Courses By Day

2023 COURSE OFFERINGS  

The UID experience is designed to enhance and fortify your knowledge, skills, and abilities with hands-on experience to support immediate application into your work environment.  You do not want to miss a session!

Which Courses are Right for Me?

UID has implemented two changes related to the curriculum to ensure participants have all the information necessary to select the courses they feel will best meet both their needs and their interests.

Courses by Track:  Courses are now grouped into one of six Education Tracks based on a theme. Not all course content fits neatly into one track or another; use this classification more as a guide. These groupings give participants the option to plan their curriculum based on interests in one or more areas. Click here to view.

Level of Complexity (LOC): Instructors have assigned a LOC: Foundational, Intermediate, or Advanced to their course. Similar to grouping a course in a specific track, the content in some courses will overlap between foundational and intermediate or intermediate and advanced.  View each course to see the level of complexity. 

 Click here for definitions of tracks and levels of complexity. 

Earning CPE

Attendees earn the equivalent of 3 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for participating in UID.   These CEUs can be applied toward the Purdue University Certificate of Innovative Distribution.  Attendees will receive a Certificate of Completion following the program. 

Courses by Day

Monday,
March 13, 2023

000. Work to a Different Beat: Own Your Mindset, Meaning, and Performance

Instructor: Justin Jones-Fosu (New to UID)

In this opening keynote, Justin will share an inside-out approach powered by practical research that empowers you and your people to bring their best selves to work every day.


001. Building an Exceptional Workplace Culture: 5 Essential Questions for Leaders

Instructor: Sean Glaze (New to UID)

In this workshop, Sean will equip you to be a more effective leader with the clarity and confidence of a proven, ‎repeatable process you can follow to develop a high-performing culture.‎ In 2021, Gallup reported that “70% of a team's engagement is influenced by managers.”


002. Selling Through Tough Times

Instructor: Paul Reilly

In this workshop, you will learn how to sell effectively and build mental resilience during a downturn. Why is it that some sellers thrive during tough times yet others barely survive? What do they have—and what do they know—that keeps them on top?


003. Inflation & Expectation: An Economic Outlook for the Industrial Distribution Strategy Industry

Instructor: Roman Basi & Bart Basi (New to UID)

In this workshop Roman and Bart discuss the ‎challenges in the industrial Distribution Strategy industry and the economic outlook of the industry. A myriad of economic nightmares including a global pandemic, supply issues, and labor ‎shortages sparked the flame that led to a wildfire of growth in inflation.


004. Finding the Balance: People, Product and Profitability

Instructor: Jason Bader

This workshop is all about building a profitable operation. Managers of these locations need to understand how to lead their teams down the path of profitability. It starts with getting everyone on the same page so that the location can provide a superior customer service experience.


005. How to Digitally Transform for Beginners: Growing Revenue via Digital Channels of Paid, Owned & Earned 0-5%

Instructor: Ken Novak (New to UID)

Are you generating at least 5% of top-line revenue via digital transaction channels? If not, why? You have invested in technology. You have invested in Managers, Directors, and contractors to manage the technology. But…you are dissatisfied with the ROI.


006. Time Management for Improved Individual & Team Performance and Increased Work-Life Balance

Instructor: Anne Patterson

Next to its people, time is the most valuable asset a company has. Next to our health, time is the most valuable asset we have as individuals. Yet today’s world seems set on robbing us of time on both fronts, a daily barrage of disruptions and distractions that de-focus us on completing our tasks, reaching our goals, and at the end of the day sending us to bed to endless tossing and turning driven by a sense of frustration and lack of accomplishment.


007. The Noble Calling of Distribution

Instructor: Dirk Beveridge

In today’s complex, ever-changing environment, leaders are learning that the very nature of leadership is rapidly being redefined by the social, technological, and demographic forces creating new customer and employee expectations. Leaders must look beyond solely managing performance and productivity to focus on purpose and impact in this modern world.


