Almost 40% of distributors surveyed by Industrial Distribution said their relationships with suppliers deteriorated in the previous year, up from 19% in 2020's survey. Distributors were also more likely to have vendor-managed inventory offerings and to be involved with buying groups or cooperatives.

The semiconductor shortage will continue to hurt new-car sales and improve used-car sales and repairs, which should generate more business for Advance Auto Parts, President and CEO Tom Greco said. The company said this week it will add 29 stores on the West Coast.

Amazon is holding this year's Prime Day sales event on June 21 and 22 instead of in July, and the earlier date could hamper third-party sellers who say Amazon has reduced inventory limits. Walmart and Target have announced their own sales events to compete with Prime Day.

The cost-to-serve metric is better than cost-plus pricing for staying profitable, but it can be difficult to calculate, writes Pradip Krishnadevarajan, co-founder of ActVantage. He recommends using activity-based costing and the surrogate method to determine CTS and training salespeople in how to deploy it properly.

When a customer wants to renegotiate their deal, it often means that sales teams haven't been continuously illustrating the value they deliver, writes Colleen Francis. In these instances, provide facts and key performance indicators that show how effective your offering has been and remind the customer why they selected your solution in the first place, Francis advises.

Companies should link their customer relationship management software with their websites through content management systems to keep customer profiles up to date, says Angela DeFranco, vice president of product for HubSpot. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a shift toward online experiences, and even as circumstances change, customers will continue to expect "the same high level of accessibility" they've become used to, DeFranco says.

Internal contests are more likely to be successful when teams only learn about overall progress at rolling intervals and when prize money is distributed evenly among winners, according to a study. "When you're able to control that flow of information, that's an important reason why you may want to have a tournament rather than rewarding each agent independently of how others do," says researcher Luis Rayo.

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