Co-piloting distributors sales activities

Track and measure the distributor's sales activities

You can't manage results. You can only manage the skills and activities that lead to results.

If you want your distributors to produce sales results for your products, then you have to make sure that they make the right efforts to do so.

You need to act on the factors that directly influence the performance of thier sales staff.

Sales performance depends first and foremost on salespeople's motivation, knowledge and skills. These 3 factors are necessary conditions for successful sales activity.

And sales activity is also based on 3 factors: a good number of visits, in the right direction (to the right customers and prospects, to talk about the right products) and with a good level of quality.

The role of a sales manager is therefore twofold: he or she must train and develop the skills of their salespeople, and help them to succeed in order to keep them motivated. They must be able to guide them to ensure that their sales activities are effective. So that they make the right number of visits, in the right direction, and are successful in their sales discussions.

To analyse a salesperson's activity properly, the sales manager should ask his or her salespeople to fill in daily, weekly or monthly activity reports.

Salespeople don't like writing reports. But it is necessary to ask for them and to get them. The aim is to have a statistical view of each salesperson's activity, the number and direction of their visits, and their effectiveness, in order to be able to redirect the salesperson differently and/or identify the areas where they need help and coaching.

For the same reasons, companies that sell through distributors need to find a way of obtaining activity reports on their brand's products. But distributors are often unwilling to share the names and contact details of their customers. As for their salespeople, they won't spontaneously send you their visit reports. Firstly because they don't like to do so, and secondly because you are not their employer. You will therefore need to obtain the distributor's agreement to set up these reports for their sales staff. It's up to them to get the salespeople to submit their reports to you. For your part, keep it simple and not too time-consuming. A monthly report that takes less than 5 minutes to complete may be sufficient.

To encourage cooperation, it is sometimes advantageous to offer incentives to your distributor, and possibly to its sales staff. For example, you could offer the distributor exclusive benefits, increased marketing support or a retroactive bonus at the end of the year if the reports are completed correctly. It's up to you to decide how much you can reasonably allocate to this objective. For the distributor's salespeople, and if your distributor agrees, you can also offer an end-of-year bonus if the reports are well done. Again, up to you to decide how much you can reasonably allocate to this objective.