Amy Bosco award winning global sales leader talks about distributor engagement driving sales growth

Welcome to the Global Sales Mentor Podcast for conversations that drive growth. When you are ready to grow your international sales, join the conversation with your host, Zach Selch. Welcome back to another episode of Conversations That Grow Global Sales. And I have here a special guest today, Amy Bosco, who is a client of mine, who is a member of the District Export Council in New England. She's been doing this for a long time. She's had great growth. I have a lot of fun working with her. And so I think what she has to say is going to be very, very helpful for our listeners. So I hope you enjoy this. Amy, thank you so much for joining us.

You're so welcome.

Great. Maybe you can tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

Okay. So I've been with my company for, it'll be 22 years next month. Um, I'm the proud recipient of the President's E Award in 2018.

What?

I received the President's E-Star Award in 2022. So we got that this year. Only one of 3 companies to receive that honor. And in 2019, I won the Small Business Administration Exporter of the Year Award.

That's fantastic.

Yeah. So, um, I've been doing global since 2014. I started out in sales and then moved into team leader, sales manager, senior sales manager, and then director of— well, I think it was senior manager of healthcare sales operations, and then over to the global arena where I dived right in. Since then, I've grown the exports, the markets pretty significantly. We brought in 34 new markets since 2014 to 2018. And then an additional 19 the following 4 years. And I have to remember that because I had to put that in for my application for the awards. And then this year we've grown into 8 markets so far. And—

That's great. Yeah, that's great. I'm really, really excited to hear all of this. I'm really, really excited. You know, every time we work together, you're, you know, and Now, for a lot of people listening, you are just like them, just more advanced, right? So maybe talk about, you know, you were in sales for 15 or 20 years before you were shifted to global, and one day you get promoted. Here you are in charge of global, and then what do you do the next thing? How, how did you get started?

So it was a lot of, um, Learning. It was a big learning curve. One of the big things that I did was I reached out to Melissa Grasso at the U.S. Commercial Service. I didn't waste any time. So I met with her to learn about everything new in my world, which would be you know regulatory and cultural differences, and how about you know how to go about finding a new partner and the vetting process. And you know we didn't have a lot of processes in place. So from It was definitely a learning curve, but I also got on the plane and flew out to Austria about 2 weeks after I took on the role.

Got the first job. After you took the job, you went right away to Austria.

I went, yeah, to one of our top distributors that was having a challenge with our predecessor. So we were at risk of losing that partnership. So I went out there, smoothed things over, and from there they've continued to grow. They've become a Global Partner of the Year Award one year, and they've been growing tremendously. So yeah, it was, you know, get out there and fix things up.

Great. And like I said at the beginning, you've been growing double digits pretty much since you got on the job. So let's talk a little bit. You're doing You sell medical products. You're selling now in, uh, what, about 70 countries with 70 distributors?

Over 70. So, um, I think the amount of distributors is about 60, but some of them sell into other markets. Marketplaces.

So you're selling to about 70 countries around the world right now.

Definitely over 70 now. Right, right.

And over the years you've built up, uh, you, you've built up really good relationships with these partners.

Absolutely.

Great. So maybe talk a little bit about that. Then we'll talk a little bit about the engagement part and what we've been doing over the past year.

So one of the things before I started working with Zach was to do a weekly newsletter, and I continue to do that. So every week I send out a communication. I alternate between a sales tip or a technical blog. And so I get that in their hands and One of the reasons I do it is one, to help support them, but also to elevate our brand and who we are because our partners aren't just selling weekly, they're selling—

Right. You were talking about that this morning. So maybe dig into that because this is really— people forget or people sometimes don't even know how important this is. Maybe dig into that, Amy.

So you want to keep, you know, keep weekly top of mind. And for everyone listening, whatever your company is, your products, you want to keep them top of mind. So it's that engagement. So it's definitely having that weekly communication. And then I'm a pretty high-touch communication person. You know that.

Right.

So, you know, there's communication on LinkedIn, sometimes text messages. I also once a quarter look at Um, the top performers for the quarter. And I do a handwritten congratulatory card and I send those out. And that's been really well received.

Those types of touches are really good for the distributors and the salespeople. They love that because it really shows that you care about them, right? You're showing them this personal touch. And you know what, if you don't mind, can you talk a little bit about your prize and your award system? Because I think that's great.

So we've always had, even before I took on the role, a Global Partner of the Year Award. But what I've done is I elevated, um, the award used to be pretty small and I decided to increase the budget and invest in a really nice award. And it's a big, heavy award, kind of like an Oscar. Um, so the Global Partner of the Year.

Love to put them on their shelf, right?

They do. And they send me the pictures of them. They're very proud of it. And that is awarded based on growth, the amount of growth that they've done and the amount of promotion that they've done on Beakly. I look at their website, see if they're promoting us, what trade shows they've been doing. Then in July of, or yeah, July 2020, during the pandemic, I introduced a new award because everyone was having challenges having to kind of restart and reboot how they were doing business in light of the pandemic. So I introduced a Global Marketer of the Year Award, and that really created some fun competition amongst the partners to see how they could recreate, reinvent the way that they had been doing business to a new world. And so we had some strong applicants. And so the first year we actually awarded that twice. Um, 2, 2 different people won that award. And I'm gonna continue to, uh, have that award because it, it's really been something exciting. Um, we do, which we'll talk about probably a little later on, is the mastermind meeting.

