When I started at 3m 30 years ago many of our distributors solely traded in 3m products. Recently it seems they have all introduced other brands to their portfolios which compete against us. Is this a fair observation? If so I can’t understand how we have let this happen as this will surely have had a negative impact over recent years. Thoughts and observations please
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This is hardly a true statement for industrial products, as almost all distributors out there have been carrying more than 1 line per space since the 80s or 90s. It may be more noticeable now as all manufacturers and distributors have had to adjust on the fly the past 2-3 years due to logistics delays, leadtime exceptions, rising costs, supply chain delays , product line rationalizations, and the need for improved productivity due to reduced workforce numbers.
Here we go with another when i started 30 yrs ago…. Groan! Retire already!
This is expected when you outsource manufacturing or move manufacturing offshores to the place where little or no protection of your IP.
No.
Our elite sales force is trained to always be closing.
Pretty simple synopsis is our COC, board, and 3M's executive team are starving 3M's ability produce and to sell products effectively or create new one's. This is not innovation or collaboration, this is a bunch of self centered leaders, trying to create a divorce, and carve out sections for themselves. Instead of the collective and whole health of company, they look inward and only think of self, personal health and wealth. That is pretty much it.
This a direct correlation of reducing headcount in sales and marketing teams, cutting their budgets next to nothing while Executive conference increased head count, reduced travel for everone but themselves, increased pricing with out explaining benefits of 3M products, especially longevity or superior performence, commoditization of tape and consumer products, and the cut of the technical staffing and experienced sales team members. Offshoring and pursuit of low cost wages in GSC with terrible response times, limited training and understanding, and lack of responsiveness to customer needs anf not paying vendir bills, in a timely fashion, competitive disadvantage. Wee Peter Gibbons has asked sales and marketing teams to constantly cut cost, and take out advertising and sales dollars for digitization and E commerce while our competitors pounced and added more. He has gutted those teams in favor of offshoring to folks with limited experience or knowledge of 3M peoducts. Executive conference increased their own personal Salary's and bonuses and benefits and ballooned cost on outside consultant firms, and board of director puppets the last three years. Monish to bed Ego plays a big part in this. Very much a Hunger games model of "Elitism. They also reduced manufacturing capacity, limited flexibility of the plants, slow to move on dual or more sourcing on critical raw material items, plus introduced longer payment terms passing off many vendors. A3M created a structure of a lot less people available to make products, a lot of overhead added, and reduced headcount by demanding 12 hour rotating schedules for production, reducing productivity and life balance for production staff, increasing accidents and cut safety budgets under Peter Gibbons last two years, yes he has a direct causation effect, that and steering precious resources to Kearny, putting zero money into maintenence and repair, not even fixing the most basic of cost at a lot of Factory's.
Look at finiancial reports all the liability's and expenditures are in the reports. The Executive conference through pure selfishness and greed to feed there growing ranks in Penem, well soon to be vacated 3M Center. The company with the right leadership, customer service and servant leadership could have still turned this. We have self dealers in leadership, carving out personal wealth, litigation galore, and a Zombie at the helm. Morale of the entire team has plunged to unsustainable levels, with corpses everywhere, the point of not only having no experience knowledge or new fresh blood with exciting ideas, will matter. It is the same stale playbook, with S to bed buzzwords, and lack of direction, focus or creativity and collaborative ideas. Be prepared to be broken up into districts because that is the only play left in the tiny playbook Penem, I mean 3M.