Episode 251: The New Catalyst for Supplier + Distributor Sales Growth

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.

Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew. It's fitting that as we close this year, 2022, we publish an episode that in time will prove to be the harbinger of a new era. I'm convinced that in a few years, we'll look back and realize that the topic of our conversation today and the work that got us here to this moment was the exact catalyst that propelled our industry's somewhat stagnant overall growth to unforeseen heights. Now think with me about the confluence of events surrounding our industry at this moment in time. Number 1, the reputation of branded merch has reached an all-time high. Number 2, our supply chain is ripe for disruption, and the good news is it's happening from within, from suppliers who are disrupting their own internal ops for faster distributor sales enablement. And number 3, Exponential distributor sales growth. I have had 3 separate conversations this past month alone with distributors who have a plan, not a hope, but a plan to each be a billion-dollar company. Now, taken separately, these points are powerful, but not nearly as potent as the combination of all 3. But they rely on each other. Today, we talk about one part of this new equation, how the supplier of the future is working right now to create this very catalyst for growth. And we're not talking to the wonderful technologists who are behind the scenes making these changes possible. We're talking with the frontline sales team who sees this change as the new leverage for sales growth. Get this, PCNA launched EPOs with Commenscue in September, just 3 months ago. Now, at that time, only 2% of all purchase orders were submitted through EPO. In 3 short months, EPO submissions to PCNA from CommsCue customers skyrocketed to around 50% of all purchase orders. My guests today are Emily Douglas and Erin Harris from PCNA. Emily is a regional sales manager covering the field sales managers in the Midwest and Texas. She's been with PCNA for 5 years. Erin Harris is the director of sales for PCNA Canada and has spent years in the field creating longstanding relationships with customers and developing a first-class sales organization. Today, we take this big, sometimes confusing topic of EPOs and we break it down to its essentials. We explain it. We discuss why it's important for both distributors' and suppliers' sales success, what changes you and your team can expect with EPO adoption, and finally, why it's such a high-impact catalyst for growth. But before Emily and Aaron join us, I wanna mention that if you are going to the PPAI Expo in January, We would love to connect with you there, and we have multiple opportunities to do so. On January 9th, we're hosting Commonsku University. It's where you can learn all about the platform, including presentations led by myself and my Commonsku colleagues, Erin Kuchere, Dave Schultz, Erin Burleigh, Catherine Graham, and our entire expo team. You can also visit us on the show floor at booth 5717 or join us for a private session in the SKU suite for a one-on-one chat with our team. But don't worry about remembering all this because we have a beautiful website that features All of this at commonscue.com/expo. We even have a list of all the CommonsCUE suppliers for you and your team to easily find them on the show floor. You can discover all of this and sign up and join us at commonscue.com/expo. That's commonscue.com/expo. And if you're not going to Expo, we hope to see you virtually on January 19th for SKUCON Virtual, the conference for innovators, explorers, and dreamers in the promotional products industry. Learn more about our incredible lineup of speakers and rally your team to join us. To learn more and register, visit skucon.com/virtual. Today's episode is brought to you by Commonsku, the work from anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonsku.com. Now here's my chat with PCNA's Emily Douglas and Aaron Harris.

I want to begin this discussion by talking about what we were talking about off mic, because it kind of surprised me. You show up, Erin and Emily, and you said to me that this was, if not the most important, one of the most important topics of the year, which kind of surprised me, to be honest. And the reason why it surprised me is I know that things like integration and EPO integration are important for us because we're a software platform. But you just said as a supplier, it is literally the most important topic Why do you feel it's so important?

Yeah, like, and Em and I can elaborate a little bit, but thank you so much for having us, Bobby. It's so great to be here. And listen, I'd say, you know, we, you know, obviously are in the sales environment. Em and I, you know, we're sales leaders, but we're finding that this is such an important topic because it's getting us as suppliers, as customers, it's getting us to the business quicker. And by the business, I mean like the process quicker. It's not, you know, there's that element of, of ease of doing business. And for you guys, obviously, as a software company, that's sort of— you're rooted in that. But for us, you know, with people retention, with ease of doing business, that for us is like critical. And, um, we're really excited to be here because, you know, almost like lending from the sales bent, the more we can educate our teams in sales, the people on the street having conversations with the customers, the more that we can educate them on how to have these integration discussions as they come up, because they're coming up all the time, you know, they're coming up around not just promo standards, but just certain customer business needs. And the more we know how to answer those questions, or at least help navigate them, we want to be sure that we're doing that with our sales peeps and that we're just in more of a leadership position to help get to the business quicker.

