Newsletter for
1Q00
Happy New Year!
We want to wish all of our visitors the most prosperous new year ever. We thank you very much for your support and look forward to serving you in the
future.
E-Commerce
We have added E-commerce to our web site complete with secure
socket layer connections and credit card payments. You can check it
out by clicking on our Shopping Cart. We
would love to do add the same kind of shopping cart to your site as
well. And we can do it more economically than any other company.
New Office Manager
We are delighted to welcome Judy Preston to our company
and wish her the the best of luck putting up with all of us as she takes
on her duties as Office Manager. Judy brings a wealth of knowledge
and a cool head to our company and we hope you will all give her your
support.
LCD Projector
We just bought a Toshiba LCD projector model TLP-651 and we love it.
It comes with a built-in video camera so that we can use it as an overhead
projector. The camera allows us to put virtually anything on the
table and project it onto the screen. The unit cost us $5865 and we
purchased it from International Audio Video on the Internet at www.iavi.com
and they are located
in Florida.
Computer Virus
We have seen several clients with the happy99.exe virus on their
workstations. This virus will format your hard drive causing you to
lose all of your files. Once the virus gets on your PC it goes to
your email address book and sends itself out to all persons in your
address book. It does this, automatically, without you having
any idea that the damage has been done. Norton and MacAfee have
virus detection and elimination software to help you get rid of the
virus. PC's get infected by opening email they were not expecting.
Investment Advice
We suggest you buy stock in companies that have something to do with getting
videos on corporate web sites. As internet connection speed and
bandwidth increases dramatically over the next few years more and more
companies are going to want to have corporate videos and words from the
boss added to their web sites. We think this is an investment
opportunity.
How To Take E-Payment
We just got into this with our recent web site upgrade. To take
E-payment you need to have a secure socket layer usually set up by a
company such as VeriSign and they charge a setup fee and a monthly
fee. Then you have to an Internet Merchant account which can be
gotten from CyberBanker and they have a setup fee, a monthly fee and and a
transaction fee. We have found a way to avoid a lot of this but you
will have to call us to find out the tricks. Please check out our Shopping
Cart to see what you think. E-Commerce
Impact On Industrial Distributors � 2000 Mitchell
Selling Dynamics, Inc. 1. The
buyer of clothes wants clothes that fit and look well on him. He wants a �professional� opinion and often wants a little help
in selecting a tie and/or shirt and maybe a belt or shoes and all these
products are inter-related and operate as a system. Further, he will be needing similar systems again
and again. These kinds
of products have not sold well on the internet so far.
2. Buying
repetitive, industrial products that have inter-relationships will
continue to require dealing with a �relationship� supplier in much the
same way a purchaser buys clothes. The
buyer wants to get items that will work together as a system and he wants
a little help and advice from a �professional� even if it is just to
confirm his own opinion. His
business depends on the inter-related products working together now and in
the future as well. He will
not try to squeeze the last dollar of savings out of his purchases. He will not spend all the time necessary to surf the net to get the
absolutely lowest price on each part of his system with the thought that
it might not work when he gets all the parts.
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E-Commerce
Impact (continued)
3.
“Relationship
Selling” will continue to be the way orders for inter-related,
repetitively purchased items are
earned but all the transactional stuff will be handled on the Internet.
In the 90’s Relationship Selling accounted for around 60%
of all sales. We may see this
slip some but not to lower than 50% in the next 10 years. Major customers will continue to want special treatment which
requires sales person involvement but they will want totally automated
transactions using the internet where possible.
4.
Bulky,
difficult to ship items or orders that involve a combination of
inter-related products are not good internet items.
5.
Major
users of commodity items that stand alone like standard valves, fittings,
clamps and common hose will have special contract pricing with
manufacturers and will want JIT delivery and may want a distributor to
“administer” the contract because manufacturers do not want zillions
of end users calling them with all kinds of special requests.
6.
Smaller
users of stand alone commodity items will try to buy them on the internet
but will always be interested in promotions from local suppliers.
7.
Manufacturers
will not want huge, powerful global distributors to totally eliminate
their local distribution nor will they want these huge distributors to
dictate how it’s gonna be. Rather
manufacturers will want to protect their good distributors that provide
value to end users.
8.
Bar
code systems will be set up and installed on the end user’s premises by
enterprising suppliers that will analyze who used what and how much is
left and the information will automatically be emailed to the appropriate
persons to take action. The
employees will have bar coded name tags or crib cards and everything in
the crib storeroom will have a bar code card by it. Card swipes will be error free and save companies processing time.
9.
Software
and hardware developers such as Microsoft, Compaq, HP and Oracle are
racing to simplify E-commerce set up.
10.
Shortly,
every company that sells business-to-business will maintain an on-line way
for their customers to get information, order stuff, check on existing
orders and just do business.
11.
Customers
will be able to enter their customer number and the prices they see will
be based on their discount schedule and their open-order status and past
orders will be
listed.
12.
Customers
will be able to make an offer on certain items like an auction but not as
formal.
13.
The
E-commerce server will eventually reside on site at the seller’s
business.
14.
The
E-commerce server will be connected, in some way, to the company’s
enterprise software so paper invoices and e-invoices will share the same
application. The “some
way” connection will take care of security concerns.
15.
Web
site hot-links will exist between principal manufacturers’ sites and the
sites of their distributors so that visitors to either a manufacturer or a
distributor can move back and forth as required. Buttons
will pop-up to remind users to "go back now".
16.
Manufacturers
will have “expert systems” on their sites to help users select the
proper item.
17.
Microsoft
will have all of their Office Professional products totally integrated
into E-commerce software and there will be glitches galore for users of
IBM Office suites that try to run with Microsoft applications.
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