Episode 211: The Future of the Industry Panel (skucamp Panel)

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. SkewCast is the official podcast of Common Skew. Driving engagement in the organization in a virtual world requires communication at a different level than what we were doing before.

That's the voice of Dan Pantano, President and CEO of Alpha Broader. And at all of our events, we love to gather some of the brightest minds in the business to talk about how the industry is changing and where leaders are focusing their energy to create change for the future. At SKU Camp, our boot camp for entrepreneurs held in September in Palm Springs, we hosted a panel discussion on the future of the industry. That panel featured a microcosm of different types of businesses, voices that represent smaller distributors, larger distributors, the association, technology service providers, and suppliers. In this chat, we get a glimpse of each perspective and how they think about the future, what's top of mind for them, and where they are putting an emphasis this year. We chat about topics ranging from technology to team development to sales and more. Our panelists include Dan Pantano, President and CEO of AlphaBroader, Chris Sorocquaz, Founder and CEO of ABGI, Kiani Perrin-Savoie, Co-Founder of More and More Merch, Catherine Graham, CEO of CommsQ, and Dale Denham, President and CEO of PPAI. This episode is brought to you by CommonSkew, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more or to begin your free trial now, visit commonskew.com. Now here's our panel chat on the future of the industry from Sku Camp in Palm Springs.

Well, let's start talking about one thing that we've sort of talked about, inferring or an inference, the end buyer and the customer and what their needs and growing needs are. So I want to start with Chris. Chris, let's talk about how we see the end buyer changing. So you work with some big brands, some closely aligned with the consumer market. You work on big programs. How have you noticed the customer changing, the buyer changing since COVID over the past 18 months?

All right. So, oh gosh, you know, looking all around us and knowing that our buyers and the decision-making process that they go through is changing and morphing and reshaping into our new reality. It's here to stay, right? We know that. I would say that the first thing that came to my mind was risk. Risk management today is, you know, every buyer has risk on their mind. We've kind of taken the stance of literally making risk our friend and leading with risk. If you don't lead out there with it, they think that you're hiding something because they know stuff is going on out there. So if you don't go to them proactively and make sure that you're managing that upfront, Even trying to— we do big programs. So, at the end of this year, we've got a big t-shirt program going out. So, we said, "Hey, listen," back in, I guess it was July, "Let's pick 4 colors of t-shirts. Normally, it's 1 color. Let's pick 4 colors because I knew we weren't getting 1 color. So, let's pick 4 colors." So, we get on the front end of that. That's managing that risk upfront.

So, you're really talking about risk mitigation. Yes.

Yes, for sure. And then the buyers are much more cautious. And they're not cautious because they don't trust us. They're cautious because of our environment.

Right. Dan, how do you see the end buyer changing? Both maybe the distributor customer, but you also do a lot of analysis on the end buyer. How are they changing?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of, well, two things. I mean, I think we've seen this over the last couple of years, but I think it's been more pronounced lately is, you know, the end buyer is more sophisticated. They're finding the product. And I think they're coming to our customers, the distributors, and saying, I want this brand. And you go back 5, 6, 7 years ago and somebody wanted a soft t-shirt, right? They'd buy, you know, you could sell them whatever brand you want. Now, you know, you hear them, I want Bella Canvas, I want Next Level. So I think there's more of a brand affinity.

Yeah.

Even in those trade basics and fashion categories. But retail brands, I'm sure everyone out here would attest. I know Jeremy would attest to it on the SanMar side. I mean, the growth has been phenomenal. That's been going on for the last several years, but it probably started, you know, this time a year ago. Yeah, just the fourth quarter of last year, and it's been on fire since. So, you know, people want better goods, maybe not the same quantity of product, but they want higher quality.

Yeah, higher quality product. Keoni, from a service perspective, how are you seeing customers grow in their demands for services from you? Are you expanding your business?

