The Distributor Channel

A couple of weeks ago Forbes ran an article that got me thinking. The title was, “How Would You Put You Out of Business?” You can read it HERE .  This short article has five questions every business needs to consider and certainly pertains to the distributor community. But, I believe there are more business threatening “what ifs” to consider. Business Model Attacks: 1) What if technology somehow sneaks up on you? By the end of this year 50% of all distributors will have some kind of mobile app for their customers. While I believe a lot of these will not provide an immediate threat, I wonder what will happen over the long haul. 2) What if somebody else has better analytics than you? Case in point, the last recession caught quite a few distributors by surprise. Oh, they might have known something was coming, but most did not understand the depth or duration of the recession. Most lacked the analytics needed to predict the drop and equally damaging, most lagged behind on t

Dinosaurs R Us.  I consider myself to be cool, hip and technology savvy, however, I could find myself subscribing to the motto.  And, based on conversations with some of my long term friends, it might be happening to you as well. For a guy like me who remembers the 1960 Mercury Comet, rotary phones and life without fax machines, I sometimes feel awash in a tidal wave of technology gizmos.  Since they first arrived, I had this feeling that iPads (and other tablets) were as much status symbol as workable tool.  Early on, I heard the story of easily being able to check email, update calendars and access some quick information via the web.   Users also showed me how they could take notes during customer calls and shoot pictures to their inside sales contact.  I wondered, couldn’t a lot of this be accomplished using an existing iPhone and a 99-cent notebook?  I was still a doubter.  For every minute saved with the new-fangled devices, I saw ten minutes worth of distra