Never Say Sell

CHAPTER 20The Power of Routers

Trying to reconcile the competing interests of sales and marketing teams can be as painful as the leathery bite of a whip. It is why we call the internecine wars we see in our clients sales and marketing (S&M).

James Baldwin has a consulting practice focused on helping retailers purchase, customize, and use point-of-sale (POS) systems to drive process efficiencies and analytic visibility into supply chains. His work can yield insight, change product mixes, focus promotions, and drive revenues. He has experience with everything from emerging fresh taco brands to sewing supply chains.

We catch up with him as he is flying to Dallas to consult with a franchise client rolling out a POS system to 600 franchisees. Shares Baldwin, “The brand was struggling because they needed the franchisees to use their capital to buy the system and were struggling to articulate to the franchisee advisory board and their marketing board the return on investment for franchisees.” They hired Baldwin to review the choices they had made to date, to dig into the unit economics of their stores, and to recommend what they should say as part of their planned “100% POS!” campaign.

“I'm a sole proprietor,” Baldwin says. “That means, I do it all – the website, the pitch decks, the targeted outreach, the thought leadership, the speaking gigs, and somewhere in all that, the actual work for the client. It can be overwhelming.”

Baldwin gets an “A” for covering the bases. He's working ...