Definitely expanding. And similar to what you said, we do have clients who come to us, they tell us Someone mentioned it yesterday, I can get this on Amazon, but I want to get it from you. I want to get it from a Black woman. I want to purchase it from a minority. So that's one thing that we've just had to be in place. And so just not to be a figurehead, but actually doing incredible work, doing great graphics. A lot of the projects that we are getting are really creative heavy, creative heavy on the creative side. So my partner Sonya, who's here, handles a lot of that. And as we were talking about, that's definitely like a call where we're getting Yeah, because, because it's so much creative work. People come to us, they want great packaging. So we're always asking the question, okay, you want this t-shirt or kind of similar to the t-shirt we had that was wrapped really nice? And how are you going to package that? How are you going to present that? So we create more work for ourselves, but at the same time—

and the next frontier for many of us is charging for those creative services. We saw the complexity grow. We saw the customers that are our place in the clients' lives from a strategic standpoint grew immensely. So that's a new frontier for us. We will be covering some of that material in some future content. Content. Um, Catherine, what do you see the end buyer needing from us more?

More transparency. And obviously, you know, COVID was a massive acceleration with e-commerce adoption, and people just expect to know, you know, what is going on with their order, where are things at, you know, tracking information, all those kinds of details. So just being able to kind of give them more self-serve tools, but leading up front kind of with the curation and all the value that ultimately you're bringing to the table, but being able to make it easier for them kind of in the process throughout after that point.

Yeah. Dale, how do you see the association helping with the end buyer experience in the future?

So several years ago, we started a campaign. Anybody here familiar with the Get In Touch advertising campaign the association does? Okay, about half of you. By the way, you have to thank Jeremy Lott for letting Lee Strom serve on the board in an interim, because if it weren't for Lee Strom, right— you guys remember the MeToo movement? Literally before that happened, a month before we changed the name to Get In Touch, Lee thankfully was the one who said we cannot go out with the name that the board was looking at. It was Touch Me Advertising. So thank you, Jeremy, for saving the association. So I think, you know, the Get In Touch campaign or the Touch Me campaign is one of the things we need to do a better job on. Right now we give a toolkit to distributors to use. I don't know how many of you use, but I don't think it's at the level that I expect of the association going forward. So I think it's going to be providing toolkits, but also more press, trying to get more press. It's easy to talk about, very difficult to do. Yeah, but to make sure that the industry is well represented out there. And we've got some ideas that next year you will hear and see about already. It's only been here 6 weeks, but we're going to do a little bit more with the end buyers next year.

And I would assume more selling tools for sophisticated buyer. For distributors and suppliers to go to market.

Yes.

Yeah. All right, let's talk about technology. So we have 3 categories we're talking about because they represent the biggest areas that in our future that we're all either struggling with or opportunity for growth. One is how the end buyer is changing. The other is how technology is affecting our business, both on the sales side and the efficiency side. So this is not a self-serving part of the conversation. As we all know, technology is a major part as we move forward. So let's talk about technology in the sales process rather than just use the word technology as a blanket. Category. We're going to talk about it as it relates to us either advancing the sale, landing the sale. And we all know we have— when I say the word technology in the sales process, we have this bifurcation in the industry from the shopping cart technology that activates sales, but the consultative side, which we have worked a lot on in terms of advancing the sale. So, Katherine, how is technology changing the way we sell to our customers? What more has to change in order for us to meet the demands, particularly this consultative environment that many of us live in?

Building on what I was saying earlier around kind of that great mix of curation and self-serve, and this was a lot around the design of portals and shops and those kinds of concepts of being able to showcase the value that you're bringing in terms of curation at the beginning part of the equation, but ultimately just making it easier. And I think this translates all the way through, and you're going to hear me beating this one like a dead horse as far as getting the friction out and promo standards and leveraging kind of all those pieces along the way that We just have to be looking at all the pieces, all the elements that we do across every step of the process and thinking, how can we be leveraging technology to get that admin burden off of us and be able to focus more time on adding value?

