Medline Industries and Bryan Health have signed a $140-million multi-year prime vendor partnership deal for medical supplies distribution. Under the agreement, Medline will provide the acute care medical centers of Bryan Health exclusive access to its essential medical supplies portfolio.

SpartanNash reported consolidated net sales of $2.3 billion for the third quarter, an increase of 10.8% from $2.1 billion in the third quarter last year. The food distributor had gross profits of $351.2 million for the quarter, compared to $329.5 million for the same period in 2021.

Autonomous technologies will need human oversight for a long time, possibly always, so developers are focusing their efforts on increasing the number of machines a human can oversee and assist. "By 2030 you're going to have human operators doing the complex work, such as loading or unloading a trailer, placing pallets in variable racking heights. But for the less-complex elements you're going to have technology taking over," said Elliot Katz, co-founder of Phantom Auto, which is developing semi-autonomous forklift trucks.

Over half of US companies in an SAP survey say their supply chain requires "a lot of" or "significant" improvement, and respondents primarily attribute supply chain disruptions to global political turmoil, component shortages and rising fuel costs. Over 60% say they'll freeze wages and recruitment if costs continue to rise, and many are switching from "just-in-time" strategies to "just-in-case" by stockpiling inventory and using nearshoring.

Some 87% of marketers think their department is offering greater value to the business than it did in 2021 and 71% report more difficulties in retaining talent, according to Salesforce's annual State of Marketing study. Business-to-business marketers are prioritizing advertising, content and account-based marketing, with technology coming in fourth place for investment despite being cited as the top priority.

Successful sales leaders have a strong grasp on sales math, which sales expert Colleen Francis describes as the pathway to understanding conversion ratios. Determining qualified leads to close and then new leads to qualify give sales leaders "exactly what it takes to create new leads, qualified leads and sales," Francis says in this video.

CEOs can replicate their strategic successes by documenting the process, assessing their own performance in executing it, seeking to learn new things and remaining humble and alert for new ideas, writes Marty Strong, a retired Navy SEAL, CEO, speaker and author. "You can't help but be humbled if you seek out new knowledge as a regular habit," Strong writes.

Celebration is in order when a strategy pays off, but it's also time to scrutinize what worked and why and how you can build off of that success, writes Adam Bryant. "Even with an ever-lengthening list of urgent challenges to address, leaders should place the word 'why?' at the top of it, as a reminder to get to the bottom of unexpected triumphs," Bryant writes.

The NAW Billion Dollar Company Roundtables are an exclusive community of thought leaders from Billion Dollar distribution enterprises who congregate to network with non-competing 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!