Courses By Day
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 10, 2025
000. 7 Leadership Takeaways From a Navy SEAL to Tranform Your Leadership
Instructor: Chad Williams, Navy SEAL (ret)
On a final operation in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq with the objective of capturing a deadly suicide-bomb manufacturer, members of SEAL Team 7 found themselves being set up on a premeditated ambush. In SEVEN, former Navy SEAL Chad Williams recounts the harrowing details of that ominous event, while communicating the seven SEAL team maxims that ultimately led he and his team to overcoming a hail of bullets in the worst of circumstances, against all odds achieving mission success. Sharing the SEVEN SEAL maxims in a relatable way, Chad demonstrates how these battle tested truths translate to the battlefield of doing business.
001. Your People Problems, Solved: A Blueprint for HR Innovation (morning)
Instructor: Tracie Sponenberg
This session provides a comprehensive blueprint for HR innovation, offering actionable insights to solve common people-related challenges.
002. Ditch the Pitch (morning)
Instructor: Steve Yastrow
Customers don’t want to hear sales pitches. In this breakthrough workshop, Steve Yastrow challenges salespeople to forget everything they’ve learned about persuading customers and to start improvising. Ditch the Pitch gives you all the tools you need to engage in fresh, spontaneous, persuasive conversations that get customers to buy. With Steve’s six Ditch the Pitch Habits you will effortlessly navigate the sales process from prospecting through closing. You’ll create conversations and communications specifically created for each customer―to craft the right message for the right customer at the right time. Tear up your sales pitch and improvise!
003. From Status Quo to Status GROW: Building and Leading a Profitable Culture (morning)
Instructor: Todd Cohen, CSP
Company culture is pivotal. Without a strong culture, even the most brilliant business strategy will struggle to thrive. It’s insightful to compare companies that merely talk about their culture with those that authentically embody it. Witnessing a company fully embrace its values is truly inspiring—not to mention it’s pretty awesome to see the impact on employees. Based on Todd Cohen's newly published fourth book on sales culture, this high-energy and interactive keynote will ask a question that will set your company apart from the competition: Is your culture profitable? Going beyond number metrics and KPIs, Todd takes the audience on a journey of leading in a culture and how every action influences colleagues, clients, and the business's overall health.
004. Managing Transportation in Global Supply Chains and Reducing Landed Costs (morning)
Instructor: Thomas Cook
The pandemic is behind us, yet numerous geo-political, economic, and climate challenges continue to create disruption in global supply chains in the form of delays, cost, shortages, capacity and much frustration. The session will frame the issues and offer guidance and strategy on mitigating options. The course spans a range of steps that can be taken to reduce landed costs and make for more competitive opportunities in supply chain management, including a deeper dive on specific strategies such as the implementation of Foreign Trade Zones. Topics include: • Disruption in Global Supply Chains • Managing Issues in the Transportation Infrastructure • Opportunities to Reduce Freight, Logistics and Overall Transportation Costs • Foreign Trade Zone Benefits, Opportunities and Operational Requirements • Best Practices in Global Supply Chain Management
005. Cashflow, Risk and the Future of AR Management in Distribution (morning)
Instructor: Thea Dudley
Everything impacts your cashflow. What are the risks and trends in your credit and collections to watch for and where AR management is headed in 2025 and beyond.
006. Powered Productivity: Super Tech Tools to Get Stuff Done (morning)
Instructor: Beth Ziesenis
Exasperated by email? Peeved about passwords? Tired of tedious tasks? You're not alone. Join Your Nerdy Best Friend, aka Author Beth Z, for a research-based look at common productivity problems, followed by the technology to solve them.
007. Finding the Balance in Distribution: People, Product & Profitability (afternoon)
Instructor: Jason Bader
This course is all about building a profitable operation. Managers of these locations need to understand how to lead their team 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.
008. Brand Harmony (afternoon)
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. You’ll learn how to identify gaps in your current customer experience, how to prioritize which parts of your customer experience should be improved, how to get your whole team onboard as you make improvements, and how to ensure your company follows through on improving your customer experience. The result of creating a more unified customer experience: Your customers love you more, your employees are more engaged, and your business improves.
