Guitze Messina is a man of many qualities. As the eminently personable executive director of HARDI LATAM, Guitze has transformed what was once HARDI Mexico into a powerhouse organization representing heating, air-conditioning, and refrigeration distributors across nine Latin American countries and counting. Not one to hoard his success, Guitze recently published Moneycall, his savvy, entertaining guide to attracting more recurring sales with less prospecting. Jason welcomes Guitze back to discuss the benefits of a proactive selling strategy, the science, and software behind distribution’s next evolution, and why he opted to format his book as a fable.
“The best way to recruit a good salesperson,” says Guitze, “[is to] ask them ‘what is selling to you?’ If they say ‘convincing, changing someone’s mind, [or] closing,’ if they say anything other than helping the client buy whatever they need, don’t hire those guys because they’ll be pushing all the time.” It’s wisdom that Guitze comes by honestly. While he began his career as an industrial engineer, Guitze transitioned to consultant upon receiving his MBA, but not before assuming a temporary salesperson position.
Guitze’s time as a salesperson may have been temporary, but the lessons he learned remain eternal. “Your job is to concentrate on those activities that provide the most likelihood of getting sales,” he observes. “In a recurrent sales industry like ours, you don’t need to look for as many clients. You just need to find the ones that buy and what they need so you can help them buy.”
You can find countless titles touting the steps for ensuring recurrent sales growth, but none take Guitze’s narrative approach. “I wanted people to be a protagonist. I wanted them to feel like they are the star,” he says. Moneycall pulls readers in with compelling “real-life adventures” of folks trying to implement his best sales practices. “If I wanted to be scientific about the whole process of being proactive versus reactive, if I went too much into data alone, people would probably not be as interested if it wasn’t presented in a fable.”
The moral of this story? Proactive pursuits yield dividends; reactive sales cost you time and money.
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QUOTES
“The worst enemy of your future success is your past success.”
“In order to be proactive, you need to focus, and this is the biggest problem when we are reactive.”
“Nothing happens until you talk to a client. There is no quote, no follow-up. There is nothing that happens until you are talking.”
“What is selling? Getting information. If you don’t get information, you’re not selling.”
“If you serve your customer well, you will deserve to get a referral.”
“If it wasn’t for the HARDI team, I wouldn’t be here. ’cause those guys make me really smart.”
CONNECT WITH GUITZE
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Distribution Talk is produced by The Distribution Team, a consulting services firm dedicated to helping wholesale distribution clients remove barriers to profitability, generate wealth, and achieve personal goals.
This episode was edited & mixed by The Creative Impostor Studios.
Special thanks to our sponsor for this episode: INxSQL Distribution Software, integrated distribution ERP software designed for the wholesale and distribution industry.
