New NAW Institute Partnership
NAW Institute and IBM to Create Next Facing the Forces of Change® Report
The NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence and IBM’s Institute for Business Value will collaborate to produce the next Facing the Forces of Change® report. Facing the Forces of Change® is the landmark wholesale distribution industry future trends research report that has been updated and published every three years since 1982. The latest version will be available in November of this year. To learn more about the NAW Institute/IBM partnership, click here to read the press release.
Through the years, distribution executives and their management teams have used Facing the Forces of Change® to facilitate both short- and long-term strategic planning at their companies. Given the extreme uncertainty that characterizes the current economic environment, this may be the most important of the nine versions of Facing the Forces of Change® published to date.
A cross-section of wholesale distribution industry executives representing a variety of lines of trade are expected to participate in the Facing the Forces of Change® background research, including dozens of in-depth interviews with distributor company personnel.
We encourage wholesaler-distributors to participate by taking a brief online survey. Go to http://www.ibm.com/services/bcs/benchmarking/survey/ms/ and enter authorization code: NAW2010.
Although the survey permits you to save your answers and return later to finish if necessary, we’d appreciate it if you would complete the survey in one pass through. This will allow us to benefit immediately from the answers you submit. The entire survey can be taken in 20 minutes or less.
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Billion Dollar Company CFO Roundtable
April 13th-14th, 2010
The NAW Billion Dollar Company CFO Roundtable for direct members was created as a new mechanism for the CFO of large distribution enterprises to network with non-competing peers in multiple lines of trade on key finance issues.
Similar to other billion dollar roundtables NAW has created for the CIO, Operations, Human Resource executives, and Chief Legal Officers this by invitation roundtable is composed of executives from billion dollar companies that meet in Chicago two times per year. This highly interactive group consists of the SENIOR-MOST financial executives or CFOs.
Featured Publication
Sharpening Your Competitive Edge: How to Strengthen Your Distribution Sales Team for Top Results
This book shows you—a distribution sales executive—how to build a stronger, strategic selling organization as well as how to lead your sales team to more proactive selling efforts that can increase your firm’s competitive advantage and, ultimately, its sales and profitability. We know you’re good; now, are you good enough to get better?
Sharpening Your Competitive Edge is written for experienced distribution sales professionals, the managers who lead them, and the executives who direct them. In it, Author Jim Pancero offers an in-depth discussion and evaluation of the seven strategic questions that can help you lead your sales team to success as well as how to identify and fix potential gaps in your sales team’s strategic selling skills and processes. Real-world distribution examples are also included throughout the book.