009. Culture as a Competitive Advantage: Building a Strong Foundation in Distribution (afternoon)
Instructor: Tracie Sponenberg
This session delves into how cultivating a positive and resilient culture in Distribution can serve as a powerful competitive advantage.
010. Leaders Are Not Born. They Are Built! (afternoon)
Instructor: Randy Disharoon
Participants will learn the four phases of Leadership & Professional Development: 1) Build Within – take a personal Leadership & Professional Development assessment and begin to assimilate the four keys to develop your capacity to lead yourself and others. 2) Build Around – employ the five keys to recruiting and retaining top talent and cultivate the power of communication. 3) Build Up – discover the seven steps to developing a winning culture and how to lead during times of change and/or crisis. 4) Build Outset a strategy to influence their industry and community and brainstorm ways to pass success on to the next generation of leaders.
011. The Road To Leadership Runs Through Sales (afternoon)
Instructor: Todd Cohen, CSP
Some of the greatest leaders have started their careers in sales. Leadership is often viewed through a lens of vision, strategy, and the ability to inspire. Yet, there is an undercurrent that can’t be overlooked. Highly effective and profitable leaders have had the irreplaceable experience of understanding how their company's products and services are sold and the customer experience. Conventional wisdom might challenge this association. “Leadership is about more than selling,” it proclaims. This is undoubtedly true. Having a sales mindset and having sold your company's products play a competitive and differentiating role in shaping a leader’s character, and they are recognized as one of the most powerful crucibles of influence, vision, and mindset!
012. Seven Ways to Lead Your Company into the World of AI (afternoon)
Instructor: Beth Ziesenis
Professionals have embraced AI in the workplace, but many companies are not ready for it. Join Beth Z, Your Nerdy Best Friend, for an overview of the challenges of AI in your business and how to lead your company and coworkers down the right path to increased productivity and decreased stress.
Tuesday,
March 11, 2025
013. The Feedback Way: How to Embrace and Leverage Feedback (morning)
Instructor: Annalise Koltai
As a seasoned team coach, I've witnessed the transformative impact of effective feedback firsthand. This workshop will equip you with the mindset, tools, and practical strategies to: Give feedback that resonates: Learn how to deliver constructive feedback that is actionable, respectful, and fosters growth. Receive feedback with openness: Develop a mindset that embraces feedback as a valuable opportunity for learning and improvement. Build stronger relationships: Discover how effective feedback can enhance collaboration, trust, and overall team dynamics. Through interactive exercises and real-world examples, you'll gain insights into your feedback habits and develop a personalized action plan for continuous improvement. By the end of this workshop, you'll be empowered to give and receive feedback that drives high performance and greater impact.
014. Selling Through Tough Times ((morning)
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?
015. Leading Relationships (morning)
Instructor: Steve McClatchy
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 clear expectations, giving feedback, navigating differing opinions, resolving conflict, and holding others accountable can be the most important skills you will ever develop as a leader. In this age of AI threatening the future of work these are skills that AI will never be able to do for you. In this presentation you will learn the keys to success in each of these areas and how to build relationships strong enough to handle the pressures and tensions inherent in building, leading and/or being a part of a dynamic, engaged, fast changing, high-performance, creative, collaborative team. This presentation is guaranteed to change the way you work, interact, solve problems, innovate, manage, and lead your business!
016. Marketing Makeover: How to Fix Your Marketing and Drive More Revenue to Your Business . How to Become a Stronger Coach and Leader of Your Sales Team (morning)
Instructor: Jamie Turner
Several years ago, Williams-Sonoma introduced a bread maker for $275. When sales of the bread maker didn’t take off, they introduced a second bread maker that was slightly better than the $275 bread maker … but they charged $550 for it. What happened after they introduced the $550 bread maker? Sales of the $275 bread maker went through the roof. This happened because Williams-Sonoma knew about Relative Pricing which is a way to help consumers re-frame how they think about the cost of products. Bottom Line: Consumers behave in ways that are sometimes surprising. And businesses that understand these behaviors outperform their competitors. In this fun, engaging, action-oriented speech, internationally recognized author, professor, and CNN contributor Jamie Turner will take everything you know about marketing and turn it on its head. This is a top-to-bottom look at consumer behavior, insight development, and strategic thinking. You won’t learn about simple tactics in this session. Instead, you’ll learn how to re-wire your brain so that you can be more innovative, fresh, and inventive when you develop your next marketing campaign.