Yeah. Mark and I were talking, we used to hide all the details from the customer. Now we're involving them a lot more in the selling process. Dale, how would you advise this? You, this interesting perspective from you, because you, people know you as your technology focus and with your role at Geiger, you were technology, and now you're moving into this role.

How do you—

how would you advise a distributor today to prioritize their tech investment as it relates to the sales process?

Well, first of all, I will say I love what Common Skew is doing, so this is not a paid commercial in any way. But while I was at Geiger, we were trying to build something very similar along those lines. So I think what you're already doing as part of being part of this community is great. But if I were to say one area, just to give you something quick, that I believe very strongly in, in terms of opportunity. I'm not sure what you call them, but pop-up stores.

Yeah.

What would you call them?

We call them pop-up shops.

So pop-up shops.

Good job, Dave.

I think those are the most valuable thing from a technology piece that if you're not heavily leveraging, you're missing huge opportunities. It creates a stronger relationship, just like all technology does, but you really solve a problem. And there are so many unique things about being able to throw up a pop-up shop quickly. That's where I would spend a little bit of time.

There's a PPAI study that reported that the average tenure of a client is 2 years on average, and with technology you can at least triple that. I know, and with our distributorship it was quadruple that based on the technology infrastructure. Chris, speaking of, that's how you keep clients, is not only just your technology infrastructure but, but also just your services. How do you see technology advancing the sale, and how do you see keeping clients? What are your thoughts on technology and sales?

So, we lean heavily on our technology. We leverage it to the hilt, we think, and we're always looking to grow into that. So, we're SAP Business One on the backend, and we build custom portals for all of our clients. HubSpot is our CRM, and integrating now with Commonsku, which is great. Commonsku is fabulous because even I can use Commonsku, which is really exciting. But HubSpot, we always say at our office that if it's not in HubSpot, it didn't happen. So we have pushed that for probably 3 years now, and with our HR situation that we have today, people taking an extended leave of absence because they just can't cope, or people leaving for unlimited vacation time, that kind of thing. It makes us, so the people that are left behind to serve, it makes it to where we can pick up a lot easier. So we really, really push HubSpot. You know, we, we plug into SAP. We, we buy plugins on the backend of SAP. So, when a large customer comes to us and says, we need, really need this, we figure it out through a plugin typically. So, technology is expensive, but it's even more costly not to have.

Yeah.

Dan, what kind of tech investments is AlphaBroader looking at for the future? And how do you see that when you're looking at clients and through to end buyers? How do you view that?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's the biggest area we're investing in is technology. I mean, bar none. In our company in really 3 areas. One is what we're doing with Commscope. So we're trying to get as integrated with as many platforms as we can, and I think that's part of what's going on in the industry. I think people are consolidating around platforms, so our focus is to make sure that we're trying to scale what we're doing, to do that, you know, more rapidly with more platforms, but to do it in a way that's not just about transferring information, but it's taking steps out of the process. Catherine talks about that a lot, and so I think We can drive efficiencies for our customers, we can drive efficiencies on our end. That's really what we want to do from an integration perspective. And I would say, you know, the second area is really around our website. You know, we have two different businesses. We have the hard goods business, the soft goods business. So we're focused on, you know, can we create a better customer experience with the two of those? Do we bring those together, create a single website, and a lot of the efficiencies that we can drive for our customers by doing that. So that's a big area of investment. And then the third area is really using technology to pull information. When you talk about kind of advancing the sale, I think about our sales organization, whether it's our CRM tool, how it integrates with our FDM4 tool, making data and information more readily available for our sales team so they're better at what they do. They're more informed at what they do. We have better team selling. When you think about customer service, you think about our inside sales team. Better connectivity across the organization. So those are really the three areas overall.

Okay, Kiani, how do you plan on investing in technology in the future? You talk about, you talk a lot about the growing needs of your customers expanding. How does that affect the technology investments you're going to make?

