Indoff Incorporated Newsletter November 2019

“Indoff Provides Solutions to Your Business Challenges.”

November 2019

INSIDE Indoff

11816 Lackland Rd. St. Louis, MO 63146

Prose CONTENT President’s

by Jim Malkus, Indoff President & CEO Happy Holidays to all!

Page 2 Human Resources Report Page 4 Recruiting Report Page 6 Finance & Accounting Report Page 7 Vendor Relations Report Page 8-9 Marketing Updates Page 10 Operations Report Page 11 Anniversaries Page 12 Social Media & Partners of the Month Page 14 New Additions Page 15 Techie Talk

It’s that hectic time of the year again – family, friends, shopping, parties, work, end-of-year planning and preparations. It can be overwhelming, but it helps to have some core principles to keep you grounded.

Indoff will start its 50th year on April 20, 2020, culminating in a big 50th anniversary celebration on April 20, 2021. We’ve made it this far thanks to many talented people’s efforts, but the primary reason we have arrived at this milestone is the Partner Program which we started in 1991. Ahead of its time, brilliant for its simplicity and still working today because we have adhered to its basic tenets: • People buy from people. Yes, the Internet greatly complicates this, but at the end of the day, people buy from our Partners for their expertise, their knowledge and their service. Our entire program is built around helping make sure our Partners can meet their customers’ expectations.

• Partners provide the sales, local marketing, and service muscle. Corporate can provide some tools, but it is up to each Partner and his or her own unique approach to succeed in their own market.

• Partners select the best solution for their customers’ needs. We have relationships with literally thousands of vendors so that a Partner is not beholden to the line we rep but free to choose the best product for a given situation. This makes us very different from the vast majority of our competitors.

• We split gross profits; we have since day one. We have never changed the split and we never will.

• Our job at corporate is to make sure our Partners can do their jobs servicing their accounts. We pay bills, calculate, collect and remit sales taxes, invoice customers, collect from customers, manage credit risk, and keep our systems up to date, available and constantly evolving to be able to communicate with the rest of the business world.

It is easy and tempting to layer on rules, exceptions and to wander away from foundational beliefs as an organization grows and ages. We work hard to keep these core pillars of the Partner Program unchanged, and we will continue to do so as we head towards the second fifty years of Indoff.

Thank you all for all you do for Indoff, and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.

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INSIDE Indoff

Human Resources

by Robin Migdal, Indoff VP of Human Resources Hi everyone and welcome to the upcoming holiday season! The months approaching often whiz by in a flurry of activities - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, or whatever special holiday you observe–so now is a good time to get your finances in order and prepare for the New Year. Here are a few end-of-year financial tasks you can start on now: 1. Schedule a meeting with your financial planner or accountant. The end of the year is always a good time for a financial checkup. A financial planner can help you segment and prioritize goals for 2020.

2. Donate to charity. Dec. 31 is the deadline for charitable contributions you plan to deduct from your 2019 tax return. Instead of donating cash, call your local homeless shelters and clean out your closets!

Robin Migdal Indoff VP of Human Resources

3. Max out retirement contributions. You have until December 31, 2019 to make final contributions to your Indoff 401K Retirement Saving Plan. The 2019 401(k) contribution limit is $19,000 and $6,000 for catch-up contributions for those age 50 and older.

4. Check your beneficiaries. You should review your beneficiaries on your retirement accounts or insurance policies. Do this at least annually because you may have had a life event in the past twelve months.

5. Adjust your tax withholding. If you have gotten married, divorced or had kids in 2019, then you probably need to update your withholding and make adjustments to your W4.

HR has a busy few months ahead also with salary ranges to prepare, year-end reviews and a clean payroll cut off for 2019. I will also publish the 2020 plan limits for our 401(k) when the IRS confirms the amounts by November 1. Below is the holiday schedule letting you know when the corporate office will be closed.

Holiday Schedule Thursday, November 28 –Thanksgiving

Wednesday, December 25 – Christmas Day

Friday, November 29 - Thanksgiving

Wednesday, January 1, 2020 – New Year

Tuesday, December 24 – Christmas Eve Corporate office will close at 12:00 pm

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Enjoy the next few months ahead and thank you for everything you do for Indoff!

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INSIDE Indoff

Recruiting

by Angela Suntrup, Indoff VP of Recruiting Can you believe Thanksgiving is almost here and 2019 is almost over? As this year winds down and you begin to think about the future, keep in mind our retirement options. This year we brought on 6 mentees under the mentor program. These mentees have been working with their Indoff mentors to learn our industries and eventually will take over their book of business when they are ready to retire.