008. Cybersecurity: What Future Leaders Must Know to Protect Themselves and Their Organization-Now Including ChatGPT and Other AI Tools

Instructor: Mike Foster

Mike expanded this must-see session to include both Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity. AI is revolutionizing personal and business lives, and it's never been more important to understand how to harness its power. By the end of the session, you'll leave with a wealth of knowledge on how to benefit from AI technologies and keep your organization secure. This is a perfect combination of two powerful technologies that are vital for your organization's success.


009. The Emotional Intelligence (EI) Lab

Instructor: Patty Leeper (New to UID)

In an interview with Harvard Business Review, Daniel Goleman—psychologist and best-selling author—said that the most effective leaders are “alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence.”


010. Value-Added Selling: How to Sell More Profitably by Competing on Value, Not Price!

Instructor: Paul Reilly

Today’s sellers face familiar challenges at unprecedented levels. Markets are flooded with tough competitors selling similar products and services. With the commoditization of products and services, customers become increasingly price-sensitive.


011. What Winning Teammates Do Differently – How To Improve Your Value And Impact

Instructor: Sean Glaze

Every member of your team needs to develop valuable interpersonal skills and awareness - because people who can build trust with others and inspire others to work more effectively will enjoy a significant competitive advantage. This program reveals the behaviors that improve organizational teamwork – so you have better days and enjoy better results! Sean will share a few captivating stories, powerful content, and high-energy interaction, to deliver a program that equips you and your people to become better teammates. You will leave with actionable steps to positively impact your team performance. You will learn how to take personal ownership of results, build deeper relationships with your people, share meaningful appreciation, and succeed more consistently in highly competitive environments.


012. Intentional Conversations: What Science Teaches Us About Better Communication Skills & Improved Sales Pitches

Instructor: Jamie Turner

Would you like to improve your communication skills? Do you want to do a better job connecting with your prospects and customers? Would you like to learn science-based techniques you can use to close more deals, work with teammates more effectively, and grow your sales?


013. The Tax Law is Changing

Instructor: Roman Basi (New to UID)

In this workshop, Roman will cover the major changes to the tax law that have been enacted and proposed. A U.S. Treasury document (the ‎‎“Green Book”) details the Biden Administration’s proposed tax law changes, including an increase in ‎both personal and corporate tax rates; changes to the taxation of investment real estate; and changes to ‎partnership taxation.


014. Tool Up: How to Select, Implement, and Manage Software so Your Technology Works for You

Instructor: Anne Patterson

Today’s Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) has an unprecedented selection of software solutions. And cloud-based hosting has virtually exploded the number of options. But with the plethora of alternatives comes the challenge: how to select the solution that best fits your company’s needs?


015. Human Centric Leadership

Instructor: Dirk Beveridge

What you do is important! In fact, it is noble. In the day-to-day rush of business, we often have our heads down doing what needs to be done to meet customer needs. As a result, work becomes ‘work” and we tend to lose sight of the importance and nobility of what we do in Distribution Strategy.

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Tuesday,
March 14, 2023

016. How to Strengthen Your Sales Team’s Selling Skills

Instructor: Jim Pancero, CSP, CPAE

In this interactive workshop, Jim will show you, as the leader of your team, the selling skills you most want and need within your reps in today’s post-virus, hyper-competitive selling environment. You will learn the evolution of selling explaining why so many of your senior sales reps are still stuck in outdated and ineffective selling philosophies.


017A. Improving the Bottom Line (Part 1)

Instructor: Albert D. Bates, Ph.D.

Part 1 - highly recommended that participants register for Parts 1 and 2. Only about 10% of all companies make as much profit as they should. This is true across almost all industries. In this workshop, Al will demonstrate to you how to improve your financial results, not just a little, but a lot.


017B. Improving the Bottom Line (Part 2)

Instructor: Albert D. Bates, Ph.D.