So I have a few thoughts about it. Being here over this entire week, we have a certain clientele that we attract very easily because of our social media, because of, you know, what we've built. We've done probably too great of a job on social media, really great job, the wrong clients as it stands now. So it served us well initially. However, we're wanting to grow in a different direction, so just trying to have to pivot. Um, but initially we used our social media as really kind of our calling card. We had some things set up in the background. We use Typeform to collect information, so anyone who's interested in working with us, we send them to our Typeform Form. We use that Typeform almost like gold. It just kind of lists anyone who's ever reached out to us, um, so we use it in that way. But at the same time, we had those types of customers, they're coming to us and they're going to Sticker Mule, who I don't know if you guys just saw, they launched like a t-shirt. Like, you can now do t-shirts on Sticker Mule. Exactly. It's not the pony, so it's not cool, um, but, but it, but it's super Easy. And so, um, that's what we love. We love, um, when, when the experience is easy. So we have a great intake process, but now we're just working on the back end and just trying to make all of those processes from the time that you reach out to us, make all of them match.

And, um, that's—

CommonSku has definitely helped a ton, and we don't use our shops enough, but when we go home, that's like our homework.

Yeah, technology's really democratized things. I mean, Greg will test this, and Brian is— we were spending— I don't know what you're doing now, but we were spending quarter million at least on technology every year just from a lot more. And so there's so much changing so rapidly. Let's talk about technology and efficiency. So Dale, we don't have to bemoan how inefficient our industry is. We kind of all get that. I think we're aware of it. How do we use technology to simplify our supply chain? There's a big question that I just can't believe I asked you that broad of a question, but I'm gonna let you answer it.

First, we need to get people to use it. I guess, you know, if you talk about promo standards or any sort of standard, You've said this today. The inefficiency of our industry because of the lack of standards drives me nuts. It has for the 20-plus years I've been in the business. But we're at a point now where the industry is not only ready, it's hungry to adopt some sort of standardization. One of the things the association has not done well is take a lead in that area. And so you have different organizations doing different things. And while Promo Standards has done some things really well, there's other things that it needs to do better. I think that we have to, as an industry, solve this inefficiency issue before it gets solved for us by someone else and makes our margin— you know, we have margin pressure that's only going to get worse. We must become more efficient. And I would say the the standardization, but also the data that you put in. And again, I know Common Skew does it really well, but you're a small segment of the entire distributor population. The data that gets put into any system— is it Aaron who said shit in, shit out, right? Yeah. So much bad data goes in from industry distributors. We have to, both as this group but as a larger industry, solve that problem. And if we do that, that's going to make suppliers more efficient if we're not calling suppliers and saying, where's my order, and all of those things. So I'm a big believer in what was already talked about earlier today.

And we have to, as you said, it's imperative because we keep drawing the, uh, our profits and our operating burden keeps getting higher, but yet we keep drawing out the unit price of what we sell, and it can't bear that burden any, any longer. Chris, Chris's model, by the way, is, is like Greg and, and Brian's at Thumbprint, I'm sure, and there's so many differences there, but that's how we kind of all As the business has grown more complex with kitting and fulfillment, you've been doing that for a while. Do you think we're using technology to help us adapt to that, those growing complex needs? And do you have an example of how that's happening in your world?

So I would say that yes, lots, lots more kitting, especially in the fourth quarter here. It's been coming into the fourth quarter is crazy. But I would say we just put in ShipStation. That seems to be, again, every little thing that we can tweak any kind of plugin we are, we're definitely using at this point. You know, we use Asana for any kind of planning. We, we have an onboarding program to bring our clients on that. If you don't onboard these people correctly to begin with, you're, you're gone. That's it. So we, we build portals for them. We use that technology to, to sell through. But when those kitting jobs come in and the backend of things, we have to be prepared in the warehouse. So our warehouse is fully, we are very connected. Our warehouse guys that were not technologically advanced are very technologically advanced today.

