Football Fever
In the words of Hank Williams, “are you ready for some football?! The season for the most watched sport in America started this weekend with Miami vs Florida and will …
The Rep Alignment Dilemma
The rep alignment dilemma … whom to align with to generate sales? End-users? National chains? Independent supportive distributors? Any distributor who will support the manufacturer? The manufacturer? But, the bottom …
Grainger Q2 Sales Slow … Industrial Indicator?
Grainger frequently is a good bellwether for the industrial market given their MRO focus on Fortune 500 industrial accounts. Grainger\’s performance highlights that the industrial MRO rate of growth decelerated …
Using Price to Expand Your Business
Competing on price is a “no no” for many distributors. Few want to say “the reason why people buy from me is price.” But, do all of your customers want …
Home Depot to Offer Customized Pro Pricing
Home Depot’s retiring CFO’s interview last night with Jim Cramer on CNBC shared a glimpse of why electrical distributors who serve small to mid-sized residential and commercial distributors should be …
Is your supplier finding leads and business, online, for you?
ABB recently launched a new initiative, eFinder, that enables visitors to its website to purchase material online. But they are not disintermediating the channel. Instead they are providing distributors with …
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Compete for Grainger’s Business: eProcurement
Many industrially-oriented distributors lament that they can’t compete versus Grainger for MRO business at their accounts. They say “we now the ‘decision’ makers and can beat them on price but …
Reducing Tax Implications of Incentive Travel Programs
This week WESCO is taking 800+ people on an Alaskan cruise as part of their WESCO VIP incentive program. It looks like an exciting adventure (check out this pre-program video …
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eCommerce in the Channel
During recent calls with distributors to get the pulse of the industry, one area we touched on is eCommerce and specifically the activity that they are seeing from their customers, …
Home Depot Orange Coming to Your Customer
The color orange signifies joy, happiness and creativity, however, it is also representative of fire and, given that the color is between yellow and red on the color spectrum it …