017. Overcoming Supply Change Challenges (morning)
Instructor: Jon Schreibfeder
When you import products from overseas or have other situations where you face long replenishment lead times you face some special challenges. In this session we will explore effective ways of planning and maintaining your supply chain. Topics will include: • Forecasting demand for an extended period of time. • Managing long lead times and order cycles. • Effectively filling containers. • Determining whether it is more effective to buy from a higher cost, more reliable. vendor or a lower cost, less reliable, supplier. • Deciding whether it is more effective to buy from a vendor or replenish stock from a central warehouse/distribution center. • Tools to measure the performance of your supply chain.
018. Building an Exceptional Workplace Culture (morning)
Instructor: Sean Glaze
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.” And while most managers want to be effective leaders, the problem is they are often unaware of the five key elements required to build and sustain a positive and profitable culture. Session participants will learn how five essential questions can help them to identify and improve issues in their workplace culture and ensure that their people are more engaged and productive. This program is full of memorable stories and valuable content you will be able to immediately implement to improve retention, boost collaboration, and ignite accountability across your organization.
019. Crush Price Objections (afternoon)
Instructor: Paul Reilly
Price objections were the spark that ignited the Value-Added Selling revolution. Even though price objections remain the number one objection salespeople encounter on a daily basis, salespeople are woefully unprepared to deal with them. This results in price-sensitive customers out-negotiating salespeople. You win price wars one price battle at a time. Crush Price Objections arms salespeople with the tactical knowledge they need to prevail in price negotiations—to persist when buyers resist. The specific focus of this program is dealing with price-sensitive customers and protecting margins.
020. Personal Leadership & Time Management (afternoon)
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.
021. Unleashing Your Superpower: How to Get the Best from Yourself and Those Around You (afternoon)
Instructor: Jamie Turner
The research is clear -- according to the Harvard Business Review, the more hours a day adults use their strengths, the more likely they are to be energized, well-rested, happy, productive and open to learning new things. In addition, people who use their strengths every day are three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life and six times more likely to be engaged at work. The Bottom Line: The more people know about their Super Powers, the more likely they are to communicate better, perform better, and build better teams. In this fun, engaging, science-based workshop, Jamie Turner will guide you through a step-by-step process designed to help you uncover and use your superpowers at work and at home.
022. What Winning Teammates Do Differently (afternoon)
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.
023. Balancing Customer Service and Your Inventory Investment While Maximizing Profitability (afternoon)
Instructors: Jon Schreibfeder
The goal of effective inventory management is to meet or exceed customers’ expectations of product availability while maximizing your net profits. And when you stock an item, you are making a commitment to have that item available, in reasonable quantities, for immediate delivery. Unfortunately, good forecasts and lead times are not enough to ensure consistent product availability. There will always be situations where you will sell more than you planned to, or you experience a delay in receiving a replenishment shipment. But how do you deal with the exceptional expectations? In this session we will explore developing an effective balance between meeting customer expectations and maintaining a reputation as a reliable supply by effective safety stock (i.e., reserve inventory) planning. Topics will include: • Managing your customers’ expectations of product availability. • Different ways of calculating reserve inventory or safety stock and determining the most appropriate method for your specific situations. • The effect of more or less safety stock on customer service, profitability and your inventory investment. • Determining where you can reduce safety stock without harming customer service. • How you can increase customer service and reduce backorders at the lowest possible cost.
