Recently, I had a conversation with an outside salesperson for a large manufacturer who brought up the "good old days" of the '80s and '90s and how easy it was to sell products back when products literally "flew off the shelves.

"I never really knew how good I had it," he said, adding that now he has to claw and fight for every sale. He ticked off a variety of reasons for the change: customers moving overseas, cut-throat competition and thinning margins, and said that distributors today are fighting for an ever-smaller piece of the industrial pie. He was pessimistic about the future, to say the least.

So where do we stand? Have things gotten so bad that the future of distribution is in doubt? One manufacturers' rep told me recently, "I wouldn't want my son to come into this business today. Things are just too bad and it's not going to get better."

True, things have not been good for those of us in the industrial sector for some time. Nearly 1.6 million manufacturing jobs have been slashed in the last three years. Many companies have moved their operations overseas, particularly to China.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I don't see all gloom and doom. Companies are still manufacturing products in North America. Production and durable goods sales seem to be increasing.

Will this mean a return to the "good old days"? Probably not. Most industry observers expect we'll never have the solid growth we've experienced following other recessions. But that doesn't mean there won't be a steady, albeit unspectacular, rise in business.

Today, there are still plenty of opportunities to sell products in a diverse marketplace. Twenty years ago, distributors were chasing smokestack industries where there were opportunities to sell MRO products in large manufacturing plants, such as automotive and aerospace.

The market has changed. Just take a look at our 57th Annual Survey of Distributor Operations. Distributors are selling products to traditional industries such as construction, but also to institutions such as schools, hospitals and prisons. As distributors have moved from product sellers to service providers, it has created opportunities to sell their services for a fee, and have sales-people become more of a technical consultant than a salesperson.

How well distributors learn to adapt to those changes and sell to new customers in new markets may ultimately determine their survival.