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News for the wholesale distribution industry | January 25, 2007

Best Practices

Attitude counts when going for the sale
The first impression customers have of your business comes from your salespeople. They should be friendly, helpful and positive in order to keep buyers from heading straight to the competition. American City Business Journals (1/22)

Tips, tricks for better ads
Remember to avoid exclamation points, keep your logo tastefully sized and consider taking some creative risks when working on new prospect advertisements. And always be mindful of spamming, in all of its forms. BusinessWeek (1/11)

Management

Management style: It's all in how you lead
The art of negotiation has become a more important management skill, according to former Harvard Business School professor and author Michael Watkins. Changes to the leadership paradigm require leadership development programs to adopt "niblet learning" or action learning, Watkins says in this Q-and-A. Workforce (free registration) (12/11)

Customer Relations

Customers respond to personalization
Tell prospects only what they want to know to avoid e-information overload. Customers can get overwhelmed by the number of choices the Web offers, and a recent study has shown that 57% of users would be willing to reveal a certain amount of private information in exchange for personalization of the content they receive. Manage Smarter (1/21)

Training and Presentation

Keep them on the edge of their seat, not at wits' end
Some simple rules for presentations prepared with PowerPoint include keeping content to a minimum on each slide, being creative, not repetitive and summarizing and expanding on each slide instead of reading it line by line. IndustryWeek (1/1)

Closing the Deal

Understand your sellers' personalities, improve productivity
"Effective sales managers know how to recognize various personality traits and deal with them accordingly," says Julie Sturgeon in Selling Power. "The result? A more productive sales team."

NAW Insider

Try Remote Deposit Capture risk free for 30 days

Securely deposit paper checks from the convenience and safety of your office. NAW has negotiated group discounts and a risk free 30-day trial offer for Remote Deposit Capture technology through Solveras Payment Systems. Visit the NAW/Solveras Web site to watch a short video clip of checks being scanned, deposited and digitally archived, or call 800-613-0148 today.

What are your employees worth?

As the U.S. economy continues to expand, wholesaler-distributors are reconsidering their staffing needs and how to attract and keep top performers. NAW's 2006 Employee Compensation Report, completely new, is available immediately for downloading to your desktop. It lets you see how your company's compensation program compares with those of other wholesale distribution companies.

Weekly Poll

Would you adopt a dual-monitor system on your work computer?
After voting once, check out the real-time poll results on NAW's All Access page as often as you'd like.

	I use dual monitors now and love it
	I'd think about it
	Seems too complicated
	I used two monitors in the past but didn't like it

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