Alexander Douglas will exit as Staples CEO today, two weeks after the company made a $1 billion bid to buy Office Depot's consumer business. Chairman John Lederer was named interim CEO.

Amazon is facing competition from startups offering speedy delivery for products from small and local businesses such as Bookshop and ShopIN.nyc, which is reportedly growing 20% to 30% each month. More established companies are also hopping into the fray, including Facebook Shops and Google's shopping platform.

Distinct user sessions on your website are a better indicator of interest in your B2B site than raw traffic data, writes Unilog executive Scott Frymire, defining a Google Analytics session as "the group of interactions or actions a user has on the site during a single visit, which can include browsing site pages, downloading documents and making transactions." Think of sessions as the top of your sales funnel, and optimize accordingly, Frymire writes.

Distributors have tremendous opportunity to add value-added services, especially if they build models to understand the opportunities and are patient in developing sales relationships, says United Performance Metals CEO Peter Neuberger. "A key part of that relationship building upfront is understanding what the customer's internal metrics are," Neuberger says.

The pandemic led business-to-business marketers to adopt a more human approach to messaging, imbued with empathy, compassion and emotion -- a strategy that should be continued, writes Cory Treffiletti, senior vice president of marketing at FIS. "Great B2B marketing taps into emotion. It enables your brand to be the one that your customer thinks about first when they need to solve a problem," Treffiletti writes.

Women account for 41% of the supply chain workforce, a slight increase from 39% in 2020 and a five-year high, according to research conducted by Gartner. "Supply chain leaders who are serious about their gender equality efforts must create tailored leadership development programs and explore flexible work policies that cater to the needs of midcareer women," said Dana Stiffler, Gartner Supply Chain's vice president analyst.

Suppliers are increasingly selling direct, customer demographics are skewing younger and many distributors are struggling to keep up. Distributors are grappling with fundamental changes in the expectations of their supply chain partners. Suppliers continue to report frustration with their distributors' poor digital capabilities. Join NAW on June 29 at 2 p.m. for this free, live webinar with Ian Heller and Jonathan Bein of Distribution Strategy Group, who will recommend actions distributors should take to address this growing channel conflict. Register today.

Designed for C-suite executives, these roundtables provide actionable strategies that will increase your company's competitive advantage. Companies belonging to this community are from distribution firms between $100 million and up to $1 billion in annual sales. You'll engage in thought-provoking conversations with your peers and hear from industry experts on topics that will ultimately increase your profits! Register today.

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."