Below are 3 great options if you are looking into Retirement; Mentor Program: Hire and train a replacement new to the industry, and share commissions on your customer base after you retire. Several Partners have brought on board a family member or friend to train and turn accounts over to them, and this approach helps with that process.

Angela Suntrup VP of Recruiting

New Hire Program: Find and help hire a qualified replacement and earn significant overrides on your accounts after you retire.

Partnership Agreement: Sell your accounts at retirement to an existing Partner; split commissions on your customer base after you retire. This has been successfully done by many Partners over the years.

Through October we have started 36 Partners: MH 12 BP 8 CI 14 PP 1 ES 1 Total 36 Indoff is always looking for talented sales professionals like yourself. If you have been thinking about someone who would do well with Indoff, now is the time to let us know! We are looking for sales professionals with 3-5 years experience in one of our divisions. If you know someone who has an established customer base and can work independently, please email me their contact info. We offer a $1000 referral bonus if you refer someone that becomes an Indoff Partner.

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INSIDE Indoff

Finance & Accounting

by Julie Frank, Executive VP & CFO The weather is changing, leaves are falling, the big holidays are drawing near and here in the Finance and Accounting departments, we are thinking about what needs to be done to close out 2019.

Year-end is a very busy time in our departments. After all the holiday festivities have died down, we have some serious business to attend to. Some of the important things we do during this time are:

Julie Frank Executive VP & CFO

• Review open order reports – Although we do this every month, we do a more thorough job at year-end. It’s important to send invoices in the year the order was completed, especially for customers who close out their budgets each year. One way you can help is by reviewing your open order reports and providing us with any information that would help us clear the older orders. We may need to cancel the order or do a partial billing. We may be missing a labor invoice, a sign-off sheet or freight information; any assistance you can provide in obtaining these is appreciated.

• Process all vendor invoices – Before officially closing our books for the year, we work overtime to make sure we have all the 2019 invoices processed. We do this not only to have accurate and complete financial statements, but also so that we get a fresh start for the New Year. Again, we will be asking for your help to “clean up” some of the problem invoices that have been lingering during the year.

• Bill and collect on orders before your customer’s budget year runs out - Some of your customers submit orders to you with clear instructions that it must be billed and sometimes paid for by year-end. Please make sure that the billing department is made award of these conditions so that we don’t miss key dates. Our collections department will be feverishly working to contact your customers as well, making sure our payments don’t get pushed off due to the holidays or year-end busy time in your customers’ accounting departments.

By working together, you can help us bring this year to a successful close. Please inform us of any order cancellations or changes as soon as you can. Please make sure to enter estimated completion dates on your orders so that we don’t bother you on orders that have longer lead times. You can send us notes on your orders at any time by e-mailing accounting@indoff.com.

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We hope all of you enjoy what is left of Fall and the upcoming Holiday Season. Take some time to relax and reenergize and then help us work towards a successful year-end close for all!

INSIDE Indoff

Vendor Relations

by Adam Heck, Vendor Relations Manager Hello Partners,

As we get closer to the end of the year, I wanted to give you all an overview of what my Vendor Relations Manager position is all about. Indoff does business with several thousand vendors each year, with a significant chunk of the active vendors reaching out to us a Corporate level with questions about how to work with the Partners more closely. My role is to be their main contact for questions or issues that arise, and also be able to advise them on the how the Partners go to market and how they can market to you.

Adam Heck Vendor Relations Manager

In this role I maintain a vendor database of about 5000 contacts that I update constantly with vendor contacts of top executives, outside and inside sales reps and marketing contacts. I do this for two reasons, to provide vendor contact info to Partners who reach out for help, and to send out updates to the vendors. I send out two types of updates, a monthly overview of the marketing programs we offer to vendors, and notifications when a new Partner starts with Indoff. I also make outbound calls to these vendors to proactively answer questions they may have about Indoff.

Each vendor can then decide how to proceed and how much time to spend on marketing to us, and if they are getting their desired return on investment. I do not negotiate pricing, as we cannot ever guarantee to hit a sales goal. To do so would force us to manage the Partners and favor certain vendors. We don’t want that, and we don’t believe you would want that either.

The other part of my position is related to recruiting. In the last several years, 8-10 of our new Partners each year have come from vendor referrals. I work with the vendors to help them understand what we can offer a sales rep or small business owner and how they can benefit from a new Partner starting with Indoff.

We believe the good feeling the vendor gets from Indoff being a good partner to them leads to them referring people to us, that turn into new Partners.

Thanks for reading!

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Marketing Updates from Jeff Ross What I Have Learned From Conversations With Partners

W

Habits of Our Most Successful Sales Partners

hen I would get a new job as a sales manager or as a consultant to a company that is trying to raise the top line, I would always begin by interviewing the top salespeople.

