The customer speaks … and you'd better be listening. That's one of the central messages of a new book from the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors' (NAW) Distribution Research and Education Foundation (DREF). Starting with two of the most crucial issues facing wholesale distribution today, the book initiates a dialog with customers that leads to surprising opinions and offers a strategy readers can use to build on the author's findings.

Through telephone interviews and follow-up mail surveys, Mark Dancer, a principal at Chicago-based consulting firm Frank Lynn & Associates, uncovers previously unspoken opinions from customers on the subjects of e-commerce and fee-based services as offered by wholesaler-distributors. His methodology is as important as his conclusions because his interviewing techniques can be used by distributors as they attempt to implement or improve their own market research plans.

“The Wholesale Distribution Customer Speaks” reports changes in customers' knowledge of e-commerce and fee-based services, as well as their willingness to consider and eventually adopt these new approaches to the distributor-customer relationship.

Dancer contends that truly meaningful customer input cannot come from casual give-and-take of the type that can occur during a typical sales call. Rather, he says, the effort must be planned out thoroughly and announced as what it is: a fact-finding mission. Then he offers tips on how to make it happen.

Says J. Michael Moore, Applied Industrial Technologies, Cleveland, and author of the book's preface, “(The book) suggests questions, analytical tools and planning methods that distributors can use right away to start their own dialog with customers. This book is focused on business results.”

The cost of the book is $80 for NAW direct members, $90 for NAW member association members and $100 for nonmembers. Online orders through the NAW books Web site at www.nawpubs.org will receive a 5 percent discount. In addition to online orders, NAW accepts orders by fax at (202) 785-0586 or by mail at NAW, 1725 K St., NW, Washington, DC 20006.

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