By Bill Wade, Wade & Partners
“It’s nice to have the ideas, and it’s great to hear about all the good things happening at other companies… But if you don’t take those ideas and try to lay them over your company to see how they may make a difference, then it’s just thoughts going nowhere.” ~ Don Polletta, CEO of leading industrial distributor Torrco.
Are your 2018 Sales-Growth Plans guided by some of these unspoken, dated assumptions?
Why Are Macro and Micro Numbers Flashing Red?
In the big picture, 90 percent of all distributors that have been participating in association financial performance surveys for 15+ years have averaged weak returns. Buy low sell high, sell more, and pay “fair wages” to work hard and lean stopped working long ago.
At the micro analysis level, the average new client of a distributor analytics service Waypoint “Line-Item Profit Analytics” discovers that:
The ‘good’ news is that 20 percent of customers produce 150 percent of profits to pay for all losing activity. Less than 5 percent of accounts are big, profitable, innovatively-growing and looking for supply-chain solution partners.
