December 25, 2006

liquidity for shareholders but maintaining majority ownership. Another distributor transitioned to 100% employee-owned.Fighting the ForcesMDM has presented several case studies over the past year on distributors who have implemented strategies to make themselves stand out and even grow market share, despite challenging market forces. Arguably, distributors are facing many issues outside of consolidation including price […]

answers, they can build best practices based on the successful behavior of top sales performers. Mystery solved: Analyze and improve performance to maximize ROI."You cannot improve what you do not measure." Business-to-business marketing professionals cite measuring and showing return-on-investment as their biggest challenge, according to a recent survey conducted by Penton Media. In fact, the

SalesOctober 2006 sales of merchant wholesalers, except manufacturers’ sales branches and offices, were $327.8 billion, down 0.5 percent from the revised September level, but were up 5.9 percent from the October 2005 level. The September preliminary estimate was revised downward $2.2 billion or 0.7 percent. October sales of durable goods decreased 0.4 percent from last

Manufacturing SummaryAbout 72 percent of survey respondents expect revenues to be greater in 2007 than in 2006. The panel of purchasing and supply executives expects a 6.4 percent net increase in overall revenues for 2007, compared to an increase of 6.2 percent reported for 2006. Manufacturing industries expecting the greatest improvement over 2006 ‘ listed

job openings, lower profit gains and fading inventory investment trimmed the National Federation of Independent Business Small-Business Optimism Index a point to 99.7 in November (1986=100). Although job openings declined five points to 22 percent, that component of the index remained at historically high levels, and job-creation plans climbed while inflationary pressures edged slightly upward.