December is always a busy month here at River Heights Consulting.  Distributors are making their plans for the next year and that causes the phone to ring.  Compensation plans are being adjusted.  New hires evaluated.  All this and, it is the season for simply catching up with our friends and family and making trips to the mall with the Missus (sometimes referred to as – She who must be obeyed).   Regardless of all my activities, my version of busy pales in comparison to the hectic activities up north at Claus International.  Generally, I received some type of communication from my old pal Santa long before the Big Day; phone call, text, email, or even something by way of the red-striped envelope with the North Pole return.    This year was different.  I received this text message just four days before Christmas:   SC at NP:  Frankie Boy, not ignoring all your messages.  Things got kind of hectic ...

We recently wrote a whitepaper for the Distribution Strategy Group which could be summarized this way: Distributors provide a plethora of services.  Services that involve people are nearly impossible for Amazon (or others) to duplicate.  Some of the services customers expect, like credit or shipping, are available for free everywhere else.   Many services go beyond the “cost of doing business.”  The services most distributors added were put in place without a real strategic plan as to how they fit into the total business.  Distributors lack an understanding of both the internal cost of providing the services and the value to the customer.  Little management oversight is applied to services – sellers control who receives their services and when.   Distributors face significant roadblocks to establishing a strategy for services.  A strategy around services c...