If I could understand how they did things and why, I could decipher what actions, skills, and focus could be replicated and then encourage others to pursue those “best practices”. I would never find a one size fits all list of habits for success, but there are always some themes and commonalities.

There is so much diversity (backgrounds, product expertise, and of course opinions) among the Indoff Partners that it makes for A LOT of learning. Obviously, one Partner’s “habits for success” may not be the same for another Partner. Nonetheless, I would like to share some of what I have learned.

No matter what a Partner’s background or book of business, there were two main take away points:

1. Most successful Partners have a plan for success.

Typically, not a written plan, but a roadmap for how to go about their business. The Partner would tend to keep their plan simple. Most set some goals, and then devise steps to achieve them. Some followed a SMART Goal Plan.

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SMART PLAN • • • • •

Specific Measurable Action Oriented Realistic Time Bound

Examples include: »» Setting a timeline / schedule for contacting existing customers »» Being onsite with major customers every month Newer, successful Partners set a goal to become proficient in accessing information from Indoff. They realize that they have joined a collection of sales professionals who will happily share their experiences, insights and advice. Many successful Partners are the most active; meaning: • they ask their peers for advice, input on vendors, etc.

• they are either working independently at marketing themselves or they are working with Indoff Marketing to be sure they are staying top of mind for their customers and searching for new customers.

• many are cross selling other divisional products. (At the end of September, there are sixteen Partners who have booked more than $50,000 in multiple divisions.)

“A goal without a plan is a wish.”

- Antoine de Saint - Exupery

There were a couple sub-themes: • working “smarter not harder” was frequently mentioned.

The two major components behind this theme were: »» Focus: be it a type of product or solution or customer »» Technology: to reach people more effectively and in the ways, they look for solutions • concentrating on one’s strengths. If a Partner had a major customer and that customer was mainly due to his/her relationship, he/she would invest time and resources into that relationship.

Also, this ties in with focus.

Fyi – Good, bad, right or wrong, very few put effort toward sharpening their sales skills.

2.

“Whereby my success is a number derived by the multiplication of these efforts. The main change from the time I began my career is how I They have changed the way pursue activity. I was and still am a face-to-face salesperson, but the way I they prospect (new and get in front of people has changed.”

existing customers)

Most successful Partners do not have to do a lot of prospecting, but they once did. One Partner shared “Like the serenity prayer, I must focus on that which I can control.” As I look over the years of my career, I find that my formula could be summarized as: (Activity

*

Ability

Some conversations were about the way “things have changed.” I put together below what I think depicts much of what I heard.

* Focus)

And now a few of my own words: I knew before I graduated college that I was going to be a salesperson. It is a noble profession. Like all professions, it is changing. The biggest change is the number of people in the profession.

This country has a million fewer salespeople every year, and this trend will continue. Nonetheless, those who are at the top of their profession will continue to earn more and more. As we enter the final stretch of the year, I would encourage you to consider something new you could try next year.

Historical Success Road Map

Current Success Road Map

Activity = number of F2F sales calls in a month

Working smarter, not harder. If I have automated communcations with my customers and prospects, I can reach hundreds in the same time it takes to reach one.

Much sales ability remains consistent from earlier in my career - with the exception of prospecting. Before I made cold calls or even knocked on doors. Today, I integrte the new ways to find opportunites. Prospects self educate via the internet. People want to minimize their interactions. To prospect, I need now to be searchable online. I focus on content that will get me to the table.

Number of phone calls in a month Number of proposals in a month Ability = Building a relationship Differentiating my value proposition Handling objections Qualifying opportunites Prospecting

Prospecting (Filling the Top of the Funnel) Has Changed Focus = what is my niche?

Where / how can I differentiate?

What should be my marketing focus?

Focus still begins with the word “no.” The more I focus on a niche the more value I add for my customer. No one, in the industry, knows more about XYZ than me.

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INSIDE Indoff

Operations

by Pam Hake, Indoff VP of Operations Hello One and All out there in Indoff Land.

Seems like the retail sector is working extra hard to direct our attention to the Holidays. Brick and Mortar Stores seem to have holiday aisles back to back, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am not sure that I am ready for it, but it turns my thoughts toward the end of the year, and how do we wrap it up.

At the risk of sounding like I do every year about this time… here goes:

Pam Hake VP of Operations

• Have you accomplished what you set out to in 2019? If not, what can you still do in what remains of 2019?

• Have you reached out to another Partner near you, to cross sell to one another’s customers? The more Indoff can supply, the more likely that customer will reach out to you, next time they have a need.