Part 2 - highly recommended for those attending Part 1. Only about 10% of all companies make as much profit as they should. This is true across almost all industries. In this workshop, Al will demonstrate to you how to improve your financial results, not just a little, but a lot.


018. Re-igniting Your SPARRK! The Power of Positivity: It’ GO Time!

Instructor: Gail Alofsin

Your attitude is 100% on YOU. No question. There will be obstacles in your life; roadblocks and situations challenging you to unfathomable extremes. YOU are YOUR Choices. Your positive, realistic and optimistic mindset yields a competitive advantage. Positivity unites – enhancing the spirit of an organization.


019. Balancing Customer Service, Inventory Investment and Profitability

Instructor: Matt Schreibfeder & Jon Schreibfeder

The goal of effective inventory management is to meet or exceed your customers’ expectations of product availability with the amount of each item that will maximize your profitability. In this workshop, you will learn more tactics to help you understand your customers’ needs, develop and maintain a realistic budget for your investment in stock inventory, understand how to buy at the lowest “total cost”, and utilize meaningful profitability measurements.


020. Customer Pricing & Profitability

Instructor: Colin Dees (New to UID)

In this workshop Colin will cover the concepts associated with a fresh assessment of current customer pricing setup and management structure including techniques in using relevant data for planning, controlling, and decision-making are taught.


021. Personal Leadership & Time Management

Instructor: Steve McClatchy

Understanding the psychology of what drives every decision you make empowers you to spend more of your time on the things that actually improve your life and your business, not just maintain them. Consistently improving your life and achieving your goals is not easy.


022. Be the Brand: Inspiring Your Employees to Live Your Values and Deliver Your Promise

Instructor: Steve Yastrow

In today’s competitive world, basic customer service is not enough. To differentiate your company from the competition you need your employees to represent your company, with enthusiasm and conviction, every time they interact with customers.


023. How to Accelerate Your Competitive Advantage in Today’s Hyper-Competitive Markets

Instructor: Jim Pancero, CSP, CPAE

During this workshop, Jim will explain how the four most disruptive post-virus shifts in selling today are impacting your sales team (and what you as their sales leader can do about it). You will learn the five best things you can do right now to stabilize and grow your business in today’s unstable markets.


024. Re-igniting Your SPARRK: Leadership Through a New Lens

Instructor: Gail Alofsin

Set your compass on success as we focus on SPARRK! From “Showing Up” to “Kaizen.” We will explore seven strategies to assist you and your team with YOUR leadership skills in navigating a YOUR ever-evolving and ever-changing world of work!


025. Effective Warehouse Management

Instructor: Matt Schreibfeder (New to UID) & Jon Schreibfeder

Every distributor has one or more warehouses. But few realize that efficient and effective warehouse operations are a key element to success and profitability. In this workshop, we will explore how a few simple practices will help you ensure that the on-hand quantities of stocked products are consistently accurate and that you efficiently store items in order to minimize the cost of filling orders.


026. Purchasing, Replenishment, & Advanced Inventory Management

Instructor: Colin Dees (New to UID)

In this workshop, Colin will cover advanced purchasing, replenishment, and inventory management methods including advanced demand forecasting, lead time management, order cycle analysis, and other key business analytics for key decision-making strategies.


027. Leading Relationships

Instructor: Steve McClatchy

Communicate Effectively, Resolve Conflict, Hold Others Accountable & Lead High-Performance Business Relationships If you are in business today you are in the business of relationships. The skills of communicating effectively, working with diverse multi-generational teams, setting expectations, giving and receiving feedback, gaining commitment, resolving conflict, and getting others to follow through can be the most important skills you will ever develop as a leader.


028. The Steps You Can Take to Improve Your Customer Experience

Instructor: Steve Yastrow

Since writing his book Brand Harmony nearly 20 years ago, Steve has had the opportunity to help hundreds of companies improve their customer experiences. In this workshop, he will cover the key steps in creating a more unified customer experience that drives customer loyalty.