Emily, you're frontline sales. How would you answer that?

Yeah, I would say it's all about the customer journey, right? And the customer experience within that journey. And so like any consumer experience, as we are in the digital age and as we've seen digital transformation really post-COVID be accelerated, How can we make a customer's journey as they purchase and consume from us easier? And we've learned immensely that it's integration and it is a much smoother process. It will get smoother as we progress, just as any digital journey would be. But I would say the ease of doing business, like Aaron mentioned, is by far number one in making sure as we progress through, you know, no matter which type of customer that a distributorship is, that integration will help that journey along as they go through purchasing and placing POs and having those orders fulfilled.

Let's pause for a minute, explain a few words that I think we take for granted that all of us understand and on the same page. We keep talking about integration, and there's a word on digital transformation. Those two words keep coming up in the industry. They've come up a lot more in the past 6 to 8 months than I've ever seen. All of us that are on this recording know exactly what we are talking about. But let's provide some context for those that are either new to the business or have been in the business a while and they they may be fatigued around things like automation and integration. So let's back up a minute. I'm going to explain something by way of example, because the integration of PCNAs, EPOs, where POs are transferred electronically straight from the distributor's hands right into your production system, where they're bypassing tons of orders, which we'll talk about in a minute— here's what happened to us, all of us collectively. In September, when things went live, 2% of all your purchase orders were sent in by EPO, by CommsCue customers, straight through to your ERP. In October, that rose to 17%. In November, it jumped to 35%, and to date, around 50% of all purchase orders are now sent straight into your ERP. This is phenomenal progress, and it's one of the best examples of what we've been calling for years the connected workflow. But in order for us to really appreciate that, let's step back for a minute and talk about the mess that we were in prior to this moment and are in to some degree. So let's talk about life before EPOs. For those that aren't submitting their orders via EPOs. What is that life like now? Erin, you said once that out of all the traditional purchase orders submitted, customer contact is required in at least 50% of those orders, mostly due to incorrect information, missing ship-to address, item number provided with no item color, incomplete order information, missing artwork. We all know the drill. Yeah, what that means is as a distributor, half of my orders I submit today are wrong, and, and we'll— at least half—

and will be held up incorrect. But absolutely, and I would actually even challenge that number and say it's probably closer to 70%.

Yeah, that's actually a number I've heard too.

I would say yes. I mean, and I hate to call it a mess because there's a huge chunk of our industry that isn't quite there yet, right? And I mean that with all due respect. And I mean, as the transformation journey occurs, it's very different for everyone, right? So, good point. Having Promo Standards and a company like Commscue working together, obviously, and let me just backtrack and say congrats on that 50% because It is the fastest integration we have seen as at PCNA with an organization. So we're super thrilled and excited about that. But yeah, I mean, you're right, Bobby, everything you said is completely true. There are elements of an order that benefit significantly simply by being able to place it digitally. So to have quick access to inventory, and I know we're going to chat about that a little bit later, but So many reasons why to look at, you know, to look at moving digitally and being able to submit an electronic purchase order is just so, you know, it's so meaningful.

Yeah, you bet. Let me pause for a minute and just ask you something. And this is not me picking on competitors. This is me trying to learn and be the voice of the audience. When you said EPO integration has happened faster than anyone else, you're doing this type of integration with virtually anyone you can because your priority at PCNA is to get integration done. So we have other standards. Give me an example of what you're talking about. Not to throw anyone under the bus, you have other organizations you're doing this with?

Yeah, I think like, you know, Promo Standards is the industry standard, correct?

Right?

It is where, you know, we've done the most work as an industry in creating access and easy flow through. But we are looking and working with, you know, a number of customers on customized integrations. It is really, in our opinion, it is a huge benefit to stick with the promo standards piece. And, you know, if there are custom integrations that have to happen, you know, we understand that, but they're often going to be delayed, right? So to get to the point, Bobby, where we're at with you guys as an organization, you know, as a leader in technology with Commonsku, I would say, you know, it's a it's probably an easier process if you're working with a company like Home&Skew. But for me, it's just been really incredible to watch the uptick and, you know, a few little pieces of opportunity as they arise when we, when we see feedback from our distributor network come in. But we've created a really strong feedback loop with our IT team and our integration people and yours. So it's made for some really quick improvements too, which I think is super awesome.

