Industry Insights
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Want to Succeed with Industrial Vending? Stop Making These 5 Mistakes
Read about five common mistakes distributors make when considering and offering vending and inventory control solutions, and how to overcome them.
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Wholesale Change Show: Fix Your eCommerce System (September 23, 2020)
Do you feel like your ecommerce platform is broken – not delivering the ROI you expected? You’re not alone.
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Blockchain in Supply Chain Management: Why You Should Care
This post summarizes some of the key findings in the second report based on our research for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors into how technology will transform the wholesale distribution industry.
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The 3 Ingredients You Need to Build a Successful Marketplace
Marketplaces are among the most successful business models of the modern era. From Amazon to Google to Grainger’s Zoro, there’s clearly good money in the marketplace.
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Why Is Cross-Selling Effectively So Difficult for Distributors?
Selling more to existing customers is more profitable than acquiring new customers. So why don’t many distributors succeed at effectively cross-selling to their customers?
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What is Your Product? Knowledge, Information and Service
Here’s what to consider when considering what “product” means to your distribution business and your customer relationships.
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The Role of AI in Building a Better B2B Sales Model
Here’s why hybrid models are ideal for this new sales landscape, how outside sales reps are primed to dominate this disrupted environment, and what tools including AI they’ll need to do it.
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Only Bad Leaders Qualify for ‘Undercover Boss’
If you hide so well – in your office or among your own employees – that your employees can’t recognize you, then you are not prominent in your own company and you aren’t a leader.
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The Art of Sales Prospecting When You Can’t Be There: A New Challenge for Field Sales in Distribution
Distributors’ field sales teams are adapting to a new way of reaching prospects now that they cannot just get in the car to visit in person.
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HD Supply White Cap-Construction Supply Group Deal is a $4B Look into the Future of Distribution
If you’re a distributor, keep an eye on White Cap, which – thanks to the help of CD&R and The Sterling Group – is modeling one of the only viable paths to a successful future.
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Real Advice About AI in Distribution: Get Ready for the Next Tech Revolution
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not just “advanced technology” – it’s a learning technology that improves on its own without human intervention. AI relies on big pools of data that are fed into machine learning algorithms (math formulas) to continually make decisions, evaluate their own performance and get better over time.
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Digital or Die: The Time is Nigh for Distributors to Embrace eBusiness
The gates are closing. It’s now or never for digital adoption in B2B markets. The sharp increase in online engagement with customers in March and April 2020 was more than just a one-off blip due to COVID-19. More and more surveys are emerging that are reinforcing the idea that while COVID-19 spurred the shift to…
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Marketing Mix: The Value of Getting It Right
Since the early 1960s, most companies have organized marketing activities into the “Marketing Mix,” or the “4 Ps”: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. Distribution Strategy Group shares how to get that mix right.
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Why Distributors Can’t Innovate – and How You Can Start
Distributors are learning how to build cultures that drive innovation; don’t wait. The disruptors are at the gate and the battle for distribution supremacy will likely go to the swift and not the strong.
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Is ‘Fulfillment by Amazon’ the Beginning of the End for Distributors?
Distributors worry that Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is assuming key distributor roles and erasing them from the equation. The service picks, packs, ships and even manages returns for retailers and distributors, as well as holds inventory in Amazon fulfillment centers.
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6 Keys to Outbound Success with Proactive Inside Sales
When most distributors talk about inside sales, they are usually referring to customer service agents. Yet, customer service personnel are generally more reactive than sales agents, because their goals are to make customers happy and solve problems.
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Wholesale Change Show: Does “Fulfillment by Amazon” Mean the Death of Distributors? (June 24, 2020)
If Amazon Business owns the customer, warehouses your products, does the picking, packing and shipping and handles the entire transaction – why do they need you?
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The Foundation for a Solid B2B Digital Strategy: Understanding Your Customers
Digital transformation has been a part of distributors’ language for many years. But the speed of transformation has varied: It’s hard, takes significant resources and in some instances, hasn’t been spurred by overwhelming customer demand.
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Wholesale Change Show: Are Inside Salespeople Really Salespeople? (June 10, 2020)
Distributors often call their customer service personnel, “Inside Sales Salespeople” – but are they?
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Grainger Disinvests in Europe as Amazon Business Expands: What This Means for the Industry
It’s fair to question whether these events are correlated or it’s just a coincidence that Amazon Business is (apparently) thriving in various international markets while Grainger is not.