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Announcing Advanced Distribution Partner Webinar: Ten Things to Plan for in ’11, featuring Brent Grover

Ten Things to Plan for in ’11 is designed to provide distributors with practical advice on how to build a profitable business plan for the year ahead. 2011 threatens to be another challenging year for wholesale distribution leaders.

Move toward a better business plan with Ten Things to Plan for in ’11!

Ten Things to Plan for in ’11
Featured Speaker: Brent Grover
Date: 9/15/2010 2:00-3:00pm EST

Join us for this exclusive webinar with distribution industry expert, Brent Grover.  He provides insight on what to put in your plan for 2011, providing distributors with practical advice to:

• Develop realistic “SMART” sales forecasts and expense budgets
• Set the “right” company priorities 
• Communicate a clear, consistent message to the organization 
• Achieve a solid ROI next year – even if business isn’t strong

Registration opens September 1, 2010.

Most distributors are on a calendar year basis for accounting. They undertake their annual business planning process in the fourth quarter. At best, they start working in their plan in October or November. The usual starting point is a sales forecast for the coming year.

It’s tempting to assign the sales forecast to the sales manager or managers. It turn, they ask their sales reps to do a sales projection for their territories. A detailed forecast would be a rough estimate of expected sales on a customer-by-cusomer basis, all the way down to the product lines if not the individual SKUs. A sales forecast at this level of detail is tedious, very time consuming and is rarely done. More often, the sales manager asks for a “SWAG” forecast and then adds or subtracts to reflect his or her own opinion. Upper management customarily rejects the first forecast and demands more to avoid “sandbagging”. Do you believe in a “motivational” type of sales forecast? Or do you want a conservative forecast you can use for forecasting cash flow and how much cash availability your business will need?

The webcast will offer some proven ideas for distributor sales forecasting, scenario planning and for linking the sales forecast to your cash projections. We will also talk about the pros and cons of different ways of preparing expense budgets both for people and non-people costs.

Most lines of trade in wholesale distribution have suffered from 2 years of depressed sales. Management needs to confront the possibility of a slow economic recovery and lagging weakness in demand. We will talk about “ten things” distribution leaders need to confront in their business plans for 2011 – questions about the outlook for recovery, about deflation and inflation, about bank lending to distributors and much more.

This webcast will provide advice to help make your 2011 business planning process more efficient and more practical. We believe that wholesale distribution businesses can achieve satisfactory return on investment and cash flow even in periods of sustained weak demand.