It’s easier to celebrate full trucks and big quotes than to scrutinize the operational friction erasing margin behind the scenes.
There’s a belief in distribution: if a customer stays with you a long time, they must be profitable. The industry has reinforced this idea for decades. Market rankings reward revenue, not earnings. Sales cultures celebrate large accounts and high activity. Leaders compare themselves to competitors based on top-line numbers.
But once distributors start digging into their order data, a more complicated — and less intuitive — picture emerges.