Yeah. Kathryn, this is obviously your passion and you probably have just the best perspective because you also survey the industry a lot on this. Where are our blind spots still when it comes to technology and efficiency? Are there any other blind spots we need to be aware of? Are we not using CRMs enough? What do you see us, where do you see us needing to make more of an investment? In the next 12 months?

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a lot of upstream opportunity. And going back to what we have been speaking about, you know, yesterday around marketing, that the more that you can be doing to support the sales process without sales having to do the cold calling— you keep bringing that back, John— there's just technologies making all those things so much easier. And whether that's from, you know, tools like, you know, Mailchimp or HubSpot as an example, but also design tools like things like, you know, Canva and tools like that that are so democratized now around. You don't necessarily need to have like a full-time graphic designer on staff to be able to make amazing marketing, you know, uh, present— or make marketing, um, emails. So I think just kind of leaning into the fact that there are, there are so many options out there now that are easy to use is taking advantage of that.

Yeah. Any questions on technology and efficiency?

So the question was around, um, Mailchimp versus Constant Contact versus other marketing platforms. It's really just what level of functionality you need. So we typically, with all of our integrations, we usually support kind of more of like an— what I describe as being an entry level, which is MailChimp, kind of more basic in terms of its functionality, and then more of an advanced functionality like HubSpot, where you just got the ability to do kind of next level, you know, automation and customization.

Our last segment is going to be on leadership as we all return back home into our offices and leading our businesses forward. Dale, You now bear the mantle of leadership at PPAI. How do you see PPAI changing for the future? What are some of your thoughts?

I don't want to use the cop-out of I'm here to listen and learn, but that's essentially right now. I'm, you know, on the listening tour. What do we need to do? So as much as I'm willing to share my bias a little bit, I hope that for the little bit of time we have left, if anybody will share with me things you want. PPAI is in a really wonderful position. We are the trusted industry association. Whatever money we make, we put right back into the industry. And I think that one of the areas that we— and I don't want to play into the tech card too much because I love the business side of things, and I know there's a lot of people here who appreciate technology, but PPAI has not taken a role of encouraging more adoption. We have very little technology expertise on staff at the association. I think that we need to be a leader. We don't need to be in the business that Common Skew is. We want to partner with and support Common Skew and the other industry providers out there, but we need to drive this industry forward. So whatever needs to be done, we need to be the leader in that. And right now, technology is the area that all of us are paying attention to, and PPAI is missing that opportunities.

It's refreshing to hear, because your share of voice is, as we know, very, very large. Dan, leadership has changed. And you are— this is a topic I know we've talked about on the podcast that you're very passionate about. Maybe it's not fundamentally changed, but our teams are changing, and demands are changing, as we know from this morning. As you survey how the world's changed, what's the most important leadership trait for us to be aware of as we look at over the next 12 months?

Well, I mean, I don't know if it's a leadership trait, but it's required of leadership. You just think about driving employee engagement in a much more virtual world. You know, our sales— I won't see our salespeople for going on 2 years, right? So, driving engagement in the organization in a virtual world requires communication at a different level than what we were doing before. I mean, I think we learned that as we went through, you know, last year. And that's a lot harder, especially when people are busy, they're stressed, they're— it's taking the time to make sure that you're spending the time talking about what the company is doing to try to get alignment across the organization. And doing that on a virtual call is difficult versus having people together in groups. The second thing I think is I look back in our organization and what we went through, and everyone here went through it, during COVID was the folks that rose to the top in the organization from a leadership perspective really demonstrated their ability to lead through adversity. It's one thing to lead and have a great team and everyone's having fun and the business is humming along, but your business is down 80% and you're taking out 30% of your workforce and doing that in a way, one, you're still instilling confidence in the organization that you're going to get through it. You're being transparent about what you're doing as an organization, and you're also getting folks to start to think about things from an opportunity perspective. And I think people that lead through adversity well, you take a problem, you take a challenge, and many times it's out of your control, and you turn it into an opportunity. Like, how do we beat that opportunity? How do we overcome that? Yeah, we're not going to grow our business in 2020, but hey, we did some things that we can celebrate. And I think about, we took our call centers, We had 2 call centers in Massachusetts and California that were physical call centers. Within 5 days, we had that entire organization working from home. We had desktops. We didn't have laptops. People did remarkable things and you got to celebrate that. Then you start to feel like you're winning again and you're not just going uphill. I think leading through adversity and I think having leaders that can do that strengthen the organization and they grow. Grow from it individually. So, you know, hopefully we're not going to go through anything like that again. But, you know, we're here to talk about the future. I have no idea what, you know, what the future is going to be. I think that's one of the learnings, right? You got to, you've got to adapt quickly, you know, because things are coming at you, you know, really, really fast.

