Owens & Minor has sold its European business, Movianto, for $133 million to EHDH Holding Group. Owens & Minor will use the money to pay down debt.

Walmart's acquisition and eventual discontinuation of Jet.com provides distributors with valuable lessons about experimenting with e-commerce, writes David Gordon, president of Channel Marketing Group. Distributors should look at Jet's culture while considering how e-commerce fits into customers' omnichannel strategies, he writes.

Distributors must have regularly updated online product descriptions and other content to best serve customers, increase visibility and make sales, writes Mike Wentz of Episerver. Dedicated resources are needed for creating and updating this content, he writes.

An FDA pilot program involving IBM, Merck, KPMG and Walmart showed the benefits of using blockchain in the US to meet the requirements of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act, write Pravin Chandran and Linda Kristoffersen of KPMG. Recall alerts that typically take days were delivered in a few seconds, and the technology can also be used to facilitate distribution of personalized therapies and to enable monitoring of environments for temperature-sensitive products.

Business-to-business marketing and sales professionals say their three biggest challenges to aligning marketing and sales are inaccurate data on prospects, communication and flawed processes, per InsideView. Nearly half of respondents said marketing and sales discuss pipeline either weekly or monthly, and sales executives want better lead quality from marketing colleagues.

Diversity within sales teams can help companies communicate better with customers and ultimately sell more effectively, writes Ronnell Richards. "More than being 'good business,' diversity of thought and having a team able to resonate and connect with a wide range of people is a superpower," Richards writes.

Performance reviews amid the coronavirus crisis still need to cultivate employees' potential but also will define company values, experts say. They offer strategies including how to use video to be "more personal and humane" to remote workers, how to evaluate changing objectives and where to find different performance data.

Distributors have made progress in navigating through this unprecedented disruption, but much more is needed. In this live webinar, we will follow up with Michael DeCata, President and CEO of Lawson Products, to hear how he is navigating through COVID-19 and how it has accelerated his plans around innovation. Mark Dancer, author of NAW's "Innovate to Dominate," and Richard Blatcher of PROS will explore with Mike how distributors must implement an "innovation ecosystem" to compete in the new normal. Register today! Sponsored by PROS.

Mark Dancer says, "One of the most important findings in 'Innovate to Dominate: The 12th Edition in the Facing the Forces of Change Series' is that 'distributors won't go far by going it alone.' In the digital age, the battle for customers is not just about putting up a webstore or leveraging AI for optimal pricing or effective selling. The real struggle is about ideas. The NAW Podcast Series: INNOVATE TO DOMINATE is here to help distributors access and create new ideas as they follow the roadmap to innovation set forth in 'Innovate to Dominate.'" Read his post.