It’s no longer enough to leave relationships solely in the hands of individual sales reps, no matter how capable they are. Becoming a strategic partner in the supply chain means evolving to a new model of sales management, according to this excerpt of a new book from the NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence.
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The 1990s saw the emergence of a new concept. Instead of just being a middleman between manufacturers and customers, wholesaler-distributors started to become marketing channels.
On the upstream side, sophisticated manufacturers began to look at distributors as partners in the ultimate job of reaching and satisfying end consumers.
Instead of just talking about what the distributors’bought, they started discussing what the distributors …
