Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/414972
48 FEDA News & Views 48 FEDA News & Views N&V: Jameel, you've spoke at length about the need for deal- ers to continue to evolve. From a knowledge perspective, what should they be seeking to learn more about to prepare their businesses for the future? Burkett: I think the wave of the future is omni-channel marketing. Customers want the ability to shop when they want, and how they want—be it on the phones, in the store or online. People are going to call their sales rep expecting to have that uniform customer experience—all the time—and it's going to take technology to make that happen. It's about integrating multiple channels into a single channel. I think that's going to be key and the other component is going to be mobility. I know mobile apps and mobile sites aren't huge in our industry yet, but every report that we're reading says the customer is using a mobile device more and more on the fly. We've got to figure out how it works best for each individual business. I think that understanding how technology applies to your business and then knowing how to use it to serve your customers is going to be key. N&V: I think a very real example in our industry is how we've seen individual dealers approach ecommerce. Burkett: Sometimes people see technology and they think it should work the same for everyone. Steve Jobs said it best, we've got to look at our competition, whether it's in the industry or out of the industry, and not ask how we can be like them but rather how we can be different. You do that by understanding the resources that are available and how they apply to your niche. So, in our industry, it's a mistake to throw up an ecommerce site because someone else has one. You should have a business plan to serve your market and that does not necessarily equate to success in another market. N&V: I think I recall you saying that there are a number of ways ecommerce can be used and it doesn't have to be a sales tool. Burkett: Absolutely. Right now, you have people who use ecommerce in the Burkett, Fred Clark, KaTom way, but there's so much more to ecommerce. Ecommerce is a tool, it's an online catalog, it's a lead base, it is a client portal, a private website for your own customers. There's so many ways to use ecommerce and how you go to market with your customers. N&V: I'm curious, do you find that there's a perception that anyone can succeed at ecommerce sales? Burkett: It depends on how you define success. I think the barrier to entry into ecommerce in our industry is very low. Anyone can get a website, get online and get up to x dollars. The question is how big do you want to get? If you want to be a big player, if you want to be a leader, it takes a great deal of investment. It takes a lot of effort, technology, manpower, resources, and advertising dollars. And again, it goes back to what you view as successful. You can do a million dollars online—easy. To do $10, $20, $30, $50 million dollars online, becomes so much more strategic. From my perspective, it takes a far greater investment and effort to make ecommerce successful than it does to make your "traditional" model suc- cessful. N&V: In terms of time, man power, money? Burkett: All of the above. Our ecommerce division has the largest percentage of allocations, and with the way the market is evolving, it's only a start. E-customer acquisition costs are increasing at a tremendous pace. Every day you're constantly driving labor and marketing dollars to get customers to come to you, and that's where I am. Before the recession, it was a lot easier to compete on the Internet. The technology wasn't as advanced. There were fewer dealers competing and the overall technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. With the sophistication in analytics and data mining, it's definitely a different market today. Jonathan Gustafson, Purchasing Ace Mart Restaurant Supply Lately, there's been a lot of talk about attracting people like Jonathan Gustafson in the industry. At 32, it's safe to say that he's in the minority, particularly in the dealer community. Look around and there are a lot of people with gray hair in leadership, he says. Of course, that's the normal order of things. More experi- ence equates to more responsibility. What concerns Gustafson is the shortage of heirs—be it because of waning interest from potential successors or a lack of urgency from their predeces- sors. "Transitioning to that next phase of leadership is going to be a challenge for dealers," he says. "You've got people in their 60's still running the business without a succession plan in place and that scares me. I think that we are going to see a lot of people scrambling if tragedy strikes, or they simply decide they want to retire." There's definitely a succession plan in place, but Ace Mart is still combing through the details. "We have family meetings and kick around ideas but it's an ongoing battle to decide who's going to do what," says Gustafson, Groff & Burkett continued