When asked the question, "What is your most valuable asset?," most industrial distributor and manufacturing executives will answer: "My people! Because without them, there is no business." These executives will then talk about the competitive salaries, health insurance provisions, and 401K plans.

But if you ask what they budget for their employees' brains, in the form of training and education, they will often say that nothing is budgeted.

To be sure, they might pull the team together for some product training provided by various vendors. They might even send a senior-level person for an occasional half-day seminar, but often there is no budgeted commitment to continuous education.

More and more companies are starting to recognize the benefits of training and how it positively affects their bottom line. These progressive companies are now building training programs directly into their budgets by purchasing classes and curriculums from online education sources.

Tooling University, as an example, offers nearly 140 classes—on indexable cutting tools, stamping processes, use of gauges and measuring devices, materials, and more—24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Kathleen Durbin, CEO of General Industrial Tool & Supply in Sun Valley, Calif., uses online education classes to provide industrial education to her employees.

"The classes provide, to both our inside and outside sales teams, real-world manufacturing application and product knowledge," she says. "The knowledge gained through the training is delivered at all levels of expertise—from beginner to advanced—thus giving our sales teams a competitive edge to better serve our customers."

Employees can benefit from the rich graphics, video clips, text and interactive dictionaries included within most programs. And for a few online education sources, supervision of an employee's program can be handled through the site, allowing managers to assign permissions and classes to an employee's schedule, as well as track employee progress and test results.

Distributors find that even some of their most experienced people can benefit from the classes. If the employees are knowledgeable in their specialty, they can still benefit by learning other foundational knowledge that will better prepare them to sell and service the company's products.

With the recession ending, those who are best prepared to provide service to their customers will win.

If the '80s were the decade of quality, and the '90s the decade of leaning out inventories and processes, those who provide superior service will win the time following the recession. Those who have educated and trained their teams to provide a higher level of service will be in position to achieve that victory.