Frank Hurtte – Founding Partner
Frank Hurtte, Founding Partner of River Heights Consulting brings 28 years of distribution industry experience and a lifetime of sales background. Frank grew up in a family owned business where he was selling car and truck tires wholesale before he turned 14. During his career, Hurtte has gone through nearly every aspect of the wholes business. He served as manager of a rapidly growing start-up location ran a cluster of branches where he worked to develop future leaders and was called on to build a winning team after the merger of two companies with dissimilar cultures. Frank successfully established sale strategies in emerging markets and coordinated the efforts of a diverse group of distributor specialists to establish a corporate-wide blueprint for success. In his role as VP Technical Sales, Frank developed and implemented a model for tracking and measuring the “value-adds” provided to customers and pivoting the company to a fee-based services model.
After graduating from the University of Illinois with a degree in Computer Engineering, Frank decided to pursue a career in the business side of Automation. After joining the Allen-Bradley (now Rockwell Automation) Engineering Training Program, he served in Sales Management roles supporting distributor’s efforts. In 1991 Fran joined Van Meter Industrial as Vice-President and Branch Manager and then as the full time Vice President of Technology.
Hurtte understands the importance of Distributor Associations. He served on the Board of Directors of the Association for High Technology Distribution and later as the President of that Organization. Over the years Frank has served on numerous Manufacturer/Distributor Advisory Committees and de facto problem solving task forces.
Hurtte is an accomplished author with five books to his credit. Building off of what he calls the 5 North Stars of 
Knowledge-based distribution, each of his books push similar themes.
The North Stars of Knowledge-based Distribution
- What we know about products and customer applications should be a competitive advantage.
- We should be paid a premium for our knowledge.
- Not all customers are created equally – Let’s not waste time on customers who don’t appreciate our knowledge. Targeting is critical to our business.
- Technology is our friend and will make our business more efficient.
- A team with a playbook and processes trumps a bunch of “superstars”.
Frank also writes for a number of Distributor Trade Publications. With over 500 articles to his name, his work has appeared in leading publications tied to the wholesale trade in the following”
- Automation Solution Providers
- Industrial Distribution
- Electrical Wholesaling
- Safety Product Distribution
- Fluid Power and Pneumatics
- HVAC and Building Automation
- Power Transmission
- Irrigation
Hurtte speaks to groups throughout the world and serves on the Board of Distribution Companies.
email Frank: frank@riverheightsconsulting.com
Call Frank: 563-514-1104