We'll get into that more because I want to ask why this integration was so efficient. Um, Erin, something I think you mentioned that I really loved is that everyone's on their own path to this journey, right? So be patient with each other as we go through this. But I want to still talk for a minute about the workflow when we talk about what happens at PCNA prior to EPOs. When, as a distributor, my order is held up so to speak, right, because of some incorrect information. Walk me through that workflow. Held up by who?

What happens?

Is it sitting in a—

You want to take this one?

Yeah, I'll take this one. Absolutely. So when you—

Awesome.

Yeah, when you submit a PO to PC&A for decorated goods and there is an action or an item that we need to fulfill the order, complete the order, we require a human to reach out to you and to validate that info. So you know, we can't put your product or your order into production until all of that is validated. And, you know, just as much as, you know, we have to touch orders because of distributor information, you know, we've got— there's human error on our side as well, right? So because there's so much complexity in POs and how they look different, um, you know, you may be an order processor on the PCNA order processing team who sees a variety of what a PO looks like, where an info is at. And so I think you know, standardizing what a PO is from a promo standards perspective or from a platform perspective, that trains our people, hey, I know exactly how to read a PO over and over and over again, instead of, okay, the ship-to address is on the top left corner versus the bottom right versus hidden in the notes, right? There leaves a lot of room for human error.

Yeah, um, as a former distributor Um, I would often make this mistake. I see PCNA's 24-hour, 48-hour guidelines, right? Hey, if I get my artwork and my order in by 3 o'clock this afternoon, it's going to ship tomorrow or the next day. And what happens often is we're racing so hard to hit that deadline, that's where some of this missing information comes in, and we think we've got it accomplished. And that's where the beginning of some of our pain starts on both sides of the equation. Let me ask you this, Emily. How many times do you think a supplier and distributor go back and forth through email or phone because of this held-up process?

I am sure there's a metric and some data to back this up, but I would venture to say on average of the POs that we have to touch, somewhere between 3 and 7 touchpoints. That could span days, right? So hey, if something is not resolved because the distributor has to validate that information from an end user, you know, that's that's that many days that that distributor doesn't get to invoice that PO. And so that's why this becomes important to Aaron's original point. You know, this helps distributors and suppliers invoice faster and move on to the next task because that those 3 to 7 interactions, and also, you know, measuring that in terms of labor as well. Hey, if my, if my, you know, CSRs at a distributorship are spending 3 to 7 touch points per order, what does that amount to in the amount of time? And I think distributors, you know, as an industry, we struggle to measure time as a resource. And I think this will immensely help free up to be able to, to do, to sell more, right? Or to process more and to, to make more money.

Yeah. EPOs, on the other hand, are rarely, if ever, missing information because the fields require you to fill them in. You can't actually get to the next step. And these are validated automatically before the order can be accepted. Am I correct? Am I wrong about that?

You are totally correct. Yeah. We did a walkthrough a couple of weeks ago with Catherine and just looking at what we're validating right now, you can't move through it. You can't submit that. You can't go on to step 2 until it's in. And I think like, you know, a fairly simplistic PO, if it's got all the deco methods listed by the supplier, which is really, you know, the hardest part of the puzzle, you know, we're talking like minutes to submit an order, which is pretty incredible.

Pretty amazing. It's a system of checks and balances, and it keeps you, the supplier, from being the bad guy and, and protects the distributor, honestly, from ourselves, because we're just rushing through to the next order, essentially. So the number one reason why EPOs are important for everyone listening right now, and for those that even may be fatigued by hearing this for so long, is for me, as a former distributor, what I hear is that these EPOs— correct me if I'm wrong— are immediately prioritized over traditional orders because they bypass the order confirmation in the order entry process. Am I wrong about that?

For me, I'd say like the order confirmation still happens, but what I would say, it's not being done by a human, it's being automated. So yes, it bypasses the human element, so it's automated directly through the system. For me, one of the biggest pieces of benefit to this on the, you know, on the distributor side, it's really about inventory. So it is a true first-in-first-out process. Yeah, where that doesn't happen. Until artwork is validated properly and it's moved through those holds. I believe on most suppliers, yeah. So this is a huge advantage to integrated distributors for sure.

