News and Trends

• VWR International in distribution deal with Assay Designs
  VWR International has entered into a distribution deal with Assay Designs, a provider of life science products. The distributor of scientific equipment and supplies will offer an array of Assay Designs' products to clients in North America. "VWR will play a critical role in our advancement in the industry," said Assay's chief commercialization officer. Laboratorytalk (7/25)

• Watsco cites cooler weather, soft housing market for profit slip
  Watsco Inc. said its profit decreased 21% in its second quarter, owing to more temperate summer weather and slow new home sales. The air conditioning and heating equipment distributor also said it expects to close on its acquisition of distributor ACR Group Inc. in August. Forbes/Associated Press (7/24)

• Value-added services add to the bottom line
  With attempts at price increases not working for most wholesaler-distributors, a better approach is to develop value-added products and services that target unique segments with specific offers. That means educating yourself on the nature of your market niches and targeting markets from the high-end to the low-end, instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach. W-Ds need to stop giving away value-added services as perks and start utilizing them as chargeable benefits, the authors of this article advise. Modern Distribution Management (7/25)

	Leverage Your Inventory for Maximum Profit. As a distributor, inventory is one of your key assets. How do you make sure you have the right products at the right place and the right time? For innovative ideas and insight, download IBM's ALL-NEW Executive Forecast and Demand Planning eKit. It features Adam Fein's article on Demand-Driven Customer Relationships, whitepapers, case studies, and more.
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Best Practices

• Tips for attracting top women candidates
  A list of suggestions for attracting top-quality women to jobs includes using positive role models, discussing the organization's culture, sending female recruiters to job fairs, and offering more than just a Web site or run-of-the-mill literature. Selling Power (free registration) (7/16)

• How to cope with difficult co-workers
  Having a difficult colleague or two in the workplace is a general rule, not an exception, and avoiding them is not an option, an expert says. Instead, workers can take action including taking a break and stepping outside, discussing the problem with the co-worker, and talking with the supervisor if the former actions don't work. CNN/CareerBuilder.com (7/25)

	Good help is hard to find. NAW SmartBrief to the rescue! You won't reach a more targeted, qualified audience in the wholesale distribution industry. Get started now and post your open positions in NAW SmartBrief.
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Sales

• Score qualified leads for greater sales productivity
  When it comes to leads, sales teams should focus on quality not quantity, and that's where having an effective lead qualification and scoring system in place to vet leads can prove to be a huge benefit, one expert says. Marketers and sales reps should establish their definition of qualified leads, while assigning scores to the leads based on a range of attributes as a way of identifying the strongest ones that are most likely to convert to sales. SmartBIZ (7/24)

Hot Topics

Top five news stories selected by NAW SmartBrief readers in the past week.

• Kendall Electric acquires Roden Electric (Industrial Distribution)

• What leadership is and shouldn't be (American City Business Journals)

• Ryerson agrees to $1B acquisition bid (The Washington Post)

• Security tops list of IT concerns (DC Velocity)

• Ten key ways small businesses can compete (Manage Smarter)

• Results based on number of times each story was clicked by readers.

Small Business Manager

• Tax breaks help businesses cope with minimum-wage hike
  Small-business owners are benefiting from tax breaks passed by Congress that were aimed at softening the blow of legislation that will raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour in three incremental steps by 2009. Even business owners in the District of Columbia and 30 other states, where local law already sets the minimum wage higher than the first federal step to $5.85, can tap into the breaks. The biggest benefit for small-business owners is a greater deduction for new purchases. BusinessWeek (7/25)

	The Buzz(CORPORATE ANNOUNCEMENTS) Don't Miss the Industry's Premier eBusiness Event-Sept. 18-20 IDEA teams up with NEMA, NAED, EFC and NEMRA to provide you with top notch speakers and insightful business ideas at the Electro E-Biz Forum 2007. Don't let your company fall behind. Discover The Power of Information and the latest trends that are reshaping the industry on the E-Biz Agenda Page. Interested in learning more about advertising in NAW SmartBrief? Contact Henry Murphey at (202) 737-5500 ext. 245 or hmurphey@smartbrief.com

Executive Life

• Americans love their pets, and spend accordingly
  Americans now spend $41 billion annually on their furry friends -- double the amount spent on pets 10 years ago and more than the entire gross domestic product of many countries. Pet care is the fastest-growing retail sector after consumer electronics, and more new pet products were rolled out in the first half of 2006 than the entire year before, BusinessWeek reports. BusinessWeek (8/6)

• Study: More than half of allergy sufferers misinformed by labels, restaurants
  A third of Americans who have serious food allergies say they have suffered from an allergic reaction because they have been misinformed at restaurants, while another third has suffered reactions because of improperly labeled food products, a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive survey found. The Wall Street Journal (7/27)

NAW Insider

• Should you become an acquisitive distributor?
  This NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence book The Acquisitive Distributor pinpoints steps to success when one wholesale distribution firm sets out to acquire another. It can help you grow your business by showing you how the best acquisitive distributors operate.

• Boost sales power with More to the Bottom Line
  Are some of your customers more trouble that they're worth? What should you do about it? The NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence book More to the Bottom Line: Customer Profitability Analysis Tools for Distributors answers those questions and lays the foundation for a powerful new sales strategy.

Weekly Poll

• Does your sales team use a lead qualification and scoring system?
  After voting once, check out the real-time poll results on NAW's All Access page as often as you'd like.

	Yes
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	I am not sure

Sales and Marketing Manager Plumbing Market Border States Electric Supply Harlingen, Texas Branch Operations Manager Erie Bearings Co. Meadville, PA

SmartQuote

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." --Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain, writer