There's something terribly wrong with the buyer-and-seller relationship in the B2B world. Sixty-five percent of B2B buyers rank salespeople as “average” or “poor”, according to a new study by Discover.org and sales linguist Steve W. Martin. As the study's blog post notes, there's already a lot of distrust and skepticism associated with salespeople — in-depth RFPs and product demos are evidence of that. However, the study shows that the 35% of respondents who held “good” or “excellent” views were willing to take more risks, like adopt a new product or experiment with a new trend.

American Trucking Associations’ advanced seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index decreased 2.1% in September after rising 1.7% in August. In September, the index equaled 113.2 (2015=100) compared with 115.6 in August. “After increasing a total of 2.1% in July and August, tonnage fell by that amount in September,” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. “Freight has been very choppy this year, but despite the latest drop, tonnage is up 1.8% since hitting a low in January. No doubt, the climb up has been slow and difficult as manufacturing activity remains flat, but the trend is up, not down.” August’s increase was revised down slightly from our September 24 press release. Compared with September 2023, the index fell 0.9%, after rising 0.6% in August from a year earlier.