PPB November 2019

ecommerce, and you can see what will be important to your business in the coming years. “The introduction and use of curbside pickup, same-day delivery, lenient return policies, text notifications, subscriptions, chatbots, etc., are all changing buyer behavior and expectations,” Loui says. Some suppliers are already starting to develop strategies to manage these expectations. One of the most successful innovations in the past several years has been the introduction of on-demand customer service. “Live chat is one of the biggest areas where online distributors hold a significant competitive advantage over the traditional distributor,” Denham says. “Customers want instant responses regardless of where they purchase, and every distributor firm should be giving customers instant access to the information they seek.” Ecommerce is still in its infancy and has a lot of room to grow and mature. That means opportunity to find new solutions and strategies to address today’s biggest problems—and that starts with deciding what role you want to play in the future. “It all comes back to deciding what type of business you want to be,” Paradiso says. “If you want to compete on price, you’ll need economies of scale and the ability to invest in technology. If you want to build a business based on relationships, you’ll need to invest in service and a platform that supports your efforts across all facets of the business, both internally and externally.” “The companies at the top of our industry, supplier and distributor alike, have done some amazing things in the last five years and, yet, there is still so much room to grow for us all,” Bonnet adds. “The good news is, no one has cracked the nut that is perfection. There is still room and time to innovate, but you have to want to. There are no more quick wins. Those died a long time ago. Stay curious and solve complicated problems, and the rest will take care of itself.” Sound like a big task? It is. But everyone starts somewhere, and the reality is that if you’re a distributor, you’re already online. Email, Facebook, LinkedIn, message boards—if you use any of these, you are part of the web community. There has never been a better time to make the leap from a distributor who is online to an online distributor, and salespeople in the industry are uniquely positioned to make the most of the market. “We believe that a talented local salesperson, combined with the power of a full ecommerce experience, has the best chance of building long-term profitable relationships,” Denham says. “The introduction anduse of curbside pickup, same-day delivery, lenient returnpolicies, text notifications, subscriptions, chatbots, etc., are all changing buyer behavior and expectations.” —JasonLoui FEATURE | Online Distributor 44 | NOVEMBER 2019 |