Emily, speak to that from a salesperson's perspective who is out there trying to sell, trying to, you know, close deals with distributors who are also trying to close deals with their clients. That was just a pretty profound statement that Aaron said, that this impacts inventory allocation for your order because because my order is 100% correct through an EPO, in a sense I've established the right to that inventory allocation first. Is that right, Emily? And how, how has that impacted and how do you see that impacting your world and your work? Because how much of your work as a sales rep is this back and forth or these kinds of details where you could be focusing on other things?

Yeah, I think this is something that I challenge my team as sales reps to, to think about, right, is is, you know, the way a customer is set up, whether it's an e-commerce customer or a traditional distributorship, in terms of how they transact, you know, having a distributor who is integrated is that much less work for you and for our teams to do as a supplier, right? And so that allows you to move on and to measure that time and efficiency, right? And hey, if I could save you, you know, 3 to 7 emails out of your inbox a day per order that needs to be validated, whether that is an order processor or an account manager or a sales rep, you know, that takes a chunk of, a chunk of work away that you can focus your efforts elsewhere. And I think this is something new from the supplier side, from a sales rep perspective, and challenging our teams to not only be the expert in product and category and merchandising, but also be the expert and the leader in tech and integrations and being able, when it, to be able to prescribe to a distributor, hey, maybe it's worth a conversation on what your digital strategy is because it's incredibly important to have. And that helps us identify where an opportunity lays for a distributorship is what that digital strategy is. Because I don't know in 10 years if you can truly find, you know, the peak of success in your business and be able to adapt and change without a digital strategy at this point. It's super important in any business, supplier or distributor. Alike.

That's so critical what you just said. So let me ask you this. Distributor enablement. Elizabeth Wimbush, the VP of Supply Chain and Sustainability with GenuineMark, one of the largest distributors in North America, said this, quote, any suppliers that have that kind of full integration, I will put them in front of the sales team more and more. I will put them in front of the sales team more, or I will find ways to remind the sales team about them more because it just increases efficiency so much. What— am I wrong? I have been saying that this is the new 24-hour, 48-hour rush race. You guys remember back in the day when, when there was this rush and all suppliers were trying to reach this 5-week turn time, then a 3-day turn time, then a 24-hour turn time? I think we'll look back on this time period and realize this was that moment.

Is that—

would that be a correct assessment?

And I would even link it back to what Em was just saying around like the education of our teams. You know, for Elizabeth, who, you know, is managing this business with a huge distributorship and is educating her sales team to work with people that help navigate their business and create better efficiencies, that's exactly what, what we're talking about with our own teams. You know, if we can both start getting the sales leads, the sales, the people that are in front of each other to have the discussion around digital journey and what that path is. You know, it might not be the sales rep per se, but it might be, you know, the lead to the account with the distributor principal or the VP of sales. But it actually helps us as we build our account plans. So, you know, 2, 3 years ago, we would not have been talking about asking about digital strategy in our account planning, and we will. Like it is part of our go-to-market strategy. It is part of the discussions that we want our sales teams to be having and asking the right people at the right accounts, because the closer we can get to integration opportunity, we're going to grow our business 100% and we're going to make it easier to do so along the way.

And I would also say, yeah, I was going to say we're in a bit of a digital arms race, right? Which is not only who can do it the fastest, but who can do it the most accurately. And I think that is, that's pretty critical because there are so many complexities with decorated goods and even with blank goods as well. When you have to facilitate decoration at some point, it's very important. And I think, you know, as we look to, again, it goes back to the next 5, 10 years, 20 years in the industry, this is going to shape what it looks like. And so we often have asked jokingly internally, you know, what is the next SureShip? From our perspective, which is that 24-hour rush, it's truly this. And it is a race and a competition between both suppliers and distributors to ensure who has the quickest, fastest way to process a PO, who delivers the best customer journey.

Mm-hmm. Most accurately. Absolutely.

Yeah. It's a bit ironic, isn't it, Emily? You work so hard for the right product selection, the right product to put in front of customers, and here you are in Salesline. You can grow a distributor's sales with this integration. Who knows how much, 20, 30, 40% year over year, just because you made it simpler for them to process.

And, you know, we hear from our distributors and really have heard it over the last 18 to 24 months, which is we don't care what products you put in front of us. Certainly that's an important part of our business, but we recognize within that top, you know, 40 to 100 suppliers, there will be a comparable product somewhere within the line. This really comes down to what we've said repetitively, the ease of doing business. How can I help my team teams sell more, close more, you know, gain more business, prospect more, and be able to grow that way.