Right.

And my distributors in the mastermind meeting was, you know, chatting. Saying how, you know, he wants the next award. So it's motivating. And then the other thing that I started to do is milestone awards. So when you hit a certain amount, so I have tiers, $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, which we actually, for the first time last year, had a partner that hit that mark. They get a special award for that. And that's also, it's not as large as the other awards, but it's still a nice substantial award.

Right, right. No, and people love these awards, right? What we're trying to do is drive mindshare. We're trying to get, like you said earlier, these people are selling a lot of different products and we want BeCrete to be their favorite product to sell, right? And you to be their favorite principal and all these things taken together are bringing you there, right?

Absolutely.

Great. Great. So maybe we'll talk a little bit about what we've been doing since we, since we met and the type of stuff we're doing. You touched on the mastermind. Do you wanna dig into that a bit?

Yes. So that's been a successful program. We started that, oh gee, over 6 months ago, I wanna say. And so once a month we set up a time, uh, not everybody can make it, but we've been growing number of attendees. We've kind of gotten a followership. But I record it and send it to everybody afterwards so that they have it. But that meeting is a half an hour of our director of training going over a product and application training. And then the other half an hour is with Zach doing coaching and motivation and doing some inspirational work. And then I, I'm, I'm the one moderating it. And then I, I kind of add a little bit. I'm usually on for a few minutes.

Great. And we started off with just a couple of people showing up on the first one, and now we're what, probably 300% growth in terms of the number of distributors that are joining every month, right?

Yeah, definitely. And like I said, now we're getting a little bit more engagement. People are starting to chat on there. In the beginning, people, I think, were a little kind of shy, like, how's this going to work? But they're, you know, they're not in competition with each other. So. It's fine for, you know, all the partners because they have their defined territories. So nobody's, you know, got to worry about that.

Right, right. Great. And you mentioned that when you read my book and we first engaged, you were looking a little bit at more methodologies and strategies. So how's that worked out?

So yeah, that was one of the areas that I hadn't been doing a lot was more of the management of the operations. So now I'm getting to the level where I'm really pushing the partners to expand the amount of products that they're selling. So some of our partners are only selling one portfolio, one product within the portfolio. So we're getting them to start going into a new arena and selling other products. And the reason, you know, we want to push that is it can increase their sales, but it's going to increase ours. So their success is Right. So that's been a big thing that him and Zach and I have been working on is digging deep into looking at the reports of the spend, the percentage of allocation towards each product, and then driving that back to the partner to say, okay, how can we support you? You know, what can you commit to in terms of, you know, Selling another product, increasing that percentage of sales.

Right, right. And sometimes I talk to people and they say, well, this is just the way it is. You have, you know, if I have 50 distributors, really only 5 of them are going to produce. And, you know, 1 or 2 of them are going to be great. And everybody else, I just have to accept it, that they're not very good. And what we've been doing is really taking the weaker distributors and elevating them just by you giving them a little bit of push, a little bit of guidance. A little bit better training, a little bit more engagement, right?

Yep. A bit, a bit of a nudge.

Right. And you're seeing results from that, that, right?

Absolutely. Yes.

Right. So, you know, I think there's a lot of ways that sometimes people don't understand, you know, they, they see the system they have, the, the, what they have, and they're not quite sure how to grow it. But if you sort of look at it, right, you found a lot of different ways to grow. And I think over the coming years, we're going to keep growing there. There are certainly ways that we can get more results out of your distributors, even though you have good, engaged, competent distributors. There's always a little bit more we can get, get them to produce better, right?

Definitely.

Great. Great. What else? So what other— what's the next set of awards you're going to win? You've been winning a lot of awards lately.

3, you should say. And I'm actually up for an award that the U.S. Commercial Service told me about for the Connecticut Manufacturing of the month.

Um, right.

It's an award, um, about exporting. So it's going, you have to demonstrate in the last 12 months, um, that you grew a new market that you never sold into. So I looked back and I was surprised actually that I had 8 that I could put down. So you, uh, send in the application and that award is gonna be awarded on the 27th. So we will see, but I have a, a good shot at earning that particular award.

Oh, that's fantastic. Great. Well, you deserve it. I think, you know, what I find is I talk to a lot of people who are very happy with the status quo and they say, well, there's nothing I can do. And honestly, most people would be very happy with 10% growth year after year. And you decided you wanted more and that's great. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Cool.

So, um, if people are interested in picking your brain or finding out more about you, where, where and how can they reach you, Amy?

So they can reach out to me on my email, abosco@beakley.com, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn.

Great.

Yep.

You're on LinkedIn. Yeah.

Cool.

So thank you so much for being a guest on our show. I'm sure people will enjoy this. I think, you know, it's really important for people to hear from somebody who's done such a great job at growing. From, you know, you're not an uncommon situation where you come in from, from domestic sales being promoted to international sales, but you really took the reins in your hand and drove growth. And, uh, it's a really great example for other people to hear about.

Great. Thanks. Thank you.

Thanks a lot for being on the show, Amy.

Oh, you're so very welcome.

Thank you everybody for listening, uh, to another episode of Conversations at ProGlobal. Global Sales, and this is Zach Selch. Have a great week and join us for our next session.