I have been thinking about e-commerce a lot lately.  Back in 2016, I said,  “While the argument for Amazon-like eCommerce may make great sense for the distributors falling into the “Logistics” side of the distribution industry, similar investment on the Knowledge-based side of the evolutionary line is likely to be poorly spent.”         For full context, read it HERE .    What a difference seven years and a global pandemic can make!   Today I believe every distributor needs to have an e-commerce platform.  Here are a couple of reasons. Earlier this week my friend Ian Heller over at the Distribution Strategy Group sent me an email promoting a January 18th web presentation called The 2023 State of E-commerce in Distribution .  The email said: Distributors with e-commerce report that 19.7% of their sales came through digital channels in 2022.  That’s compared with: • 14.5% in 2021 • 11.6% in 2020  This is ...

Years ago, one seasoned distributor executive said, “One of the natural laws of distribution is that you will lose between 8-10 percent of your business every year.  Companies change direction, close their operations, are acquired by others, and a mess of other things.  If you don’t plan for this, you will be forever behind the eight-ball.”  The message was shocking.  While I am not sure his percentages were entirely accurate, the message was true.  Customers do occasionally go away.   Having a solid source of new customers is important.  Yet, according to our 2022 State of Distributor Sales research, only a dismal 34 percent of distributors are happy with the number of new customers brought into their organization each year. The distributors we spoke with went on to state that traditional salespeople were their primary source of new customers.  It has been my experience, and this research further illustrates, that distributor salespeople do a poo...

The State of Distributor Sales 2022 COVID-19 made its dramatic world debut in 2020.  When the subject of Global Pandemics comes up in some far-flung future dinner conversation, I plan on citing Friday, March 13 th as the day any normalcy slipped out of my life.  It would be an understatement to say, “A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.”  The Distribution Model has undergone a lot of external pressure. The past fifty years or so have repeatedly demonstrated a major point – distributors can change with their environment.  The distributor business model today bears very little resemblance to the business operated by my parents a half-century ago.  I started this project as keenly interested in exactly what has changed and established a benchmark for distributors to consider as they moved into the future. The result of the research concluded with a whitepaper and a presentation titled: 2022 State of Distributor Sales: Rewriting the Distr...

After surveying and interviewing distributors across the country with Distribution Strategy Group, we are pleased to present the 2022 State of Distributor Sales. The webinar features: How distributors organize their sales forces by size, customer type, geography, and other factors Techniques for providing better, faster, and more efficient customer support Current trends in sales force compensation Best practices in telesales Which technologies and data sources distributors can employ to drive sales productivity Click HERE to watch the webinar for free.  Sponsored by Epicor and proton.ai. Thanks to all who participated in this project!  We appreciate your time and your contribution. .

Yep, it’s that time of year again. Even though I am busy with client year-end planning, new salesperson training and steering a couple of distributors toward fee-based services, I take time away from work to visit my long-time (being born in 270 AD, he hates it when I say old) friend Saint Nicholas – aka Santa Claus. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Santa. The back of the earliest picture of us together has a timestamp of 1957, but I know we visited prior to that day when our paths crossed at the Downtown Houston Foley’s. Based on my early recollections, Santa was a great friend and business advisor to my grandfather. Following one of my short meetings with the “Jolly One”, I overheard the two of them talking about meeting down at the Eagle’s Club later. As politically incorrect as it is today, my five-year-old olfactory nerves sensed Santa and my grandfather shared the habit of smoking a cigar after a hard day at work. Over the years, Mr. Claus has become a frien...