September 2025 Mastermind Recap

An innovator emphasized that not every B2B touchpoint needs to be an organized event. Oftentimes, swinging by with your customer’s favorite coffee or energy drink can strengthen relationships just as effectively. Your B2B Champ could drop this off directly and say hello, or you could leave the treat with a business card. Try giving your B2B lead a $50 weekly coffee budget and see how many of his coffee drop-offs lead to a sale! At the end of the day, it’s all about doing the things that keep Ace (or your store) top of mind!

Jim, a B2B veteran, still makes the rounds to his customer base at least every two weeks. His approach? Lead with personal conversation—like asking about a customer’s kids—before letting sales naturally come up. He’s even taken clients out for breakfast, proving that old-school relationship building is still powerful.

Jim also shared how he broke into multi-housing groups: by going directly to the director of the nonprofit or trade group, asking for a list of properties, and then working through them one by one. Instead of waiting for the perfect opening, he relied on quick cold calls and walk-ins—short, direct conversations that got him face time and opened new doors.

Innovators are finding success with winter prep flyers that are given out in August that offer pallet deals on ice melt (plus bundled shovels and spreaders). These create easy upsell moments. 

Bonus: Delivering a pallet often opens the door to additional supply requests right on the spot.

Others pointed out that snow blower promotions during summer months have a ripple effect. When a property manager invests in new equipment, they typically stock up on the related supplies at the same time—fuel, parts, and preventative ice melt. Once you’ve made that big-ticket winter sale, you’re in the perfect position to capture all the follow-on purchases that keep business clients ready through the season.

The group emphasized that successful B2B sales programs often require two very different skill sets, which are explained in the book, ‘Predictable Revenue’.

• List-builders are the detail-oriented prospectors. They’re skilled at researching property managers, pulling lists from CRMs, and doing the disciplined work of sending emails and making first-touch calls. They create the pipeline and keep opportunities flowing.
• Closers are the relationship-driven extroverts. They thrive on walking into a contractor’s office, shaking hands, or sitting down for breakfast to talk business. They’re best at converting warm leads into loyal, long-term accounts.

Both roles are essential—but expecting one person to excel equally at both can lead to missed opportunities. Teams that clearly define these roles see more consistent pipelines and stronger conversion rates.

👉 And don’t miss next month’s B2B call—we’ll be diving deeper into list building as we explore tools and systems that make prospecting more effective.

October brings a ready-made marketing opportunity: Fire Prevention Week (October 5–11). Customers and property managers are already tuned into fire safety this time of year, making it the perfect moment to promote products like fire blankets, extinguishers, smoke detector batteries, and even carbon monoxide alarms.

One marketer pointed out that property managers are especially low-hanging fruit—they need to refresh fire safety gear regularly, and a seasonal reminder from their local hardware store makes the process easy. Campaigns can be as simple as end-cap displays paired with educational flyers, or as involved as hosting a fire-safety-focused B2B event. When selling into these management companies, don’t forget to let them know that they can be a hero by leading the way when it comes to safety in their organization. 

The group agreed: prevention is always a strong hook. By leaning into a theme the community already values, stores can boost sales while positioning themselves as a trusted partner for safety.

A garden center’s Labor Day sale showed the power of channeling all promotions into a single landing page. Instead of scattering details across flyers, emails, and social posts, the team drove all traffic to one page where customers could see every deal clearly laid out.

The result? 3,200–3,700 visits in just two weeks, with shoppers spending time reading the details and converting on big seasonal items like pots, plants, grills, and furniture. By centralizing promotions and tracking the traffic, the team could draw a straight line between marketing efforts and sales impact.

Not having a set budget leaves marketers guessing. One marketer for a 3-store Ace group in the Midwest shared how being told “spend what you need” actually created stress. Another suggested assigning each store a clear monthly number, which provided confidence when planning campaigns (i.e., they get $2,450 per month above and beyond their Ace marketing spend). 

This is exactly why we’ll be hosting the Hardware Innovators Webinar: 2026 Marketing Budgets for Hardware Stores in November. We’ll cover how to structure your spend, balance seasonal promotions with ongoing campaigns, and get buy-in from leadership with numbers that make sense.

Need an example to get started? One of our innovators shared this Marketing Strategy & Budgeting Worksheet!

Events aren’t just for customers—they also strengthen your staff. One idea: turn flyer distribution into a friendly competition. Whether it’s seeing who can hand out the most or spotlighting employees featured in event posts, team involvement makes events more fun and effective.

When the calendar is packed with fall events, it’s easy for your marketer to feel buried under endless to-do lists. One innovator shared their every morning mantra:

“If you got these three things done today, would you feel good about yourself?”

This mindset shift moves the focus from everything left undone to celebrating steady progress. The group also tied it back to gratitude, reminding each other that being in a position to solve problems for customers is a privilege, not just a stressor.

Another reminder was that the attitude you bring into your work often shapes the experience as much as the workload itself. Together, these insights reframed marketing not as a burden, but as an opportunity to problem-solve and build community.

With rising political and cultural tensions, the group agreed: avoid divisive topics. Stick to being a unifying space for the community. That means honoring moments like 9/11 or Veterans Day, but steering clear of hot-button issues. Employees should be coached to listen first if customers raise sensitive topics, rather than offering opinions.

For some, Last year’s Ladies’ Night presented challenges around food, alcohol, and managing logistics. This year, they are scaling back: no drinks, no food—just sharp discounts and vendor engagement. Simpler execution reduces headaches and, in many cases, focuses on what customers care about most anyway.

GMs stressed that skipping a detailed walk-through is a recipe for disaster. It’s not enough to just map the customer journey in your head—you need to physically walk it. From where guests park, to how they enter, when they receive giveaways, and how they check out, every step should be tested in advance. Stores that actually staged the flow ahead of time spotted gaps and fixed them, while those that didn’t often ran into day-of bottlenecks and confusion.

Multiple innovators called Halloween a “dead category” for sales—it often costs more in buying, merchandising, and clearance than it brings in revenue . Still, it’s valuable for engagement. One GM participates in their town’s downtown trick-or-treat event with a tent, costumes, and themed giveaways like “Frank-n-Steins” (root beer and smokies). Others use Halloween décor simply as a loss leader that helps transition customers into the holiday season.

When traditional fall events lose steam, swap them out for competitions or seasonal tie-ins that connect with your community and generate great content. 

Innovators shared creative alternatives that worked well in their markets:

• A chili cook-off where associates bring crockpots, customers pay $1 to taste, and proceeds go to charity. It boosted morale, smelled amazing, and fit perfectly with the start of football season.
• A salsa contest tied to harvest season created a strong community vibe and performed well on social with photos of judges, entries, and fresh ingredients. Not into salsa? Try a canning, jarring, or pickling contest—pair it with a quick how-to workshop to draw crowds and add value.