Companies such as Office Depot are what Alibaba calls "anchor sellers" for its US business-to-business platform, says John Caplan, president of North American B2B at Alibaba.

Amazon has launched AmazonCommercial, a private-label line of bulk CPG products aimed at business customers. The venture's offerings currently include toilet paper, paper towels and tissues.

Amazon's fulfillment centers around the world now employ about 200,000 robots that perform functions including unloading merchandise, moving products from one place to another and sorting packages. About half are so-called Hercules robots that can lift around 1,250 pounds at a time.

Distributors must have a strong value proposition and communicate it effectively to customers, writes Jonathan Bein. "Trying to be all things to all people is a sure path to bleeding profitability," Bein writes.

Nate Skinner, vice president of marketing at Salesforce's Pardot, discusses the need for customer empathy and the biggest issue facing all marketers -- "data-palooza." He also talks about four key priorities business-to-business marketers should be focusing on in the immediate future -- account-based marketing, artificial intelligence, conversational marketing and analytics.

Strategy should be a living process that gathers knowledge from all levels of the organization and empowers everyone to contribute, writes Art Petty. When strategy instead is formed by a small leadership collective, "execution becomes a top-down driven mechanical process breeding work but not insight, ideation, and refinement," Petty argues.

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NAW 2019 Chairman of the Board George Pattee of Parksite Inc. has just posted a new Chairman's Column titled, "Do You Have an Inclusive Business Environment?" In it, George encourages distribution leaders to maintain a company culture that empowers their employees and allows them to achieve greater heights while having fun in their business lives. Read Chairman Pattee's Chairman's Column.