Sysco's sales are doing well because restaurants are recovering to 2019 levels, with many large markets yet to fully reopen, says President and CEO Kevin Hourican. "Consumers want to go back out to eat, they have food-at-home fatigue, and the doors that remain open will see higher productivity," Hourican says.

J.B. Hunt Transportation Service is working toward capacity-as-a-service for the trucking industry with its Shipper 360 platform. Other carriers such as Gillson Trucking and Andrus Transportation Service have partnered with existing platforms.

Over 40% of logistics and manufacturing executives responding to a Blue Yonder survey said they plan to invest more in artificial intelligence and machine learning in the next 12 months. Several other technologies also gained such sentiment from over 40% of respondents, including sales and operations technologies.

Business-to-business marketers are most likely to commission an agency to help with paid search engine marketing, followed by social media community management, paid social media ads and mobile apps, according to a Provoke Insights report. For brand strategy, B2B marketers most seek help from agencies for logos, messaging, and mission, vision and values, respectively.

Sales leaders can show they care about the mental health of their teams by checking in often with salespeople, writes Craig Moore. Investments in culture and efforts to improve communication within teams will benefit both the company and its employees.

Conflict can escalate quickly, especially if the argument is in binary terms, one party feels humiliated or the root causes have gone unexplored, writes Amanda Ripley. "Every high conflict has an understory -- the thing it's really about--which almost never gets discussed," Ripley writes.

Writer Ingrid Rojas Contreras uses self-mesmerism to induce a trance-like state in order to get deep work done. The age-old technique, a precursor to hypnotism, includes having a ritual as well as visual and sound cues to be able to tune out distractions and tell the mind that it's time to concentrate.

The pandemic is nearly over, and it's time for distributors to apply the lessons from the last year so they can grow their businesses faster in the future. Watch NAW's free webinar on demand and find out what distributors said about their sales in the pandemic, what their 2021 forecasts are, their work-from-home policy, how their website and digital tools performed, which digital tools they'll invest in, and more. Also, sign up to be notified when the accompanying Pandemic Effects on Distributors Research Report is available for free download. Sponsored by Oracle Netsuite and Conexiom.

How have distributors been innovating their business during the pandemic? Find that out and much more from 10 distributors who tell their stories and share ideas for both surviving and thriving in a drastically changed business environment. Author Mark Dancer shares up-to-the-minute ideas and insights from distributor leaders based on their experiences and lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic. Order this just-released e-chapter, "Distribution Leans In: Stories of Resiliency and Innovation During the COVID-19 Pandemic."

According to NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence author Mike Emerson, "For salespeople, the top predictor of income should be performance, not tenure. But all too often, it's the other way around. The truth is traditional sales compensation plans that are tied to territory and tenure no longer work. If you haven't already updated your sales compensation plan to meet pandemic-induced changes in how sales teams interact with customers, it's time to act." Read his post.