Odom began his career in the aftermarket in 1978 as a part time counterperson and stocker. He worked from 1983-1992 for Parts Inc as an Outside Sales Representative, eventually working in a sales management support role. In 1992 he joined Nickels Performance warehouse as Sales Manager and later assumed shared General Management with responsibility for sales, purchasing, marketing, and private label development. He assumed the role of President/CEO of AAM, USA, Inc. on July 1, 2003.
What is the single best investment AAM Group made this year?
I would say year-to-date our best return has come from a new staff position we created for a program coordinator. What our program coordinator is doing is giving us contact at the store level in a way that we didn't have at the program group previously.
He meets with our Parts Pro Performance Centers and Total Truck Centers to find out what brands of products are being supported, what authorized manufacturer programs they may be involved in and providing feedback to our manufacturers.
In the specialty market, consumers may not know where to go to find some product lines, such as tonneau covers or intake manifolds. Our program coordinator is contacting manufacturers to make sure that our retail stores are listed on their Web sites' "Where to Buy" sections.
The AAM Group is also taking our stores and placing them on Google Local and Yahoo Local pages. We feel it's important because, while it's easy to find traditional retailers online, it can be more difficult on the specialty side.
Our second best investment is a Web portal that will serve as an aggregated B2B selling portal for the AAM membership: AftermarketGateway.com. Currently being deployed, the Gateway is a significant, strategic investment that brings AAM members into emerging markets, which we must be addressing because brick-and-mortar stores will start to go away and our products are going to find a place on the Internet.
Warehouse members can join AftermarketGateway.com, and when a customer places an order we electronically distribute it to the WD with the closest available inventory. This gives us the benefit of serving customers with a diverse product inventory, expedited delivery and lower shipping costs.
How has the current economic climate affected/not affected AAM's go-to-market strategy?
There is no doubt that the current conditions are having an impact on distribution and program groups because our incomes reflect the success of our members. This is a tough year.
But for AAM, we feel all of the initiatives we currently have in place are strategically important and need to be addressed. Internally, we need to address the changing side of the marketplace, such as electronic markets, even if we have less budget to do so.
When we talk about our go-to-market strategy, we've simplified our marketing to a product presentation at the counter level. We're providing members with a product pitch book that simplifies the sales process and encourages customers buying a certain product to consider related items to help develop more volume in a touch economy.
What marketing initiatives are most well received among your jobber members? WD members?
So far the marketing initiative that our jobber members have been most enthusiastic about has been linking them to Google Local. They started receiving hits, traffic and phone calls immediately.
We are in the process now of seeking ways to expand that initiative with training to help stores create a site that can be indexed by search engines for local product sourcing. A jobber store cannot compete nationally, but the goal is to get customers into the store so they can make a face-to-face presentation and start developing a relationship.
Among our WD members, we find that salespeople are hungry this year and a few extra dollars goes a long way. Marketing initiatives like sales spiffs and gas cards have been playing very well.
The AAM Group consists of Parts Pro Performance Centers, which sell to street performance and race markets, and Total Truck Centers that serve the truck and SUV accessory market.
