Packaging distributor TricorBraun is being acquired by Ares Management and a pension plan in Ontario in a deal expected to be finalized this quarter. President and CEO Court Carruthers will continue in his role, as will Executive Chairman Keith Strope.

The value of supply chain mapping became evident during the pandemic as many logistics professionals struggled to identify weak links and make necessary adjustments to keep goods flowing, writes Bindiya Vakil, CEO of Resilinc. Vakil describes various mapping techniques and best practices and notes, "Rapidly evolving technology, cloud adoption, and enterprise networks have made mapping cost effective, scalable, and rapidly achievable."

Learning about cybersecurity threats should be rewarding to employees, writes Shannon Williams, who has five pointers for gaining buy-in. "Turn the right answer into a badge, a discovered vulnerability into a star and a year without an incident into a holiday bonus," Williams suggests.

Jabmo CEO Nick Heys and Dun & Bradstreet's Stacy Greiner talk about major trends in business-to-business marketing for 2021, covering the necessity of sales and marketing alignment, the acceleration of digital transformation, and marketing's role as a growth driver. "It's not only B2B marketing's opportunity, but it's B2B marketing's responsibility to take back control of the buying cycle," Heys says.

Sales managers should encourage their teams to create new leads and opportunities every day, writes Colleen Francis. No matter what, salespeople should ask for referrals, place calls, send emails and contact a past and current client each day.

Much leadership training focuses only on managing reports, but leaders who become executives must also be skilled at working with leaders on other teams and influencing their bosses, writes Jon Lokhorst. "Leading across your organization requires a unique blend of trust and influence as you build productive relationships with peer leaders," he writes.

Successful, ambitious people pay consistent attention to what they're accomplishing, how they're learning and growing, and how their well-being is, writes Nicolai Tillisch. He offers a weekly ritual to identify opportunities thoughtfully without falling into the trap of making everything a reductive, problems-based approach.

Don't miss NAW's first-ever Digital Summit, Jan. 27-28. Register by Jan. 15 and receive a special gift box from NAW that includes items for you to use on each day! The NAW Digital Summit is focused on helping you lead through a time of transition. You'll hear from distribution CEOs, network with your peers, get the 2021-22 economic forecast, find out what the Biden agenda means for distribution, plus much more. Use special 5- and 10-pack registrations to bring your team!

In this capstone webinar for the NAW Series: How Technology Will Transform Wholesale Distribution, Ian Heller and Jonathan Bein will summarize what they learned from the research conducted with distributors, suppliers and customers. They'll provide a roadmap forward: a specific set of recommendations on the strategic actions that the distribution industry -- and individual companies -- should take to fend off competitors, outflank the disruptors and prepare to take market share and improve profitability. Register for this free Jan. 21 webinar at 2 p.m. Eastern. Sponsored by Unilog and PROS.

Old school distribution is about stocking inventory, taking orders and serving demand. New school distribution is about innovating through customer services and working side-by-side with customers in the real world. The future of distribution is about solving problems in your customer's business -- often before your customer even knows a problem exists. Innovate to Dominate provides breakthrough ideas, lessons from leading distributors who are innovating and inspiration to help you lead your customers into the future and sustain your competitive advantage.