You spend a lot of your time leading leaders with a billion-dollar-plus enterprise like you have there. That's where a lot of your energy goes, I would assume.

Absolutely.

Let's talk about leading our clients. So, Kiani, you've consistently shown up in this industry and shown us how to do some things masterfully social media marketing and things like that. How are you communicating with clients in the future differently than you were before so that you can lead them as opposed to always living in a reactive world?

Great question. Um, so I would say just asking better questions, um, making sure that our clients know, you know, that we have the experience. Um, I do bring public relations experience and just, you know, all of the past positions I've ever held. I bring all of that to the table. So during conversations, for instance, we had a client, they were going to be at a big trade show and they were going to do Post-it notes. That was like, we need 25,000 Post-it notes. Not 25,000, it wasn't that many, but they need— they wanted Post-it notes. And I'm like, okay, well, we could do something. First and foremost, we couldn't get Post-it notes in the time frame that they wanted, so I had to think of something different. But so we did some gum packs for them, and we, you know, how about some gum packs? Hey, it'll put a smile on people's face. Their breath will probably need it going to this conference. So it'll be something a little bit different. So just little small things like that. They sent us a text message at the trade show. They had a huge space right in the middle of this trade show. It was a hit. Everyone loved the gum packs, and the speaker even talked about the gum packs on stage. So, you know, just even more return on their investment. So just getting text messages like that are incredible. There was a client that we worked with, and we actually did these earrings, food is fashion earrings, hoop earrings. It was a really creative project. And instead of one of the ideas she had, we included— her brand is a food brand. It's a really creative, really fun brand. We included some QR codes that people could go download some recipes from her family that she had passed down. So just inputting little small touches and things like that into the projects that we work with are kind of what helps set us apart and keep us.

So, yeah.

Chris, how are you, how are you changing the way you communicate with clients? I mean, you do a lot of large consumer goods industries. So how are you and your team changing the way you lead your clients in the future?

So everybody has Zoom fatigue, but we look, we embrace Zoom. We've opened up a whole new world with Zoom. So yes, we're all tired of it. We all want to be together in this room together. This is so refreshing for us. But Zoom really has opened up a whole world for us. Our largest clients are not in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so it's been very challenging. We haven't seen one of our clients for 2 years, but we are very, very close to them. And of course, during a time like we just went through, they have relied on us and the bond with our relationship has grown very deep. So, I would say Zoom is a big thing. We call it Zooming ahead. And, you know, as far as little things along the way to keep in contact, any kind of customer contact point is, we have to somehow touch and keep top of mind. I think that we run on EOS. So, we're really in this box, so to speak. So, we really have metrics that we have to meet and client touches and how we reach out to our customers and how creative we get with that is super, super important to us. And that's our culture. We want to make sure that we're the ones that stand out, because if you can't, if you can't think of how you stand out lately, you know, what you've done lately to stand out, you're not standing out. So I think that's the most important thing is making sure that those touches in any way, whether it's technological pick up the phone and call. We do that every now and then.

