Relationship Management
Account Management Regular site visits Channel Communication Extranet Resources Sales Promotion Management
Business ManagementRelationship ManagementMarketing Services
It’s a reality that to distributors and resellers your products are just some of the many potential products they could spend time on. Our job is to ensure that you get an unfair share of their time! Each channel partner is different, and we will work according to their needs, not with a one-size-fits-all solution. They may need training, suggestions for promotions, assistance with marketing, whatever it is, we’ll find a way to help them sell more of your products than they otherwise would have done left on their own. And the interesting thing is that these companies know that they are benefiting too – they welcome the assistance that increases your sales!
The best way to motivate and focus channel partners on your products is to visit them. We need to influence them to think about your products all the time, and therefore to continually identify ways to sell your products. Visiting is of course relatively expensive, so there’s a balance. Because we can usually represent more than one product when visiting a channel partner, the costs can be shared and therefore the benefit comes at a lower price than can be achieved by full-time employees. The regularity and choice of visits is something to be agreed in the business plan and regularly monitored.
Communication is key. You might be good at sending regular emails, brochures, promotion ideas, press clippings, etc to your channel partners – but most manufacturers are full of good intentions but get bogged-down in the day to day business. Communication is our focus.
One of the best ways to organise live communication with your channel partners is to establish an ‘extranet’. If you don’t already have one, we can create an automated website where your channel partners can access a password-protected area and see latest news, pricing, sales leads, brochures, and more. When different time zones are involved, an automated source of information can be even more important. We can maintain this site, or we can provide simple access for you to maintain the information without the need for any technical web-design tools.
Regular sales are all very well, but sales promotions create the real peaks. Not all promotions work the same in all countries, and new ideas can be difficult to conceive. We’ll work with you and your channel partners to determine and then implement general or market-specific promotions. The key is to have the buy-in of the channel partners – they will succeed with a promotion they believe in and have a hand in creating.