Sales reps often quote prices based on educated guesses – or worse, just a hunch. Management should use analytics to tighten some of the latitude sales reps have over pricing, which improves the bottom line, says Brent Grover in the Distributor's Guide to Analytics.

According to Grover, "profits are lower when management has loose controls over pricing," so distributors should give sales reps accurate market pricing information for them to make realistic offers and counteroffers.

Luckily, distributors have access to the necessary "computing power, software and analytics tools to mine their data for market pricing and customer profitability information," says Grover.

Read more about using analytics to optimize pricing in the Distributor's Guide to Analytics.