Longtime industry consultant and speaker Mike Marks, managing partner at Indian River Consulting Group, directed a three-hour session at the recent North Central Wholesalers Association annual meeting in Dublin, Ohio, that zeroed in on the importance of pricing as well as competing for business in the digital space.
Marks started by giving a synopsis of current distribution pricing trends, labeling present state as “one size fits all.” “Most supplier and distributor pricing activity is transaction-based,” he said. Marks said most distributors let sales reps determine pricing without accountability and distributor column prices are mostly used inappropriately to give discounts to large customers, while rebates often are added to capture or retain large customers.