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Wednesday,
March 15, 2023

029. Market Judo – The Secret to Success in B2B

Instructor: Steve Deist

In this workshop participants will learn a transformational approach for applying their existing understanding of customers to create compelling value propositions. We’ll connect the dots between these value props and sales, marketing, branding, and strategy.


030. Communicate to Motivate & Lead Any Organization or Team to High-Performance

Instructor: Skip Weisman

In this workshop, participants will engage in deep-dive discussions on each of The 3 Primary ‎Communication Sins and explore a leadership communication model that is a core fundamental of the ‎communication style of best coaches and leaders at the highest level of the sporting world.


031. Make it a Process…Key Elements of Sales Management

Instructor: Joe Ellers

The role of sales management has changed over the past 25 years. The primary change is a shift from customer relationship management to the need for more focused, proactive sales efforts. In this workshop, Joe will address the core elements of effective sales management including a set of specific tools that can be implemented immediately.


032. Get the Meeting No One Else Can: Discovering the Right Opportunities & Decision Makers, at the Right Time, with the Right Message

Instructor: Sam Richter

In today's world, it's no longer enough to be interesting. To succeed in sales, you must be interested. What's important to the other person? How do your solutions align with their goals? What relevant value can you provide in every interaction that they care about?


033. Managing Risk and Spend in the Global Supply Chain

Instructor: Thomas Cook

All business executives involved in international business require skill sets in risk and spending reduction. This seminar will frame the issues in global trade that impact risk and spending with a detailed focus on contemporary solutions that could be utilized.


034. The People Productivity Equation: Strategic Recruiting and Hiring

Instructor: Kathryn Newton, Ph.D.

Employee wages and benefits represent a huge dollar investment for most employers, yet they rarely invest a commensurate amount of time and energy in selecting and retaining them. In this workshop, you will learn how to take a "systems" viewpoint of the organization, learn tools to identify productivity gaps in your firm, and evaluate changes needed in a pandemic-prone world.


035. Brain-Friendly Communication for the Salesperson

Instructor: Daniel McQuiston, Ph.D.

The field of sales has often been considered more art than science where successful salespeople developed their own brand of self-taught, trial-by-error, school of hard knocks approach. About the only thing salespeople could agree on was that perseverance was at the heart of sales success.


036. Max Out Margins with Strategic Pricing

Instructor: Steve Deist

Better pricing is one of the fastest ways to put more money into the bottom line. But…pricing changes can be complex and risky. During this workshop, we will outline the steps to build a world-class pricing program that will grow profit while managing short- and long-term risk.


037. The Myth of Teamwork & How to Create a Real Team that Delivers Championship Level Results

Instructor: Skip Weisman

In this workshop, we will explore the common threads between teamwork on the athletic field and ‎teamwork in a business setting. Through interactive activities participants will discuss state-of-the-art ‎‎“team building” concepts leading them to their own conclusion about the value of moving away from ‎the myth of teamwork to a more proactive, positive, and productive definition of teamwork that will ‎generate high-level results.


038. Creating Your Unique Value Proposition

Instructor: Joe Ellers

The current competitive environment is tougher than it ever has been. The internet and constant price competition require that each business be clear on the value it offers to its customers—and prospects. During this workshop, you will have tools to help solve this equation: Real sales opportunity = Product (or service) you are selling + X.


039. Keep Your Top Talent from Becoming Someone Else’s in a Post-Pandemic Workplace

Instructor: Lisa Ryan, CSP

The impact of COVID-19 has profoundly changed business for good. Not only did companies have to change many of their work practices, but employees have found they have lots more options when it comes to how, when, and where they can get their work done.