Catherine, let's put your right sleeve hat back on for a minute. Where are you focusing your team in 2022 in terms of leading them to lead the clients?

I think this is the moment to flip the script.

Like, we—

I think so many of us as salespeople, distributor salespeople, kind of sit back and let the client kind of guide the conversation. They need you to lead right now. They need solutions, they need answers. They don't have the answers in every facet of their business at the moment because everything has changed. So whether that's how to attract and retain talent, whether that's how to reach clients, whether that's how to appreciate clients, you know, all of these elements, there is a blank slate out there where the toolkit has been completely upended and they need you to step forward with solutions. So don't be hanging back kind of waiting for them to be reaching out, like have the confidence to sit at that table. And drive the conversation and the confidence in the, the experience that you bring to the table and what it is that you have the perspective on in working across clients and the, the solutions that you can share. So we just need to step forward in a huge way. And I think with that comes like enormous opportunity. I mean, we have such a great opportunity right now to be taking market share from every other medium. Like the, as I say this, the slate is blank. So get in there and take what we deserve as far as the industry is concerned.

Final rapid-fire round of questions here. As a leader, you can only focus on a finite number of critical initiatives. Each of you, where do you plan to invest most of your mental energy in the next 12 months counting? Let's start with you. We'll work our way down.

So when you asked me that question, I literally had a list of like 20 things that we are thinking about, that we're worried about. But if I had to narrow it down into 3, the first thing would be into just figuring out what we don't know about business. So we are a really small shop, me and my 2 partners. So we are super small. But by the time we come back next year, hopefully you can ask us who we've hired and we will have some names for you. So just learning the things that we don't know. I want to be able to answer all of like the Shark Tank type questions, um, like what these numbers are. Maybe I'll call Jon Vo to help me figure that kind of stuff out. But just to be able to answer better questions about our business from a really business standpoint and not just like a mom-and-pop. So hiring and then retiring, um, just kind of thinking about those things that really make a business a business. And that's it.

Great.

Thank you. Dan, you really have to focus your finite energy because you're pulled in so many different directions, particularly with supply chain challenges. Where do you see yourself investing more mental energy next year?

Well, one, to be executing our strategy. And we've got 4 key pillars to our strategy. I won't go through all those. But one of those is the technology piece that we talked about earlier. And I think in normal times, that would be a really big focus for our organization. We're really focused on the customer experience, and some of that's tied to what we're doing from a technology perspective. And I think we have got a long ways to go to get to where we want to be and trying to really take out friction in the process. And that's through all sorts of, you know, the different ways that orders and interactions with customers come through to us. So that's a big focus operationally, and it's a big focus culturally of what we're trying to do for next year. But I believe in the folks talked about this yesterday in the supply chain. We're going to be dealing with the supply chain issue well into the latter part of next year. And we're not going to be able to create a great customer experience if we don't try to get out in front of that. So I envision at least well into the back half of next year, whether it's staffing, that challenge I think is going to be ongoing, and whether it's supply chain, as you heard the folks talk about yesterday, that's going to be the back half of next year. So we're going to still be really tactical Yeah, to get that, because those are the two biggest issues that our business is facing. And if we can mitigate those better, it's going to allow us to do more strategic things. Yeah.

Chris, how about you?

I think client experience, always. It's, it's top of our list every year. But the journey, the customer journey has been something we've worked on this year. But we are really, really— and we, one of our core values is customers first. And we really, really do walk that talk. So, through technology, through the use of our technology, we want them constantly coming to us. I had a client come to me the other day and ask me about an attorney. Like, I want you to come to me for everything, but I hope it's not divorce. So, we really want to make sure that that customer journey is a great one. And that encompasses so much. It's our technology. Everything. It's in that culture and that, that HR piece that, that everybody's struggling with. That's, you know, that's something that is all on our minds and how we're going to hire, fire, review around our core values if we can find people to do that.

