Lindsay Konzak, Author at Modern Distribution Management

Foodservice Sector Tackles Data Standards

This article looks at how one distribution sector is tackling the data standardization challenge in collaboration with manufacturers and end-users through the Foodservice GS1 US Standards Initiative.

National foodservice redistributor Dot Foods has used EDI to automate transactions with suppliers for many years. But when product data between manufacturers and distributors doesn’t match, “all that efficiency goes out the window,” says Debbie Bower, e-commerce manager for Dot Foods, Mt. Sterling, IL. When ...

November 25, 2012

Sales & Marketing

How to Get Sales Reps to Do What You Want

Steve Deist of Indian River Consulting Group says that getting sales reps to do what you want starts with figuring out what your customers want. In this exclusive MDM Webcast summary, Deist talks about steps distributors can take to segment, target and position more effectively – the first steps to building out a better sales force structure and sales compensation program.

How can you get sales reps to do what you want them to do?

Before jumping right into sales compensation or structure as the answer, Steve Deist of Indian River Consulting Group recommends taking steps to understand the ...

November 10, 2012

Economic Trends

5 Steps Distributors Should Take Now That Election is Over

While election's completion doesn't allay all the concerns we had pre-election, it does bring some certainty into the equation.

November 7, 2012

Economic Trends

Commentary: It’s Time to Move Past ‘Election Paralysis’

Forty-four percent of respondents to the quarterly MDM-Baird survey featured in this issue said they had deferred business decisions pending the results of the election, including hiring and investment spending, as well as employee compensation.

Respondents explained:

“Many customers are waiting to see what happens in November.”

“A lot of jobs are pending due to election paralysis.”

While it’s true that the election …

October 25, 2012

Economic Trends

‘Election Paralysis’ Dampens Latest MDM-Baird Distribution Survey Results

Nearly half of respondents to the latest survey have deferred business investment due to the election.

October 18, 2012

Sales & Marketing

Help Your Sales Managers Be Proactive, Not Reactive

Jim Pancero: Give sales managers the training they need to coach your sales team.

October 15, 2012

Sales & Marketing

Make Your Data Work to Grow Profitability

MDM Editor Lindsay Konzak recently attended the Advanced Profitability Improvement Conference in Arizona, featuring some of the top speakers on wholesale distribution strategy and management, including Brent Grover, Bruce Merrifield, Tony Pericle, Jon Schreibfeder and more. The focus of the conference was how distributors can make smarter and more informed decisions about where to target their resources to boost margins going into 2013. Analytics should be the foundation of any move on this front, the speakers said. This article presents a summary of main ideas presented by some of the speakers at the conference.

Expenses exceed gross profit on too many sales, according to Randy MacLean of Waypoint Analytics. In fact, he says, “there is no correlation between gross margins and profit.” He was speaking at the semiannual Advanced Profitability Improvement Conference in September in Scottsdale, AZ. So what happens? Where do the profits go?

MacLean says there are five ways profits disappear before reaching the bottom line.

The cost to serve a ...

October 10, 2012

Economic Trends

Where Manufacturing & Construction Fall in September’s Jobs Report

While overall jobless rate fell, there are still plenty of areas for concern in the monthly employment report.

October 5, 2012

Sales & Marketing

Where Are Your Profits Going?

Randy MacLean: 5 ways profit disappears before reaching the bottom line.

October 1, 2012

Sales & Marketing

Why Do Customers Leave?

Avoid the 'fatal error' of not telling customers how much value you provide.

September 26, 2012

Strategy

Commentary: The Pain of Uncertainty

Uncertainty permeates today’s business environment. In fact, I’ve spoken with a number of distributors over the past couple of months who are holding off on expansions or hiring because of it. As National Association of Manufacturers chief economist Chad Moutray told MDM last month: “There really has been a sitting-on-the-hands mentality both on the part of consumers on businesses.”

That said, there are always …

September 25, 2012

Strategy

Disaster Plans: ‘No Single Point of Failure’

Each hurricane season, there’s a renewed effort by many businesses to implement disaster plans, but most still do not have a formal, updated plan for business continuity. This article looks at the first steps a distributor should take to ensure that its business can keep running should the unplanned happen.

F&F Industrial Equipment, a one-branch industrial distributor in Middletown, NY, has been proactive about developing a business continuity plan in the case of disaster.

While the distributor itself has never been affected by a natural disaster or other major disruption, it has witnessed customers’ experiences with storms and other unplanned events and the havoc those can wreak if a business is not prepared.

“Knock on wood nothing happens here,” says Frank Fasano Jr., vice president of operations. But, he says, “you really never know.”

As recent events have shown, a disaster can hit anywhere. Consider …

September 25, 2012

Free

The Challenge in Taking a Long-Term View of Your Business

How can you strengthen the organizational factors that lead to long-term health?

September 13, 2012

Economic Trends

U.S. Drought Hits Rural Economies

More than half of U.S. counties have been designated as natural disaster areas after the worst drought in more than 50 years ravaged crops and pastures this summer. As of Aug. 28, 2012, nearly 53 percent of the country was still in moderate drought or worse, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, released weekly by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Manufacturers and distributors serving these markets will or already have seen an impact as the drought continues to dampen economic activity.

The impacts have been widespread, from cracking …

September 10, 2012

Technology

The Downside of Data

How can you differentiate between useful data and data best left untapped?

August 30, 2012

Sales & Marketing

What’s Driving Distributors to Update Sales Compensation Plans?

About a third of distributors plan to make changes to sales compensation in the next year.

August 27, 2012

Human Resources in Wholesale Distribution

MDM Interview: Get Strategic Clarity Before a Sales Compensation Change

In the recent MDM-Baird Distribution Survey, we asked readers how satisfied they are that their current sales compensation plans support their business objectives. More than 60 percent responded that they are very or pretty satisfied (ranking of 6-10 on a scale of 10) that their plans aligned with their business objectives. (Full results are presented in graphics throughout this article.)

About a third responded with a rank of 5 or below, implying that they are somewhat or very unsatisfied with the performance of their current sales compensation plans.

“They are working into a headwind, because their sales compensation plan is not supportive of what they are trying to do at a company level,” said Mike Emerson, co-author of the new book from the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, Effective Sales Incentive Design for Distributors: What’s the Right Plan?

Editor Lindsay Konzak spoke with Emerson about the book, what distributors need to do before embarking on a redesign of their sale compensation plans, what the most common challenges are when doing so and how distributors can take steps in the early stages to ensure a smoother transition to a new compensation plan...