A second bidder has arisen for Anixter, which recently agreed to be acquired by a Clayton, Dubilier & Rice affiliate for $3.8 billion. Anixter is in discussions with the undisclosed bidder, President and CEO Bill Galvin told employees.

C&S Wholesale Grocers plans to sell three warehouses to Ahold Delhaize USA, which is moving toward a self-distribution model. C&S and Ahold Delhaize's Retail Business Services subsidiary will provide supply chain services as Ahold Delhaize makes the transition.

Distributors can use social media to network with potential employees and use video to speak to candidates remotely, writes Bridget McCrea. Other ways to improve hiring include offering schedule and workload flexibility, McCrea adds.

Louis Columbus displays 10 charts that offer insights about marketing technology used by business-to-business marketers, including a visual from Scott Brinker that shows how IT and marketing are collaborating on tech activities. A chart from Adobe outlines how marketers plan to use artificial intelligence and another from Salesforce examines the use of AI within personalization and real-time marketing strategies.

Fred Shilmover explains the emerging trend of revenue operations in business-to-business marketing, which brings together marketing, sales and customer success teams to focus on growth. He describes three ways the operational trend will benefit marketers, including removing silos, providing support and creating a more positive culture.

A facilitator can restore peace when team members are at loggerheads, writes Liz Kislik. "When the facilitator helps people see additional sides of an issue, buffers criticism and defensiveness, and encourages thoughtful participation, both individuals and entire teams often become able to maintain the new behaviors by themselves," she writes.

Called the "Master class in innovation for distributors," "Innovate to Dominate: The 12th Edition in the Facing the Forces of Change Series" has arrived. A roadmap for innovation, it helps distributors connect the dots between the forces of change and how distributors can change their business to capture opportunities -- and defend their business when necessary. The best innovations are about getting ahead instead of catching up. Order your copies to read over the holidays.

The October kickoff meeting was so popular that the NAW Institute and Texas A&M are holding a second kickoff meeting Jan. 23, so more companies can participate in our groundbreaking Digitizing the Sales Process Consortium. Distributors: This is your opportunity to contribute to this fundamental research on how distributors will determine which portions of the sales process will be digitized. Learn more here; if you're interested, you have to register soon, because only four seats are available.

This study brings together best practices from leading distributors and their suppliers that were developed through a consortium on Optimizing Channel Compensation. The resulting Channel Alignment Framework is the first-of-its-kind map that seeks to build optimal manufacturer-distributor channels. Distributors need to read this book and buy it for their manufacturer partners. Then they need to sit down with those suppliers and properly plan effective processes to get the supplier market access while meeting distributor investment needs.