Verno Consulting
Verno's 2-Minute Manager newsletter (2MM) is a free resource designed to quickly equip leaders of the beverage distribution industry. Share each issue with your leadership team to start conversations that will help your company stay ahead in the rapidly changing marketplace.
2MM: 7 Simple Ideas to Increase Management Engagement in 2026
View in Browser | Sign Up When management is not around, disenfranchisement can abound. Disenfranchised employees are more likely to care less about the company or the quality of their work, and eventually leave the company altogether. Employees often view upper-level management as unavailable to workers. In most wholesalers, employees are more loyal to their direct supervisor or teammates than to the company itself. Too often, wholesaler leadership and higher-level managers are not...
2MM: Before You Say Yes to Another SKU… Read This
New SKUs are critical to the future of the beverage industry, but pose significant cost risks to wholesalers if unsuccessful. All new SKUs have a certain degree of risk. Wholesalers need to know how to measure and manage the selection of new SKUs. Just about every wholesaler has to deal with more SKUs than they want to carry. Suppliers are attempting to stimulate growth by introducing new sizes and flavors, a trend that has been ongoing for several decades. Consumers seek new items that meet...
2MM: Is Breakage Hiding Your Biggest Inventory Theft Problem?
Inventory theft is more than a breakage problem – it’s also a leadership problem. It's leadership’s role to make sure the right processes are in place and being followed, which makes inventory theft more difficult and easily detected. Many wholesalers have told us stories about theft problems. The risk of product theft is a real challenge in the industry, but it shouldn’t be acceptable for leadership to look the other way towards unaccounted-for inventory loss. Breakage is one of the areas...
2MM: When Taking Care of Suppliers Sabotages Your Own Success
When lower-priority suppliers are allowed to offer higher PFP payouts than priority brands, sales reps often chase the money instead of executing the portfolio strategy. This results in a revolving door of low-priority placements that erodes long-term market share for the wholesaler's core brands. Formal or informal brand priorities are essential for an overall portfolio strategy. Problems occur when you allow secondary brands to come in and offer incentives (distribution, display, or volume)...
2MM: How to Honor Loyalty Without Sacrificing Performance
With shrinking volumes and increasingly complex operational demands, many long-term employees are struggling to maintain the skillsets needed to execute their current positions. Additionally, there is a whole class of talented employees waiting in the wings for the positions currently held by longer-term employees to become available so that they can be promoted. Meanwhile, companies risk losing these talented employees to competitors. Every industry is talking about long-term employees not...
2MM: Unlock Warehouse Efficiency Using Simple Standards
Many warehouse managers are focused on getting the job done, not necessarily getting the job done efficiently. It’s easy to see why this happens. Most warehouse managers are juggling several balls at the same time. Most warehouse supervisors are working supervisors -they help their crews get the work done - and no one has ever taught them to measure work and move people around throughout the shift. This problem is further complicated because the most senior warehouse personnel have been...
2MM: Your 'successful' online portal might be failing (here's why)
When it comes to measuring online order adoption, are you winning the scoreboard but losing the game? Many wholesalers consistently overestimate their online ordering success, creating a dangerous blind spot that undermines digital transformation efforts and revenue growth. While wholesalers celebrate seemingly impressive online metrics (e.g., high portal registrations), the truth reveals a critical disconnect: most "active" accounts exist only on paper. Why? Retailers sign up for portal...
2MM: Are Your Sales Meetings Hurting or Helping?
Every time you call your sales team in for another "quick" meeting, you're pulling money out of your pocket. Is the meeting worth it? While you think you're building alignment and sharing critical updates, your top performers are sitting in a meeting room instead of closing deals. The frustration is palpable: your best salespeople check their phones, mentally calculating the commissions they're losing while listening to updates that could have been delivered through email. As a wholesaler who...
2MM: Why you need an E-Commerce Manager
As online ordering becomes more standardized inside wholesalers’ sales models, the need for an E-Commerce Manager becomes even more critical. We get that most wholesalers are just happy that retail accounts are using the ordering portal - this is a significant accomplishment in and of itself. It's also evident that most wholesalers don’t understand the e-commerce position well enough to staff it with the right person or ensure the position is receiving adequate training. Many wholesalers have...
2MM: Make Drug and Discount Stores More Profitable
Wholesalers face operational challenges in the drug and discount channel that become more costly as more stores open. Continuing to add marginal accounts increases wholesalers’ costs and decreases profitability. When looked at in aggregate, the drug and discount channels are large. Suppliers consider these channels large volumes and want to ensure these accounts receive the necessary service. However, most drug and discount stores are small accounts for wholesalers in terms of volume and fail...
Verno's 2-Minute Manager newsletter (2MM) is a free resource designed to quickly equip leaders of the beverage distribution industry. Share each issue with your leadership team to start conversations that will help your company stay ahead in the rapidly changing marketplace.