then in May of 1954, Roger Bannister broke it, 3:59.4. He did it, because up until that point, the experts were saying the human body cannot run that fast. So he did it in May of 1954. What happened 46 days later? John Landy broke it and beat that time. A year later, three runners in the same race beat that time. And here we are 50 years later, and thousands have done it.
The relevance of this is branded products, they’ve been around forever. But the expectations have changed. The Amazon effect, Amazon’s broken the four-minute mile. So how do we deal with all of us who are practically… We’re not satisfied that we’re getting it the next day anymore. It’s 10 o’clock in the morning, why won’t I have it by 3 o’clock this afternoon? It’s pretty crazy to think about that. And then they’re throwing in the free shipping. We know there’s no such thing as free shipping. Somebody’s paying it.
It reminds me of, I don’t know if you’ve heard this phrase, we offer three kinds of services, but you can pick two: good, cheap, and fast. For good and cheap, we won’t be fast. For fast and good, we won’t be cheap. For cheap and fast, we won’t be good. You can pick two. But this Amazon thing, it’s like, I can see the quality, and if it’s not good quality, I can send it back. The prices are pretty aggressive, and obviously, we’re getting it very fast. So how do we deal with that element?
It’s why we’re talking. We’re not Amazon, and keep in mind, our clients aren’t Amazon. But that’s exactly what these company stores, with a certain level of inventory in the back end, do. So you have to be smart about what’s being purchased, the suppliers that you’re using, the refill quantities, reset fees, and all that stuff. There’s a lot of background work that has to be done. But if they want a product with their logo and they want it shipped, let’s just say, within one to two days, it can absolutely happen. It doesn’t mean that they need to have $128,000 worth of inventory on the shelf, but they need to have something.
Are there other alternatives to have the “fast” ? I hate the word cheap. That’s such a negative word. We’ll just say competitively priced, fast, and good quality. That gets into these on-demand options that we have. For anyone that was at the PPAI show in Vegas, there were a number of them. However, there’s a difference there. It’s not going to be inexpensive. So the question was, how do we deal with expectations in the Amazon world we live in?
You get a company store. You don’t try to, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered, don’t get greedy with it. Let’s start small, let’s measure it, and so forth. You can have a program where these are items that are not available right now, but here are some that are available right now, and then you start there. That’s the solution. That’s as close as you can become to fulfill now, good quality, but staying competitively priced.
GABE GOTAY
This has been part one of my interview with Brad Gooch of Ideal Incentive. Stay tuned for part two, where he’s going to give us a look at the inner workings of running a business offering solutions like this, the technologies and costs associated, including shipping costs and inventory management, and how to more effectively run a sustainable business using SAGE Stores. Plus, Brad is going to give us some insights on being a B2B distributor rather than selling directly to smaller end clients, some of the benefits of doing that, and how distributors who are doing more B2C business can transition to B2B and do more business using SAGE Stores. Subscribe to Promo Perspectives wherever you get your podcast and stay tuned for part two.