024. Building a Culture of Success: The Power of Purpose, Performance and Positivity! (afternoon)
Instructor: Gail Alofsin
Optimism, confidence and character propel you, personally and professionally, to become your best YOU. Your positive and pragmatic mind-set is a competitive advantage. Positivity enhances the spirit of an organization, creating a connection between the company, clients and colleagues. The workplace is not perfect. We are all challenged with unexpected hurdles. How you productively tackle these road blocks impacts your leadership, trust factor and personal brand. Harness your positive energy! In the end, you work for you – YOU are your company. Start today with the Power of Positivity. What are you waiting for?
Wednesday,
March 12, 2025
025. Improving the Bottom Line (Part 1) (morning)
Instructor: Albert D. Bates, Ph.D.
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. The program emphasizes two essential concepts: Planning Profits First and Setting Profit Priorities. The first of these topics will focus on treating profit as the first element of the plan that should be developed each year.
026. Onboarding Excellence: Setting New Hires Up for Success from Day One (morning)
Instructor: Lisa Ryan
Onboarding is more than just an introduction—it's the foundation for a new hire's success and long-term engagement with your organization. This session dives into the essential elements of a high-impact onboarding process, specifically tailored for the distribution industry. You will explore strategies to create an onboarding experience that not only welcomes new employees but also integrates them seamlessly into your company culture.
027. Understanding the Drivers Pushing Distribution from Version 1.0 to 2.0 (morning)
Instructor: J. Michael Marks
Distribution has been going through tremendous change for the last quarter of a century with customers expecting an Amazon experience, the advent of digital, suppliers going direct, industry consolidation, the entry of non traditional competitors, and of course generational change. The pandemic only accelerated these impacts. Two firms have provided significant insight into these changes along the way, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) and Modern Distribution Management (MDM). The two firms have now joined and this session distills the key learning from both organizations. The impacts are usually grouped into several categories including sales transformation, the introduction of analytics, digital applications, and culture. Proximity and artificial intelligence are just now emerging into driving forces and innovations will be seen in these areas during 2025 and beyond
028. You Can Always Sell More! How to Strengthen Your Sales Team’s Selling Skills and Competitive Market Positioning (morning)
Instructor: Jim Pancero, CSP, CPAE
This interactive program will show you, as the leader of your team, the selling skills you most want and need within your reps for success in today’s 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. We will discuss the selling skills you most value in the next sales rep you hire. You will learn the five most critical selling skills (in addition to product knowledge) your team needs to achieve long-term selling success as well as the ten steps you can follow with your team to help them communicate a stronger response to a customer asking “Why buy from you?”. A detailed workbook/action guide will be provided to help you take these ideas back to share with your sales team that includes a twenty-question evaluation of a sales rep’s selling skills.
029. Purchasing, Replenishment & Advanced Inventory Management (morning)
Instructor: Colin H. Dees
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. Other topics to be addressed are replenishment strategies for re-Distribution Strategy and/or hub and spoke decision-making with real-world examples.
030. The People Productivity Equation: Strategic Recruiting and Onboarding (morning)
Instructor: Kathryne Newton, Ph.D.
You will learn how to take a "systems" viewpoint of the organization, learning tools to use strategic, big picture thinking to identify productivity gaps in your firm and changes needed in an ever-changing business world. You will learn to work towards a balance and interconnectedness for employee recruiting and hiring great people, onboarding, and using technology and engagement to gain employee impact. You will also learn key strategies to consider for compensation, and the newest perks you must offer to hire the best employees.
031. Improving the Bottom Line (Part 2) (afteroon)
Instructor: Al Bates, Ph.D.
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. The program emphasizes two essential concepts: Planning Profits First and Setting Profit Priorities. The first of these topics will focus on treating profit as the first element of the plan that should be developed each year.
032. Retention Mastery: Breakthrough Strategies to Keep Your Best People (afternoon)
Instructor: Lisa Ryan
Retaining top talent is crucial for any organization’s success, especially in the distribution industry, where skilled employees are in high demand. This session provides a fresh perspective on employee retention by exploring breakthrough strategies that go beyond the standard practices. Attendees will gain insights into developing compelling employee value propositions, creating a culture of continuous recognition, and aligning growth opportunities with employee aspirations. By focusing on these innovative approaches, this session equips leaders with the tools they need to build a loyal, engaged, and high-performing team that drives long-term success.