040. How to Lead Yourself and Your Teams Through Crisis, Challenge, or Change

Instructor: Mary Kelly, Ph.D., Commander, USN, CSP, CPAE

In this workshop, Mary will do a deep dive into the tactics of dealing with a crisis, challenge, or change. Whether it is a software update, a leadership change, or a global pandemic.


041. Innovation Best Practices: Making the Leap Forward for a Distributor

Instructor: J. Michael Marks

Many distributors have decided it is time to get ahead of all the increasing industry disruptions. Those that have already started their change process often get stuck in pilot purgatory.


042. Positively Diverse Leadership: The Future of Diversity and Leadership

Instructor: Kiki Ramsey, Ph.D. (New to UID)

Kiki Ramsey has coined this Positively Diverse Leadership™. Creating a true work culture of diversity, happiness, and belonging is not impossible. Unfortunately, many leaders don’t know where to start for fear of getting it wrong.

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Thursday,
March 16, 2023

043. Welcome Onboard: How to Keep Your New Hires from Jumping Ship

Instructor: Lisa Ryan, CSP

You spend time, money, and energy to make sure you hire the right people to help your business succeed. Did you know that your new hires decide whether they are going to stay or leave your organization within the first six weeks?


044. Master Your World: Today’s Game Plan for Maximum Profits, Peak Productivity, and Top Communication

Instructor: Mary Kelly, Ph.D., Commander, USN, CSP, CPAE

We hear the word leadership a lot around the office. But, do we understand what it means to be a leader – regardless of our job title or our place on the ladder? Leadership isn’t just a plan for supervisors and CEOs.


045. The Real World of Distributor Sales Transformation

Instructor: J. Michael Marks

This workshop is focused on how to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of a distributor’s selling efforts. It is easy to describe and hard to do, so the session focuses on specific practices from over 100 distributors that have gone down this path where some have been on it for ten years.


046. The People Productivity Equation: How to Practice No Surprise Management

Instructor: Kathryn Newton, Ph.D.

In this workshop, Kathy will share a systems approach to maintaining a productive work environment for your employees and learn how to beat the “great resignation.” In 2022, only 24% of Americans believe their managers had their best interests at heart.


047. Everyone’s in Sales – It’s Mindset and Culture!

Instructor: Todd Cohen, CSP (New to UID)

In today’s complex environment, the focus on acquisition, loyalty, and retention is critical. Customers see and feel dysfunction when doing business. They respond by finding organizations that demonstrate the ability to work together seamlessly – without conflict and partners who put them first.


048. Master Your World: Today’s Game Plan for Maximum Profits, Peak Productivity, and Top Communication

Instructor: Mary Kelly, Ph.D., Commander, USN, CSP, CPAE

We hear the word leadership a lot around the office. But, do we understand what it means to be a leader – regardless of our job title or our place on the ladder? Leadership isn’t just a plan for supervisors and CEOs.


049. The Real World of Distributor Sales Transformation

Instructor: J. Michael Marks

This workshop is focused on how to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of a distributor’s selling efforts. It is easy to describe and hard to do, so the session focuses on specific practices from over 100 distributors that have gone down this path where some have been on it for ten years.


050. The People Productivity Equation: How to Practice No Surprise Management

Instructor: Kathryn Newton, Ph.D.

In this workshop, Kathy will share a systems approach to maintaining a productive work environment for your employees and learn how to beat the “great resignation.” In 2022, only 24% of Americans believe their managers had their best interests at heart.


051. Defining Your Goals Starts Today, Achieving Your Goals Starts Tomorrow

Instructor: Jeremy Wall (New to UID)

In this closing keynote, Jeremy will ensure that when you return to work, you will know how to implement what you’ve learned and set your individual goals be. More so, he will provide you guidance on how to take what you have learned to impact the entire company.

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Contact UID

Main Office

UID - University of Innovative Distribution
1300 Piccard Dr, Suite LL14
Rockville, MD 20850

Email: info@univid.org 

Phone: (240) 760-2492