Wholesale trade sales topped $7.1 trillion last year, improving on 2020 and 2019, the Census Bureau reports. Merchant wholesaler sales for December 2021 were up 21.8% year over year, while inventories were up 18.5% year over year.

AAR's commercial business is bouncing back after some unevenness due to the pandemic, while its government and defense business has won such deals as a $365 million Air Force contract related to the F-16. Executive John Cooper discusses the company's recent successes and its emphasis on "digital support offerings."

Blockchain can make logistics and supply chain operations more efficient by improving visibility and cybersecurity, allowing proactive inventory management and replacing manual processes, write Eric Sophir, Eugenia Wang and Kathleen Wegrzyn of Foley & Lardner. The technology also allows for "smart contracts" that automate payments and documentation, they write.

The number of container ships backed up at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is still high, but it has eased from 109 a month ago to 78 earlier last week, the Marine Exchange of Southern California reported. However, it is too early to tell whether the dip is temporary and likely to tick up again after the Lunar New Year break at factories in Asia, port officials said.

Sales leaders can give their teams clarity of purpose and ensure more consistent performance by establishing a sales process flowchart, writes Anthony Iannarino. For best results, include detailed processes for lead sourcing and qualification as well as details on sales meetings and closing processes, Iannarino suggests.

StrawberryFrog's Chip Walker explores how the pandemic and increased consumer trust in business has fueled purpose-driven marketing among business-to-business brands, as evidenced by six of the top 25 purpose brands in his firm's most recent The Purpose Power Index being B2B companies. Walker looks at how two B2B companies, HP and UPS, are finding success through purposeful activations, noting, "The key is actually doing something tangible with purpose, not just talking about it."

People can get so focused on a project that they miss the big-picture goal they're aiming for, says University of Miami neuroscientist Amishi Jha, who says it's possible to improve your "internal situational awareness." Jha offers an exercise called "River of Thought" that helps people observe their thoughts without being caught up in them.

The "family of tests" approach to products means that before any design occurs, teams must converge on what the problems are and what the correct set of tests would be to validate potential solutions, writes Mike Shipulski. "When there's disagreement about which tests are the most important, how do you converge on the right tests?" Shipulski writes.

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