Winsupply successfully completes first drone delivery | Study: Women gaining ground in B2B purchasing | Distribution Solutions Group posts higher Q2 sales
Through a partnership with Drone Express, Winsupply delivered its first product via drone on Friday, sending an exclusive NIBCO item from a Winsupply warehouse in Miamisburg, Ohio, to a company outlet three miles away in Washington Township. The delivery marks the beginning of a service that will help save customers time, according to Winsupply President John McKenzie.
Most business-to-business purchases worth more than $100,000 are still made by men, but the majority of B2B buyers under age 30 are women, according to an American Marketing Association-New York Future of Marketing study. Nearly 75% of B2B purchases are now made through company websites, and buyers are more likely than typical consumers to support companies that emphasize social purpose or social-political concerns, the survey found.
Distribution Solutions Group, which consists of Lawson Products, Gexpro Services and TestEquity, had second-quarter net sales of $321 million, up from $134 million a year ago. The distributor posted a loss of $4.7 million for the quarter.
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There may be certain challenges involved with making the shift to LED lighting in warehouse spaces, but doing so can yield significant benefits in terms of cost, efficiency and sustainability. Supply chain real estate company Prologis is looking to move to 100% LED lighting in offices and warehouses by 2025, and the company has installed LED lighting across 57% of its global portfolio to date, according to Prologis' Rafat Shehadeh.
Bob Wiesner, partner at The Artemis Partnership, talks in this podcast about how business-to-business marketers can create the most effective case studies, or as he explains, what should be called "case stories." "Like any good story, they should have a plot, they should have a problem, a challenge, they should have a method for resolving it, they should have an outcome, they should have heroes and even villains," Wiesner says.
Reframing your team's thinking to position your company's intangible service benefits as tangible ones can increase sales, consultant Colleen Francis writes, offering several examples. "[W]hen you recast all your value this way, you accelerate the total ROI your customer can expect from you," Francis writes. "That's the key to shutting out the competition and creating a high-growth, high-profit business in today's marketplace."
Calm stress with a simple exercise that involves breathing deeply, holding the breath for six seconds, exhaling slowly and repeating as necessary, writes executive coach Jody Michael. "If you are in a contentious board meeting facing a room full of irate directors or on a call with impatient shareholders, you can't excuse yourself to find a quiet room to meditate -- you need a method that you can do right then and there," Michael writes.
Effective leaders are those who are able to leave "CEO island" and learn how to lead through engagement and vulnerability, says Christine Barney, CEO and managing partner at RBB Communications. "When you're at the very top of the house, it's important to find people to call you out," Barney says.
The NAW Billion Dollar Company Roundtables are an exclusive community of thought leaders from Billion Dollar distribution enterprises who congregate to network with noncompeting peers in multiple lines of trade on key issues. The companies invited into this community are from distribution firms at or above $1 billion in annual sales. Register today!
