Genuine Parts reported fourth-quarter profit of $8.9 million, down from $187 million last year. Revenue of $4.71 billion was up from a year earlier, although sales for subsidiary Motion Industries declined 5.6% year over year.
The coronavirus outbreak is keeping some Alibaba employees from reporting to work and testing its supply and logistics operations. Food delivery, electronics and apparel purchases have been hampered, but groceries and other staples are doing well.
State of the Wholesale Supply Chain Industry in 2020 For the third straight year, Blue Ridge asked wholesale supply industry leaders about their challenges, how they're thinking about solving them and how they're dealing with the pace of technological change. One key finding for the 2020 survey is the adoption of new machine learning, such as A.I., which is on the rise as a strategy to combat supply chain disruption. Get the report to read more.
Distributors should carefully consider the Americans with Disabilities Act and applicable state or international disability laws when designing a website, writes Fred Mendelsohn. Businesses can benefit from conducting regular audits of their website and mobile apps to ensure compliance and following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, he writes.
Evergreen blog posts, visuals and surveys are just three ways brands can create engaging website content,
writes Manisha Sukhyani. "If you have conducted a survey or have collected a list of statistics, put them on a website to influence users for taking decisions in final purchases from your business," she writes.
The average business-to-business buying decision is made by almost seven people, per Challenger, and The Marketing Practice's David van Schaick explores the implications of this for marketers -- such as the psychological effect of group thinking, which encourages more risk-averse and conformist behavior. The key to success lies in creating "an environment in which consensus is easier" and making "your audience look good to their audience," he writes.
Empathy and self-awareness can help leaders motivate employees when digital transformation is jeopardized by inertia and other threats, writes Sanjay Malhotra. He points out that "[f]or most organizations, the human aspects of change will be a greater challenge than the technology."
To assist your leading-edge company in transforming your social selling practices, the NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence and Texas A&M University are holding a third kickoff meeting on Oct. 1 for the brand-new "Digitizing the Sales Process" consortium. If your company wants to be on the cutting-edge of creating and implementing a digital selling strategy that guides your organization and ensures that technologies are aligned with your other business processes, please register for this consortium now! To learn more, email NAW's Patricia A. Lilly.
Watch Barry Lawrence. This first-of-its-kind "Sales and Marketing Optimization" research study, with an accompanying Sales and Marketing Framework wall map, provides 30 best practices for improving these critical business processes: market segmentation, value proposition, business development, sales process and sales force stratification. Every distributor should adopt and execute these best practices successfully if the business is to adapt to the new realities in today's economy and still achieve competitive advantage.
