Change With Your Key Partners’ Digital Desires

Barcodes sparked major, model-changes in the ‘80s for both drug and grocery distributors. Regular-calling reps gave way to: sole-supply, integrated, automated, replenishment systems. And, many extra services were unbundle for fees. 95% of the existing distributors didn’t change and disappeared. This model has since spread into other channels, especially with repetitive commodity buying.

Continue reading 250. Rethink Your Business Assumptions and Models →

Never has a balanced, global economy been shut down for a year. Then: rebooted with massive, blunt, stimulus and Build-Better funds. It will take months for the supply-and-demand for both products and labor to rebalance. And, then into what New Normal?

Continue reading 244. Pandemic-Recovery Labor Challenges →

Feb 13, 2021: What a Week

Unless you were unplugged, the week of Feb 8^th had chaos on many fronts: pandemic, impeachment, short squeezes, money printing, etc. With the distractions of the news and the exponential infoglut at your fingertips and dinging from your smartphone, where should your company be focusing its attention?

Continue reading 233. KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON* →

Survey: 80% of McKinsey Clients Fret Business-Model Risk

So much for global-2000 CEOs. What are distributor CEOs thinking?    

1. What percent of distributors – with commissioned, field-sales reps- have business-model worries?
2. What percent believe the results (from multiple surveys) that: a majority of millennial B2B buyers don’t want regular sales calls; or, to pay for them in higher prices?  
3. How many CEOs are “well-informed” about their key suppliers’ plans for: digital engagement of end-user customers along with new, omnichannel journeys for them?
4. What are the dis- and re-intermediation realities of suppliers’ digital plans?

Continue reading 228. Disrupt Your Own Business and Selling Models in 2021 →

Beginning of the year Planning Questions:

Does your firm set target “numbers”: budgets and financial, in the form of “stretch” goals?

1. If so, what will you do differently to fill the stretch gap? And, any specifics for digital transformation necessities?
2. Will your “strategy changes” threaten the status quo? Or,
3. Will they fine-tune what you know and have been doing?
4. Will debates be only about choosing and prioritizing the type of lipstick or dresses to put on the same old activity bundle?
5. Has this process achieved stretch goals in each of the past five years?

Continue reading 227. In 2021, do the Numbers, Strategy and Catalytic →