AI for Production Planning, or “You can call me Al.”   ⏱️ 6–7 min read By Desiree Grace I need new friends. I need more friends. My production team is too busy to lift their heads from their desks. When they do look up, their eyes are beady little slits from staring at spreadsheets for hours on end. And, well, they are grumpy. Same goes for my other group of friends, the purchasing team. They have ripped out their hair over delivery delays, and their cortisol levels are through the roof. None of them are any fun these days. Nobody wants to party. They need a new friend. I’m going to introduce them to Artificial Intelligence, nicknamed Al. Al could be a great addition to your next dinner party, especially if you want to feed a crowd. Hear me out. When you plan a dinner party, you need to have enough food and supplies. You do not want to run out of napkins or beer. Right? Not very different from production planning, really, so let’s start there. Because dinner parties are easy for Al...

A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment Are You Marketing to Gen X… or Missing Them Completely? Know Your Target Market By Desiree Grace The “Forgotten Generation.” Yep, that’s me. Gen X, born between 1965 and 1980, we are a smaller cohort than the Baby Boomers and Millennials. Just don’t lump us in with the Boomers, no matter what those Tik-Tokkers say, because we are NOT the same. But overlooked doesn’t mean insignificant. Gex X represents roughly 65 million Americans and an estimated $5 trillion in consumer spending. We are also in our peak-earning years. Many are now in senior leadership roles, running companies, approving budgets, and shaping strategy. In other words: if you’re selling to people over 50, you can’t afford to misunderstand them. If you are crafting a sales pitch or a marketing campaign to those influential people from the Gen X crowd, know they are entrepreneurial and productive in the workplace and value work-life balance. This is the generation that didn’t automa...

How Smart Distributors Spot Problems Before They Become Expensive For years, distributors have treated Voice of the Customer surveys like something you send out there to customers without much follow-up. But after running dozens of these projects, we’ve learned something a little surprising: some of the most eye‑opening insights come from your own people. No one likes to admit it, but the hesitation usually starts the minute we ask a sales team to help promote a survey. Some worry customers will think it’s intrusive. Others are convinced management will use the results as a scorecard. A few swear surveys are pointless because “we already know what customers think.” And almost everyone quietly wonders what happens if the feedback is negative. But here’s the funny part. Once the final report lands, those same teams almost always say the survey helped them understand their customers better. The resistance was never about the survey itself. It was about not knowing what to expect. ...

Mission Possible: How to Capture Customers Before They Leave Your Website By Desiree Grace We all know the sneaky reconnaissance behaviors. These guerrilla shoppers visit your website, grab screenshots of your best information, and quietly skulk off to the next site. Much like saboteurs, you can see the evidence they were there, but you can’t catch them. Worse yet, they don’t buy. These uncaptured customers represent lost revenue. They often take your best marketing and product research straight to your competitors. In sales and marketing circles, this bad behavior is known as Webrooming . So how do you keep these shoppers from slipping away? How do you get them to stay put and buy from you ? There are A LOT of things that matter to the Webrooming customers. The strongest ways to convert webroomers are simple and research‑grounded Best Practices: reduce friction, increase confidence, and personalize the journey so they never feel the need to leave. Before we get into best...

Advice for New Grads By Desiree Grace, River Heights Consulting Picture this: your friend and mine, Frank Hurtte, is invited to give a commencement speech. Before stepping up to the podium, he’d get a trim to sharpen that Colonel Sanders meets Midwest straight talk look. Then he’d sit down to prepare his remarks. As you might imagine, this discussion took place over a diet soda (generic, of course) for him and a black coffee for me. In my mind, new graduates need to understand a few fundamentals. To start, they must learn the strategy, goals, and culture of their new organization. Their actions and priorities should align with those elements. Even the language matters. For example, some companies use “sales” to mean top‑line revenue. Others use “turnover.” Learning the vocabulary is part of learning the job. Beyond that, new grads need to show up on time, follow directions, and be prepared. The homework doesn’t stop when you walk past the podium. In today’s world, no organization hire...