It’s been a while since I last wrote something and the reason is in our Legacie division we have been hard at work trying to improve the way we work with our valued business partners (we also did a major acquisition with Revo Sunglasses – but more on that in the next post!). We have been saying for some time that the age-old “sales rep” business model is not the model for the future…. And that in order to be the best partner going forward we need to offer more consulting, more analysis, and more sales and marketing support, as opposed to the older model of “let me come in and replenish what sold and take out what didn’t”.
As of this week, we are very proud to announce that Legacie has implemented the first phase of what we are calling our new “relationship selling” model. What does this look like and what does it mean for our optical partners?
- We now have four Brand Ambassadors, led by Felix Marks who is our Executive Brand Ambassador. Our ambassadors will focus their energy on our partners – and offer a full range of consultative services in addition to traditional sales.
- We have re-imagined our customer service department from an excellent “reactive” team to now be a fully functioning (and still amazing) sales support arm. They will still handle ALL our daily service issues and in addition, they will be in touch with ALL of our important partners in a more consultative and sales support role.
- In the coming weeks we will launch a robust b2b legacie.com site where all of our partners will have access 24-7 to everything ranging from ordering product to training videos to marketing materials to inventory and account balance information. We want to make the “selling process” as easy and efficient for our customers as possible and we recognize that in some cases this means NOT talking to someone.
We realize that our retail partners’ time is very limited and very valuable, so we are working to streamline all of our processes, recognizing we all need to be more efficient and more aware and respectful of our partners’ time.
I am sure the transition to this new model will be a little bumpy and a little messy. I am sure we will make mistakes and have some things fall through the cracks. So I apologize in advance for the inevitable “screw up”. And please know we have the best interests of all of our partners in mind as we make this transition. Instead of resting on our laurels of the past 85 years, we are eagerly planning for the next 85. And we look forward to partnering together!
Thanks, and please reach out with any questions or comments.
– Cliff
