It’s November. The Midwestern Iowa leaves feature Technicolor rainbows of colors; bright red, deep orange, a thousand shades of yellow. A bit of warmth lingers, but Thanksgiving, December, and the Holiday season make this time of year go by quickly. Two painful realities of the season loom in the distance - yard cleanup and annual planning.  As I jot down these few words, I feel the approaching pain of a future Sunday afternoon manhandling a rake around the property.  Some pay a neighborhood teenager to handle the raking. But it’s hard to find an $8.00 an hour surrogate for End of Year Planning. Planning needn’t be the dreaded task hanging around the corner. Join me as we remove the pain out of the process. Start early . Many of us don’t dig into the task of Year End Planning until the last minute. A few of us dread the seemingly gigantic nature of the job so much, the procrastination pushes us into next the year. I know people who move paper clip sorting to the front and ce...

A quick review of the Profit Reports generated by several knowledge-based distributor associations reveals a few undeniable facts: • Distributors sell thousands of SKUs • Distributors sell to thousands of customers • This equates to millions of customer/product combinations Another point dwells just below the surface. While it is harder to spot without lining up the reports over long period of time, our research indicates the typical distributor discounts more when times are good than when they are bad. You would think that margins would go down in tough times and up in good times, but the preliminary results indicate just the opposite. Perhaps times of economic growth cause us to loosen up our grip on pricing mechanisms. Maybe we get just a little sloppy. Or, perhaps our customers rev-up their negotiating strategies. Still, we find ourselves discounting. As we say here in Iowa, " let’s put some lipstick on this pig ."  Our customers don’t think poorly of us b...

Annual Planning for Distributors It’s November. The Midwestern Iowa leaves feature Technicolor rainbows of colors; bright red, deep orange, a thousand shades of yellow. A bit of warmth lingers, but Thanksgiving, December, and the Holiday season rapidly approach. Two painful realities of the season loom in the distance - yard cleanup and annual planning. As I jot down these few words, I feel the approaching pain of a future Sunday afternoon manhandling a rake around the property. Some pay a neighborhood teenager to handle the raking. But it’s hard to find an $8.00 an hour surrogate for End of Year Planning. Planning needn’t be the dreaded task hanging around the corner. Join me as we remove the pain out of the process. Start early . Many of us don’t dig into the task until the last minute. A few of us dread the seemingly gigantic nature of the job so much, we procrastinate into next the year. I know people who move paper clip sorting to the front and center in order...