Strategy’s important, but without a strong culture, it may be dead in the water.
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With the U.S. economy still struggling to fully recover and global markets more accessible than ever, more companies are exploring expanding their businesses across borders. Global business development expert and author Mona Pearl recently spoke with MDM about why this is an important trend, how middle-market companies should approach such a task and how to overcome some common mistakes made along the way.
Middle-market companies face a unique set of challenges in an increasingly global business environment. They don’t have the same resources available to them as large multinational corporations, yet when looking to expand, they’re finding the need to compete on that same global stage.
“It’s really not an option if they want to keep being in business. Nothing is going back to where it was,” says Mona Pearl, a global business development expert and author of Grow Globally: Opportunities for Your Middle-Market Company Around the World.
“It’s going to be…
Ignoring critical constraints could all but guarantee a failed strategy.
How can industrial distributors identify where to expand?
Push the envelope on creating value for your customers in 2012.
This is sure to be a year of change for many distributors who are finally – post-recession – investing in new initiatives.
Make difficult decisions and then act on them to ensure your plans are implemented effectively.
Industry experts provide advice on profitability, technology, inventory management, change and lean for distributors.
Concerns about keeping up with a competitor’s tactics, or, conversely, enjoying the satisfaction of tactical gains can blind management to broader, more subtle opportunities.
Pricing, sales management and technology dominate the list.
While the overall economic outlook looks pretty good for 2012, with a few exceptions, employment continues to be a hang-up. Sure, productivity is up, but in some cases at the expense of current employee morale. Employers report they want to hire – but they are increasingly picky about…
Make sure the person overseeing corporate communications has the right skill set to protect your image.
Manufacturers reviewing how they use their distribution partners as channels consolidate.
Articles on profitability, marketing and the Web rise to the top of MDM’s annual top 10 most popular features.
An article in the Dec. 10, 2011, issue by distribution consultant Bill McCleave expands on research Bill and I did 10 years ago on the key elements that define the customer’s total value perception of a distribution company. Bill does a great job of updating our research with some additional dimensions he has identified as critical to gaining competitive advantage in today’s markets.
At the risk of patting ourselves on the back, our research and the 10 case studies of innovative distributors we used to illustrate the concepts in our 2003 book, Stand Out From the Competition, have stood the test of time p
In 2002, MDM Publisher Tom Gale and industry expert William McCleave of W.R. McCleave & Associates, conducted a research project on distributor differentiation. The research resulted in solid advice and case studies about how distributors could compete against their rivals over the following decade. Nearly 10 years later, the advice offered in that report is still relevant. This article takes the concepts outlined in the book resulting from that research – Stand Out from the Competition – to another level, detailing how distributors can leverage technology, treasure, talent and technique to differentiate over the next 10 years.
From our original research and the resulting book on how to stand out from the competition, we found there are at least four dimensions for differentiation: Position, Pitch, Performance and Proof – the Four Ps.
These four dimensions are inextricably linked in the distributor world, and each still holds opportunity for creating compe…
In a recent MDM Webcast, How to Lead a Profitability Turnaround, Jonathan Byrnes, senior lecturer at MIT and author of Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink, presents the four barriers to profitability many companies face. Access this webcast on DVD or on-demand at www.mdm.com/profitability.
Hurdles that prohibit or slow a company’s ability to raise profits do not develop overnight.
“It’s a legacy of a major change in the nature of the era of business that we’re in that’s happened in the past 20 or 30 years,” said Jonathan Byrnes, senior lecturer at MIT and author of Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink. The history of business from the 1900s to today reveals the key avenue by which companies became successful was economies of scale, so
Why companies can meet sales targets but still lose money, and other questions executives want answers to.
