Can You Beat Amazon at Their Game? 🕒 5 min read By Frank Hurtte The vultures are circling again.   Every few years, the doomsayers resurface: Amazon's eating distribution. E-commerce is the death of wholesale. Distributors are obsolete. The headlines are predictable. The advice? Equally predictable and predictably wrong.   Build your own Amazon. Hire consultants to help you compete on speed and price. Invest millions in e-commerce platforms. Match their logistics. Underprice the giants.   If you take that advice, you'll lose. And you'll waste time, money, and energy doing it. Here's why: You're competing on their battlefield instead of yours. W hat Amazon Does Better (And Always Will) Let's be honest. Amazon, Grainger, Faire, and the newer B2B marketplaces have invested billions in logistics, data, and algorithms. A mid-sized distributor can't match their speed or price. Competing on those terms is like a neighborhood bookstore trying to o...

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...

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. ...

Why Relationships Alone Are Not a Growth Strategy Stop Waiting for Competitors to Retire By Frank Hurtte Relationships matter. If everything else is equal, the salesperson with the relationship usually wins the order. But if your only competitive advantage is that customers like you, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. Your competitor has a relationship, too. And if your growth plan depends on waiting for that competitor to retire, transfer, or die, that’s not a strategy. That’s wishful thinking. I’ve watched salespeople play this waiting game for decades. Their “growth plan” often sounds like this: “I’ll keep showing up. I’ll answer the phone at night. I’ll jump when there’s a problem. I’ll build trust. And when the competitor eventually slips up, I’ll move up the food chain.” Relationships can open doors. The keyword is "eventually." Eventually might mean a year. It might mean five. I’ve seen reps wait a decade for a competitor to “finally mess up.” Meanwhile, the accou...

Being Proactive Still Matters Why Distributors Should Ask Manufacturers the Hard Questions Now Years ago, when I was a young rookie factory salesman responsible for a dozen or so distributors, a cornerstone requirement of my job was providing each distributor with a customized, semi-formal annual review. While many of my coworkers treated the exercise as a simple “check-the-box” activity, I saw it differently. To me, it was a rare opportunity to step back, take stock, and outline how each distributor could be a better partner to my employer, and, frankly, how we could be better partners to them. As a young guy who still had a few dark hairs remaining, those annual reviews also gave me something just as valuable: time. Time to sit face-to-face with distributor owners and managers who had been in the business far longer than I had. It gave me a chance to show them that while I was part of a different generation, often viewed as “green as the grass,” I was serious about the work. ...

The Customer Complaint is a True Gift By Desiree Grace and Frank Hurtte “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Department of Motor Vehicles.” If you’ve been inside a DMV lately, you already know what customer service isn’t . Endless lines, rigid processes, and staff who look like they’re allergic to joy. They can get away with it because there’s no competition. But if you’re in the real business world? Customers always have other options. And the ones who complain might just be the ones saving your business. Complaints, demands, and challenges…they’re all gifts in (slightly annoying) disguises. Clear, specific, and sometimes blunt customer feedback forces us to improve by having us rethink our habits, modernize our tools, and strengthen our relationships. Meanwhile, the silent customers, the ones who quietly defect without saying a word, are the ones who should keep you up at night. The non-complaining customers are often the ones who go away silently. They don’t com...

Supply Chain Whiplash: Survive It, or Use It to Pass the Competition By Frank Hurtte   A few years ago, I closed a six-figure deal in a gas station bathroom. Seriously, it’s no joke. How? The timing was super deluxe because the customer was ready, and I was nimble enough to close in an unusual spot. That kind of agility matters more now than ever. The supply chain is doing somersaults. One day, freight is cheap. The next day, there’s a two-week backlog. Factories shut down. Regulations shift overnight. It feels like whiplash, and everyone’s rubbing their necks. And if you’re sitting there thinking, ‘It’ll smooth out next quarter,’ let me save you the wait...it won’t. But here’s the kicker: when your competitors freeze, that’s when the real winners move. You don’t win by waiting out the chaos. You win by preparing, adapting, and spotting the openings that others miss. Let’s talk about how distributors can turn volatility into opportunity.   1. Map the Weak Links First Let's f...