Ace Hardware has acquired Colorado-based home-repair services franchise Handyman Matters as part of its plan to expand into the "do it for me" segment, President and CEO John Venhuizen said. "It's this natural fit of bringing 'helpful' to the home, so that we have a service provider that can actually do it for the consumer," he said.

American Tire Distributors has been testing an electric delivery truck at its Santa Fe Springs, Calif., distribution center. The experiment, which could be expanded beyond California, will help the company determine whether such vehicles could take the place of diesel-powered trucks.

Data analytics has a number of varieties, and collectively they can help distributors improve sales productivity, increase margins and find growth opportunities, writes Sean Kracklauer, ENAVATE's chief revenue officer. Descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics "can guide distributors to the best decisions for how they go to market, which customers they target, how they price their products and services, and other long-term strategies," Kracklauer writes.

Business-to-business marketers must stop wasting resources on ineffective content strategies and instead identify their ideal buyer and target them with personalized messaging, Stacey Danheiser writes. She outlines three steps to identifying ideal buyers -- review current customers, talk to sales colleagues and develop buyer personas.

Reports indicate that consumers favor brands that provide personalized mobile communications versus blanket messaging and appreciate when businesses given them control over the frequency of these interactions, writes Glenn Fishback. "When advertisers deliver well-tailored offers, they not only prevent users' frustration over irrelevant content, but they also build deeper relationships with those consumers that will translate into increased lifetime value over the long haul," he writes.

Most business-to-business leads are found on LinkedIn, but it's more effective to conduct your outreach on Instagram or Twitter with a goal of building relationships versus pitching services, says Carlos Gil, author of "The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI." He offers tips for leveraging your presence on LinkedIn, including how to use the platform to improve your search engine optimization.

Make the most of one-on-one meetings by asking questions such as, "What do you wish you had more time to do?" instead of asking how things are going, writes Lance Baker, who lists 16 possible questions created by Susan Scott. "If we want to develop productive, engaged, and innovating workplaces, then we need to learn how to value employees and have rich conversations," he writes.

"Optimizing Distributor Profitability: Best Practices to a Stronger Bottom Line" is a groundbreaking research study -- with an oversize, step-by-step wall map -- that features 47 best practices and 50 action steps developed from actual experiences with 84 real-world wholesale distribution firms. This perennial best-seller is a powerful weapon to use to enhance your shareholder value. Also available as an e-book. Download a sample.

The time has come to address your concerns about shrinking margins by upping your game on pricing decisions. If you keep doing more with less, you'll soon be doing everything with nothing. The issue of margin erosion will never end if you don't get creative -- first with your pricing methods and second with your value proposition. If you want to leverage pricing optimization best practices that are rooted in sound analytics, start by reading "Pricing Optimization."

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