Wakefern Food reported that sales for the fiscal year ended Oct. 3 totaled $18.3 billion, or up 7.9% from a year earlier. The company has begun opening micro-fulfillment centers and plans to continue doing so, executive Chris Lane says.

Home Depot saw sales surge in the last few months, as consumers spent to improve their homes, where they've been spending nearly all their time, and digital innovation has been key to keeping up with demand, Chief Information Officer Matt Carey says. He discusses coping with a surge in online sales, perfecting curbside pickup and how the pandemic has transformed shopping habits.

Wearable headsets, gloves with scanners and Google Glass are among ways technology can improve efficiency in transportation and warehouse operations, says Shash Anand, vice president of product strategy at SOTI. "In the warehouse, barcode scanning is probably the number-one use case for picking, packing and shipping, and they're starting to leverage both wearables and voice to find items faster," Anand says.

Chief supply chain officers can keep up with increasing digital demands by helping employees develop new skills through experiential learning and by having knowledgeable managers, according to Gartner analysts. "Rather than fighting to compete [for new talent], many CSCOs will look to make do with what they have and work to improve the digital dexterity and data literacy of their existing workforce," principal analyst Caroline Chumakov says.

Less than one-third of B2B buyers want to resume in-person sales meetings after the pandemic, indicating that remote and digital sales will remain dominant, according to McKinsey research. B2B buyers are also much more willing to make larger purchases online, with almost 70% open to buys of more than $50,000.

Distribution salespeople can promote their employer's value and improve organizational brand recognition by developing personal brands online, says Amy Vandaveer Novak of the University of Houston. Online research and social-based selling tactics are commonplace these days in B2B, she notes.

What comedians do well is see "associations between disparate, typically incompatible elements," which is a skill that can help business leaders identify and solve thorny problems, writes Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, citing Peter McGraw of Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "They're looking for problems because they want to turn those problems and those cracks into comedy," says McGraw.

According to David Bauders, CEO of SPARXiQ Intelligent Sales and Profit Acceleration, "As modern buyers have embraced self-service (via internet searches, social media and e-commerce platforms) for much of their buyer journey, the need for traditional sellers who provide product information -- and even application insights -- has dropped radically. Buyers complete 70 percent of their journey before they even engage with sellers. COVID-19 has accelerated the pressures to boost productivity and elevate sales teams' value-add." Read his post.

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