Today: digital disruptors are attacking most industries. In ’95, a few startups invaded easiest B2C product categories with their own homemade digital tools. Today, raiders are targeting every “buying-journey experience” with off-the-shelf digital tools from cloud providers. Barriers to buying-journey innovation have fallen for both startups and your firm.
Continue reading 161. How Digital Disruptors (Will) Skim Distributor SalesWhen you quote a customer a “price”, what are the services that are bundled (“for free”) into that price? A typical distributor-bundle includes costs for: outside and inside reps, pick, pack, shipping, and trade credit. Bigger customers usually get extra services “for free”. Small ones may have a minimum order size requirement and/or an un-bundled freight charge. (A tough sell with Amazon’s free shipping policies.)
Continue reading 159. Distributors: Get Re-Bundling FlexibleGrove was a founder of Intel, and its CEO from ’87 to ’98. He wrote an acclaimed book on what he had learned: “Only the Paranoid Survive”, published in ’99. His summary quote:
Continue reading 157. “Only The Paranoid Survive” 2.0How important would it be to know who your most net-profitable customers are? Which ones are growing the fastest? Would a team effort to better partner the profitable, fast-growers payoff?
Why not try a simple experiment?
Continue reading 156. Measure and Act on What MattersMany distributors do not share general financial numbers with all employees on a regular basis. So, new plays and innovation metrics (based on insights from customer and SKU net-profit analytics) can’t be pursued. Too bad! All stakeholder groups would benefit enormously.
In many of my presentations over the years, I’ve asked roomfuls of distributor principals:
Continue reading 151. Share the Secret: “Profit” Is a Clean Word!In ’08: The Central Banks rescued PE firms from their over-paid, over-leveraged ’07 deals. By lowering interest rates to near-zero for 10 years good things happened:
Continue reading 149. What Distributor Roll-Ups Will Become Zombies?