I'm glad you mentioned the customer experience because I think we take that for granted. We're so busy and we're so busy putting out fires. Everyone in this room is. Dale, if anyone's thought about this question more, it's probably you. Where are you investing your leadership energy?

So I will answer that by starting with a question to Dan. Dan, you said you haven't seen your team in 2 years. Where are you going to see your team?

We're in Vegas. Good, good commercial you just ran there.

At SCUECON first, I think, right, Dan?

That was not SCUECON.

Right? Of course.

Well played. So clearly Expo is what funds so much of what we do to reinvest in the industry. So, I have to have that as a priority. But beyond that—

Dale, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think we all should know that PPAI is a business and they just talk about getting hit hard. And you and your team have handled that so masterfully. And I know many of us, I think we kind of take our association for granted and you've got quite a few folks— go ahead.

Well, I think what you said there is maybe we are taken for granted, but this is where I'm going to put some of my energy next year, which is We do so many things, but I don't think we do everything that we do purposefully and well. And so if you get emails from us, you probably, like the other supplier emails that you tune out, tune us out. We have so much noise internally at the association and we just blast that noise back out to you. So for me, a big part of what I'm doing right now and working with the team and you'll see next year is We're trying to eliminate that noise. And I would encourage everyone to do that for your own business, but definitely from the Association, we have to do that so that then when we do decide whether it's pushing standards or the end buyer or whatever it is going to be our key focus, we have so much more volume with that message.

Yeah, clarity. And Katherine, how about you? I think folks are curious too where you're putting your mental energy leading Commski.

Just a huge, huge focus on how to make it easier for you guys to do business. Like, doing business is hard right now. And so anything that we can do to get the friction out, you know, Aaron alluded to the big changes that we have coming up with dashboards and analytics and navigation. So how do we serve up intelligence at the right opportunity to the right roles to be able to help, you know, with decision-making, to help you keep on top of things. And so just a big, big focus on how can we make things easier across the whole process.

Questions for our group.

So just to repeat that, the question was around how many times I've said reducing friction, but it's about the importance of promo standards and what can distributors be doing to encourage suppliers to get involved. Tell them what difference it makes to you. In the number of conversations that I've had, like Sandy Gonzalez was saying that they make buying decisions based on how easy it is for their salespeople to execute that, and she never realized how much of an impact kind of the Connected Supplier Program would have on that. So just listen to what people are saying around what it is that you can be doing to help make buying easier and communicate that, that it matters to you guys and it matters how you organize your spend.

Sam, do suppliers expect— will they ever require purchase orders to come in electronically?

Um, or we're not going to do business with you? No, I mean, I think— I mean, we are clearly pushing our customers that way any way we can, and I do think it's it's naturally going to kind of evolve as I think consolidation continues and there's more customers on these fewer platforms that are out there. CommsCue is obviously a great example of that, but I don't foresee in the near term that we would do something that dramatic. We'll encourage it and maybe we'll incent it. You use the carrot and not the stick to reward people because it's way more efficient for us. So we get some value out of that. We can share that value back to our customers. So That would be the way we would encourage it. But I mean, we've got close to 100,000 customers and we're a long way. I think you would really have to kind of segment those customers and figure out which ones are able to get there that they just don't want to get there. But I think that's a long way off before you really try to force it.

And I'll just add, based on my experience, that's 100% correct. I do think the incentives will start to be more valuable, whether it's monetary or the example of what you shared with Starline earlier today, you know, 85 POs sitting there and one goes to the front of the line. I think it will happen sort of naturally, but our industry is very, very slow to adopt. I don't see in the next 5 years any supplier saying no, or even boldly saying, you know, you're behind the line in a, in an official way. But I think the incentives are going to grow quickly in a way that it will help.

Yep.

Thank you, guys. Thanks. Give a round of applause for our wonderful panel. Thanks, guys, so much.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for listening.