SELLING THROUGH DISTRIBUTORS
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 their sales staff.
First boost your distributors' sales reps sales capabilities
🎯their knowledge about your products and competition
🎯their sales skills, the best practices to sell your products
🎯and their motivation VS your brand and products
These 3 factors are necessary conditions for successful sales activities.
A good sales activity is depends 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 thus efficiency
The role of a sales manager is therefore twofold:
1. he or she must train and develop the skills of their salespeople,
2. and help them to succeed in order to keep them motivated, which means guiding them to ensure that their sales activities include the right number of visits, in the right direction, and with succesful sales discussions.
The need for tracking, measuring and analysing sales activities...
There is no alternative! To analyse a salesforce activity properly, a sales needs sales activity reports. But salespeople don't like writing reports, and your distributors' sales reps will not accept to fill daily or weekly reports on your brand's CRM ! Firstly because they don't like to do so, and secondly because you are not their employer.
In addition. your distributors are often unwilling to share the names and contact details of their customers, and they don't like the idea of being scrutinized.
Motivation is key !
To get sales activity reports from your distributors here are a few keys:
➡️ Reward reports on commercial activities, both for the distributor (a small retroactive bonus at the end) and for its salespeople (awards).
➡️ Show the benefits of sales activity reporting to your distributors; provide them with useful insights and support to improve
➡️ Obtain your distributors' agreement to set up sales activity reports for their sales staff. It's up to them to get the salespeople to submit their reports to you.
➡️ And key! Keep sales activity reports simple and not time-consuming. for instance a monthly report that takes less than 5 minutes to complete is sufficient.
It's up to you to decide how much of your budget you want to allocate to obtaining sales activity reports, once you understand that this is the key to co-managing your distributors' field activities and, therefore, the key to your commercial success.
Good news! WWIDER D.R.M. may be the easiest solution for your Brand !
WWinder Sales Consulting Sàrl has designed “WWIDER©” specifically for companies that sell through distributors.
🎯Motivate distributors and their salespeople to provide you with visit reports
🎯Automatically analyze your distributors' sales activity
🎯Identify each distributor's strengths and areas for improvement
🎯Facilitate the preparation of relevant business reviews that lead to good sales results
WWIDER© is not a CRM. WWIDER© is a DRM, a Distributor Relationship Management tool. A dashboard for the brand, an iOS/Android app for your distributors' salespeople.