033. Artificial Intelligence for Distributors - The Current Situation in 2024 (afternoon)
Instructor: J. Michael Marks
Everyone has turned into an AI expert and the amount of noise in the field is overwhelming. Mike is actively working with deploying multiple AI applications with industrial distributors today. This session starts with a quick overview for those who aren't already using ChatGPT or any of the other models in use today. Those with online access in the class will be able to set up a free account and actually be able to try out the tools for their own use.
034. Customer Pricing & Profitability (afternoon)
Instructor: Colin H. Dees
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. Colin will also dive deep into understanding customer and product segmentation, how to assign or allocate pricing and margins, developing strong practices for setting up a price matrix and learning about industry best practices. Excel and Data Analytics will be used throughout the workshop, highlighting their importance in practical application.
035. How to Become a Stronger Coach and Leader of Your Sales Team (afternoon)
Instructor: Jim Pancero, CSP, CPAE
This information-intensive program will focus on the sales leadership skills required to successfully manage and motivate a sales team today. We will discuss and address how to motivate people, the difference between coaching and consulting as a manager, and how to conduct effective sales ride-with’s with your reps. There will also be plenty of time to answer your questions and concerns. A detailed program workbook/action guide will be provided. This is the second half-day program - My first was on selling skills and this one is for leadership skills for a sales manager.
036. The People Productivity Equation: How to Practice No Surprise Management (afternoon)
Instructor: Kathryne Newton, Ph.D.
In the follow up to Personnel Productivity Improvement: Strategic Recruitment & Onboarding, you will continue with the systems approach to maintaining a productive work environment for your employees. Learn why no-surprise management is important for your effectiveness as a manager. This course will help you to establish goals and use continuous appraisals to enhance performance, manage ongoing change and conflict, and teach you the best training tools for advancing your workforce.
Thursday,
March 13, 2025
037. Workplace Vibes: Your Toolbox for Building Effective Relationships (morning)
Instructor: Claudia St. John. Ph.D.
Studies consistently highlight the connections between emotions, performance, and overall wellbeing. But what does that actually look like in the workplace? And how does it translate into tools we can use to prioritize better teamwork, collaboration, and conflict resolution? In this keynote, attendees will uncover effective ways to strengthen their relationships, reduce stress, defuse conflict, and improve job satisfaction. It will also explore what it means to make and keep promises – and use forgiveness as a leadership super power - to be better custodians of your professional relationships.
038. Economic Update – What to Expect in 2025 and Beyond (morning)
Instructor: Alex Chausovsky
The US macro economy is traversing the back side of the business cycle while several industrial sectors are going through a mild recession. Aggressive interest rate policy decisions by the Fed mostly stamped out inflation, but they also stifled capital investment and borrowing costs. Now the Fed is looking to rate cuts to prevent the economy from tipping into contraction. A visibly slowing labor market is just one of the visible cracks in the armor of consumers, with delinquency rates for credit cards and auto loans also flashing warning signs. However, leading indicators continue to support the narrative of a soft landing for the US economy. What does all this mean for your business? This presentation will deliver practical and actionable advice designed to help business leaders plan for future economic conditions and continuously improve their organization’s strategic planning initiatives.
039. Get the Meeting No One Else Can: Intel Secrets to Find the Right Person, at the Right Time, with the Right Message (morning)
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 can you hyper-personalize your message so it gets noticed? When you know more, you'll find the right opportunities, at the right time, with the right message to get meetings with decision-makers that others only dream about. In this dynamic program, you will discover...
040. Liar, Liar Pants on Fire: Decoding Body Language in Negotiations (morning)
Instructor: Traci L. Brown
When the economy gets uncertain, fraud and deception goes up. It might not be intentional, but people are more apt to stretch the truth or omit important information in negotiations when money is tight. How can you tell when something is not quite right in supplier discussions? Or when interviewing potential candidates? Or in that big sales meeting? Body language expert and Human Behavior Analyst Traci Brown will share tactics used by the FBI to uncover hidden truths and tactfully steer conversations in a more honest and productive direction so you make decisions using info that’s been hidden in plain sight. You’ll save time, money, energy and get to yes more quickly.
