Wholesalers knowingly or unknowingly allow sales teams to add a second delivery stop to accounts that should receive one-a-week delivery just to ensure the shelves are stocked for the weekend. Adding delivery stops can be an easy but expensive mistake.
Most beverage wholesalers are not charging service fees to retailers. These wholesalers are missing their biggest opportunity to improve profits short of acquiring more territory or getting a major new brand. Most wholesalers can’t cut enough costs to equal the same profit contribution that a service fee can generate.
Do each of your sales supervisors have their own dedicated relief rep? We’re guessing they do.
Warehouse productivity problems are like bugs that infect the entire company. We talk to exasperated managers about this all the time. Many wholesalers are so fixated on squashing the bugs in the warehouse that they fail to see how other departments may be contributing to the problems at hand.
Most wholesalers are not able to deliver the quality of service they think they are providing. Why? Because too much service is bad service.
Most wholesalers wait until the fall/winter to embark on reroutes to avoid any significant projects during the busy summer months. While this makes sense on paper, there are significant flaws in the logic.