• Have you added even one new item to your mix this year, that you haven’t sold or pushed before? Either way I challenge everyone to do that now, so that you are poised to finish the year strong, and get 2020 off to a good start.

• Is there a customer or customers who seem to have fallen off your radar?

Send them an email, give them a call or stop by and see them.

• Is there a potential customer you have thinking about approaching? No time like the present …..

• What other ideas do you have? Feel free to share those with me, or better, sharing with your Fellow Partners on the discussion boards.

We have created and we maintain an environment, where Partners have choices.

• You made a conscious choice to work for Indoff. You make the choice to continue to work with Indoff.

• You choose what vendors you will work with (provided they give us access) • You choose who you call on, when you call on them, and how you make contact with them.

• You choose how to wrap up 2019 and look toward 2020.

Let’s go out there and finish up the year strong. It remains my privilege to work with the greatest group of Sales Partners and Corporate Staff ever assembled anywhere.

Thanks for all you do for Indoff and Happy Holidays!

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Happy Anniversary!

20 Years

Mark Seeto November 15

Tom Cherney November 1

Dennis Steiber November 8

Barb Radice November 15

Colin Faulkingham November 17

Cheryle Boring November 1

15 Years

Chris Koeneman November 8

10 Years

Bill Unger November 16

Debra Surface November 23

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Follow Us! Stay connected with Indoff by following us on social media! You can find us on several social media platforms via the usernames provided below:

@IndoffInc

Indoff, Inc

@Indoff_Inc

Indoff Sales Partners of the Month s

Congratulations to our top Partners from each division!

September Material Handling

Material Handling

Brian Galloway - $725,557

Ken Hebert - $789,246

Commercial Interiors

Commercial Interiors

Doug Fletcher - $535,602

Stacy Bernhardt - $628,794

Darrell Reed - $119,171

Darrell Reed - $90,269

Business Products

Business Products

Promotional Products

Promotional Products

John Hollern - $161,303

John Hollern - $194,536

Chris Koeneman - $261,159

Chris Koeneman - $350,203

John Vasquez - $12,549

Bryan Bell - $46,924

Allied Appliance

Energy Solutions

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October

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Energy Solutions

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Welcome!

Meet the New Additions to Indoff

Tabitha Songer Jr. Web Development Intern

Geoff Owens MH

Lisa Branch CI

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Carla Haines Marketing Intern

Kali Goodwin MH

Bruce Large MH

Brad O’Brien CI

Rick Hensley CI

Jason DeFriese ES

INSIDE Indoff

Techie Talk

by Shawn Faulkingham, Chief Information Officer Ahh... the end of the year is approaching. Leaves have turned, colder weather is beginning to settle in (well... at least in the Midwest) and the holiday season is quickly approaching. It’s time to look back at the year to see what we have accomplished. Here are some of the projects we worked on this year: The Cloud: I spent considerable time researching “the cloud” to see if there is any advantage for Indoff and our Partners. We currently have our own private cloud which makes management of our infrastructure seamless to the end users, and we use different applications in Amazon’s cloud for storage requirements and DNS. I decided a full “lift and shift” into AWS, Google or Azure does not make sense for Indoff at this time. Unless our requirements change for our applications, we will continue to use our own cloud and a few applications in the public cloud.

Shawn Faulkingham Chief Information Officer

SugarCRM: We have been using Goldmine for twenty years for our recruiting, vendor relationships and our appliance group. In order to join the 21st century, we are moving to SugarCRM and Sugar Market, marketing automation that is integrated into SugarCRM. Email marketing and other web-based marketing are integral to success in today’s world; SugarCRM and Sugar Market will help us capitalize on this.

Pure All Flash Array: As we continue to maintain and improve our infrastructure, we need to update our storage that powers all of our servers and applications.

We replaced our old “hybrid” array (spinning drives and SSDs (solid state disks)) with a new array of all SSDs. What does that mean for you, the Partners?

Confluence will be able to return data quicker, giving it a “snappier” feel.

Colin Faulkingham Chief Technology Officer

Confluence: Colin has made numerous improvements to Confluence.

Here are just a few: • GMail integration when emailing out of Confluence. This automatically stores sent emails in your sent items folder, so you don’t have to save all the pdfs and notes about what emails were sent.

• Importing SIF files for our CI and MH divisions. You can export an order from Giza or AutoCad and import it as a SIF file rather than an excel spreadsheet. Split pricing (think 50/10/5) is also available.

• SQL query improvements. We made some changes to a few of our queries to eliminate a mid-afternoon slowdown we had been experiencing, and we also made some tweaks to our database system to further improve performance.

Thank you for all you do, and if you ever have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to ask!

Shawn and Colin Faulkingham

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