Yeah, David Nicholson coined the phrase distributor enablement, which I loved, and he may have picked it from somewhere, but that's the first person I heard it from. And to denote this sort of new era that we've been talking about, where more and more suppliers investing in technology and in particular ways to empower the customers, I'm sure that distributor enablement is something that you're doing even beyond tech, like the infrastructure and changes that you're making in a supplier's business. Do you see a time when PCNA or other suppliers will require EPO only someday?

Well, if our CRO has her way, I would say yes.

Hey, if our CEO has her way, what do we ask to do?

I love it. I think that we've made really significant changes, like you said, to other parts of our business outside of just the integration standpoint. I mean, you look at our website, We're requiring people to order samples online now, solely through PCNA.com if they would like to take advantage of certain benefits. So we're driving people to do things digitally that we have never done before. And if you can make it worth someone's while, then absolutely we will be moving towards that. Never say never, I guess I would say.

Yeah, I would echo that as well in that we've got our internal BHAGs, our big hairy audacious goals, of a percentage of POs that we would love to come through digitally. You know, realistically, how fast will it get to 100%? I don't know. Learning the statistics from Commscue when we integrated shocked me a little bit at how quickly it truly could happen.

Very shocking.

Yeah. So yeah, never say never to Aaron's point.

Yeah. I know you're both suppliers and not distributors, but I have always appreciated the perspective of suppliers about the distributor business because you are working with virtually all distributors and because of this cross-pollination pollination from one unique distributor to another, you have a perspective that is really special. So for example, Emily, you might come into my office as, as a sales rep and you've just walked into 10 of my competitors' offices, right? So there's an interesting perspective you have that I will never have. So I'm going to ask this question to both of you. Emily, how do you see this integration making distributors better at what they do for their clients?

Yeah, I would say, you know, first and foremost, the, the client journey or the customer journey that, that a distributor has with a supplier can almost be mirrored with what they have with their end user, right? Being that the upfront information that's gathered, the time reduced going back and forth, the accuracy of orders, while may not ever be 100% perfect, most certainly will be improved this way. And so as our distributors are on their digital transformation journeys and as data and analytics becomes far more important in all of our business, I think this will allow business owners to tie metrics and be able to measure suppliers better or more importantly than just products. And so, hey, as a true supplier or as a true partner, Do you make my business more efficient? And that's where I think there's opportunity on the supplier side of the business to make a distributor's life easier, faster, more efficient, better. All in all is to help them make more money.

Yeah, beautifully said.

Erin, any other thoughts you want to add to that?

Em summed it up perfectly. I think, you know, you mentioned data and analytics and the judgment-based outside of just the product selection. I know how far have we come in the last few years from, you know, from really just showing product to having meaningful partner discussions. I think, you know, I think the pandemic helped us do that. I think it helped us have conversations digitally that we never had before, you know, where we weren't just, you know, to coin a phrase, showing up and throwing up with a bunch of product. So I think it's made us better business business partners, truly, as supplier-distributor relationships have grown, for sure.

Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. As a, as a former distributor, I— the thing that I know, I'd be looking at the P&L. And I would— we used to have payroll split in two different areas. We'd have payroll split into sort of sales and client-facing payroll, and then our ops side that was handling, you know, all of, all the things we know, from processing orders to following up on orders. And there is this shift that can occur because of this, where I might say— let's say, for example, 65% of my payroll costs might be wrapped up in just this mess of following up with orders, processing orders, those kinds of things, versus now the shift might turn. If the shift turns and 65 to 70% of my payroll is now front client-facing resources and people that have shifted now to working on solutions for clients, guess what happens to my business? Instead of us growing, you know, in a very moderate pace, we can now see a much more accelerated pace because the percentage of our energy is spent on forward projects and not either existing project or past projects.

And where can you invest that money, right? Like where else are there opportunities within business that you can reinvest and repurpose those dollars to, to do exactly that?

Yeah. And I would add to that, like for us, back to the data and analytics side, it's very easy for us to track who we're growing with as a supplier. So to your point, Bobby, you know, as we look at the outpace paced growth with some of our partners who are digitally integrated, where we are seeing significant outpace, um, you know, outpace growth from an industry standpoint, from, you know, our own metrics, usually from that distributor's metric. So, you know, we're starting to see that. We're actually starting to see, at least on our end, that the business is growing with those partners that are digitally integrated with us. So I'd say that that probably holds true on, uh, on the distributor side as well.

Yeah, go ahead, Emily. Was there something you were gonna add?