041. Cybersecurity: What Future Leaders Must Know to Protect Themselves and Their Organizations (morning)
Instructor: Mike Foster
In today's interconnected distribution landscape, cybersecurity is a key knowledge area for organizational leadership, and it's a business survival skill. This engaging session transforms complex cyber concepts into actionable insights for distribution leaders. You'll learn practical strategies to protect your supply chain relationships, customer data, and operational systems from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
042. Labor Market and Talent Strategy (afternoon)
Instructor: Alex Chausovsky
This interactive session will cover key economic indicators and their impact on your company’s talent strategy, equipping decision makers with practical advice to navigate the evolving business landscape. Attendees with gain valuable expertise on crucial economic factors such as inflation, interest rates, labor market conditions, consumer spending, business investment, and supply chain developments. By exploring tactical strategies to enhance talent-oriented initiatives, businesses can position themselves for success in an increasingly complex labor market.
043. Creativity Unleashed: Generative AI and Your Future - Transform Your Business, Your Communications, Your Job and Your Life (afternoon)
Instructor: Sam Richter
Generative AI is transforming our world at a speed never before seen in history. With the introduction of programs like ChatGPT, CoPilot, Gemini, and other large language models, for the first time, everyone has equal access to discover and manipulate data in ways that will transform business, communications, jobs, and everyday lives, forever. In this dynamic presentation, you will discover… In an easy-to-understand way, what is the difference between AI and Generative AI, how they work, and how embracing them can give you a competitive edge.
044. Liar, Liar Pants on Fire: Decoding Body Language in Negotiations (afternoon)
Instructor: Traci L. Brown
When the economy gets uncertain, fraud and deception goes up. It might not be intentional, but people are more apt to stretch the truth or omit important information in negotiations when money is tight. How can you tell when something is not quite right in supplier discussions? Or when interviewing potential candidates? Or in that big sales meeting? Body language expert and Human Behavior Analyst Traci Brown will share tactics used by the FBI to uncover hidden truths and tactfully steer conversations in a more honest and productive direction so you make decisions using info that’s been hidden in plain sight. You’ll save time, money, energy and get to yes more quickly.
045. Cybersecurity: What Future Leaders Must Know to Protect Themselves and Their Organizations (afternoon)
Instructor: Mike Foster
In today's interconnected distribution landscape, cybersecurity is a key knowledge area for organizational leadership, and it's a business survival skill. This engaging session transforms complex cyber concepts into actionable insights for distribution leaders. You'll learn practical strategies to protect your supply chain relationships, customer data, and operational systems from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
046. Five Common People Management Mistakes & How Not to Make Them (afternoon)
Instructor: Claudia St. John, Ph.D
Even the best managers face challenges when navigating tricky people-issues at work. From hiring and onboarding new employees, to engaging, managing existing ones, to ultimately disciplining and separating with them, this session discusses the most common mistakes managers make and offers recommendations on how to avoid them.
047. Winning with Simplicity - CLOSING KEYNOTE
Instructor: Bob Marsh
Bob Marsh has spent his career in sales and people-centric leadership, his greatest passion. As the Chief Revenue Officer at Bluewater Technologies, he works with a team of 200+ experts to create demand and advise clients including General Motors, Rocket Mortgage, and Penske Corporation on workplace technology, corporate events, and modern retail experiences. Prior to Bluewater, Bob was the founder and CEO of LevelEleven, a sales management system used by some of the world’s most progressive sales organizations— including HP Enterprise, Comcast Business, Google, CarGurus, Verizon, and hundreds more. Bob raised millions in venture capital from some of the top investors in the world, and ultimately sold LevelEleven to a private equity firm who continues to successfully expand on the foundation he created.
Contact UID
Main Office
UID - University of Innovative Distribution
1300 Piccard Dr, Suite LL14
Rockville, MD 20850
Email: info@univid.org
Phone: (240) 801-3868
Accommodations
Pacers Basketball Game
2025 Pacers Game
*Get your tickets here!