Legacy Foodservice Alliance held its Mid-Year Connection June 8 and 9 in Camden Yards, Baltimore. The tagline of the event summed up its goal: Linking Supplier and Distributor Member Sales Teams. An educational program provided training and new ideas for the 18 distributor and 19 supplier companies in attendance. Distributor members were encouraged to bring their sales reps and supplier members to bring their corporate trainers.
Two well-known speakers and consultants made presentations to the group. Marc Rosenberg, a fiery motivational speaker who calls himself "The Shaking Guy," titled his talk “Making Lemonade Out of Lemons.” He discussed what it takes to be part of a team, i.e., work hard, show enthusiasm and sell yourself. “Marc’s presentation was exciting, interactive and engaging,” said Derek Barbagallo of Colony Foods.
Bob Oros, who has been consulting in the foodservice industry since 1992, started with a question: Why should anyone buy from your company? and worked toward a statement: Why everyone should buy from your company! He says, “It’s not the size of the company that makes the difference, but the size of the service and the passion for being part of your customer's business that gives a sales person the competitive edge. Our business is based on a one-to-one relationship between the customer and sales person who knows how to be of service as a consultant.”
A training session, Hands-on Help for Sales Professionals, spanned the two-day event. Suppliers in booths conducted 20-minute product training sessions with distributor management and DSRs. In addition to supplier booths, Legacy provided a booth for its online video training tools called StreetWise. The videos are created to train DSRs and operators and are available for Legacy members at www.streetwisedsr.com.
CEO Steve Push says: “We stayed true to our mission with this event. The Connection is all about providing an intimate environment for educating our sales teams on new and innovative ways of helping our independent operator customers succeed. Operators continue to be squeezed by increasing product and operating costs. We’re just trying to do our part to help them compete and win in today’s highly competitive environment.”
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