No, I was just gonna say, as I watch my team interact with, you know, many of the top 40 distributors on a regular cadence, whether it's business reviews or other business conversations, rarely does integration not come up. And most of the time our team is trained to bring it up, but the majority of time the distributor brings it up as well. So I think it's a It is a topic of conversation that is hot for both the supplier and the distributor side. And there is a need. And, you know, that will spread quickly as we, as, as we see more and more people send EPOs.

Yeah. I'm glad you brought this up because as a distributor and I'm listening, you know, we've had somewhere around 50,000 listens to the podcast this year. And we have probably an audience split about 70-30, 70% distributors, 30% suppliers. I'm listening, I'm going, what can I do practically about this? And I want to ask your advice for distributors because I think there is a very important aspect of this, and that is, for me as a distributor, I valued my top 20 suppliers so much that that's the conversation. For one thing, that's a practical takeaway. I need to have that as a front-line conversation, as a number one conversation. We're all about to go to Expo, and I can see myself walking into my top top supplier partners booths and going, what are you doing about digital transformation and integration? Because it's the most important thing for my distributorship. So there's this, um, there's something that can happen from the distributor's viewpoint where they have more leverage than they think. I think some of us might be guilty of waiting for all this to happen so our business can get better, but actually, as a distributor, if we are pushing that for that and telling our suppliers that it's important, then that integration would happen faster?

I think that like goes back to the education standpoint and the conversation that we had at the very beginning off mic is that, you know, I don't know if it's so much as leverage because I really try to look at this as a partnership. But if I'm—

yeah, okay.

And if I'm a distributor and I'm walking into a booth or I'm having my, you know, first out of the gate, you know, yearly meetings in the new year with my— some of my key suppliers, And I'm a principal where that is a priority for me, and I'm a distributor, and I'm like, we need to be better integrated. You know, the question is really, I think, tapping your suppliers. Like, either you're an important partner, and if I'm a distributor and if I don't know that you are a potentially integrated supplier, then sure, there's that conversation around, are you guys going to become more integrated? Because it's important to my business as a distributor. I'm putting on a new a distributor hat right now. But it's also the conversation I think that maybe some distributors have struggled with, which is, teach me. Tell me what I need to do. Where should I go? What do you recommend? If I'm a, you know, as Em and I go down the journey of learning so much more about integration and digital transformation and speaking that language to the sales folks in our industry, it's really about like learning. So if I'm a distributor and I don't know and I'm not yet going down that journey myself, it's about what are the best practices, what do you see working? So that's why I think today these conversations are so critical because you're hearing from Emily and I and we are in sales leadership. We are not on the integration team. We are not a part of IT. You know, if you can tell. But the truth is, is we're having meaningful conversations with some of our largest accounts And we're doing it on a biweekly basis with our integration teams. So often sales has to wrap their arms around these conversations with integration to get the ball rolling. So that would be my advice is ask the questions, who's doing it well? If I'm a distributor, hey supplier, what's working? For me, an amazing best practice to share is what we've done with CommonSKU in the last 3 months to go from zero, uh, to to 50% EPO integration in the US market with EPOs and PCNA is a huge win and a best practice. And they need to be working with people who know how to get them there.

Yeah. Emily, we're going to give you the last word.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I would say, you know, to Erin's point around education is having the conversation, right? Whether that's with other distributor networks, right? Whether that's a community of people finding like businesses and mastermind groups and really asking. And I think that is, you know, that's becoming more important in where we find some duplication efforts. Like, hey, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. I'm going to take what other people have done and figure out a way to make it fit in my business. To where it's— so it's not totally, uh, totally customized, but yet it's a fit for my business. And I think that sharing is really important, especially as distributors embark on their own journey. It is scary, right? It is a business need that owners and other people within that are stakeholders within that business have to decide on how to invest and when to invest and how much to invest and Those are big decisions. And I think we can learn from each other, you know, whether again, whether that's mastermind groups or community and how to make that best fit for that organization.

Great point. Erin and Emily, thank you so much. I literally had no idea how passionate the three of us were about educating everyone on this topic. Of course, people are like, of course, CommsCue would. But again, you said your frontline sales folks. Folks who are out there actually pushing this topic. So thank you for joining us today. I really enjoyed chatting with you two, and I guess I'll see you in a few weeks.

Thank you so much. We appreciate it.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, you bet. 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.comandsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.

Mm-hmm.