Growth Strategies Around the World

I want to let you know about a new report that I just completed called Growth Strategies in Wholesale Distribution.

This research project was graciously sponsored by Lawson Software, who is also making my new report available for free online here. (Full disclosure: you will have to register to download the report.)

The report compares how wholesale distribution executives in the U.S, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand plan to maintain growth at their companies. I was attracted to the project because there is almost no published research on global trends in our industry.

Here’s one surprising result: Distributors in European countries identify fee-based services as a much more important factor in their revenue growth plans than North American executives.

You heard me right. Believe it or not, European executives are more optimistic about their ability to charge customers for new services rather than giving away value-added services for free and hoping to recoup the costs with product margins. In contrast, U.S. executives are much more focused on increasing sales of their current product categories.

For example, I found that 7% of North American industrial distribution executives were expecting fee-based services to drive growth compared to 14% of European industrial distribution executives. (The results for other product sectors are in Exhibit 2 of the new global report.)

This new report demonstrates that wholesaler-distributors are innovating around the world, providing a global perspective on the New Profit Models trend described in Facing the Forces of Change®: Lead the Way in the Supply Chain. (For examples, see Exhibit 3-7 on page 62 or see Capturing New Profits from Services from last month.)

I hope this new research gives you fresh insights for benchmarking your own company’s growth strategy.

P.S. Be sure to check out Managing fee-based services by Ben Zoghi and Rafay Ishfaq, Texas A&M University. Great article! (It was the lead article in last Friday's NAW SmartBrief.)