Pro Tips: Finding new customers

In this industry, the potential for growth and change is constant. Customers are one of the biggest parts of that growth and finding new ones can sometimes feel daunting. We asked five distributors to share how they go about finding new customers, building rapport, and making the sale. Check out their responses.

2. Follow your technicians

"Customers move around all the time. Just follow them. Follow them, and you get a whole, whole new list of customers where the new shop is. So that's probably the easiest way to find new customers." 

-Chuck Trombold, Mac Tools

3. Take the path less traveled

Mac Tools distributor Leroy Hess has found a "gold mine" of untapped customers by visiting farms in his area. 

“I grew up on a farm, and a lot of my farm customers ask, ‘Why do you come to my shop?’ and I tell them, ‘When I lived on a farm, we would have spent thousands of dollars on tools if someone would have come to us.’”

-Leroy Hess, Mac Tools 

4. Use your history

"My boss has been doing this for, I think, well over 20 years, so we have enough clients that the senior techs are now foremen or running a new shop. They tell their new guys, 'Hey, buy everything from here,' so we get referrals from that. One of my customers went to the brand new, biggest BMW in Canada, and through him, I was able to sell A/C machines and some other kits without even touching them — I just shipped them right over."

-Matt Rowaan, independent

5. Make yourself available 

When independent distributor Brian Deakins moved from one coast to another, he had to build a whole new customer base. 

“I just started driving around, and I’d pull into shops. Then other times there’d be people somewhere, they’d see me and ask me to come by, like with the [Department of Transportation] garage. I didn’t know where that was, but they saw me somewhere and stopped me and asked me to come over. It goes a little bit of both, me pulling in or somebody asking me to stop by.” 

-Brian Deakins, independent