The WWIDER Distribution Relationship Management app

Most brands find it hard to know what their distributors are really doing to promote their products...

In the end, most companies that sell through distributors know very little about the actual activity that their distributors salespeople deploy to promote their products. Do distributor salespeople make enough visits? Do they talk about the brand's products? To the right people? With a good success rate? These questions don't always have answers. The only thing the brand sees is how much the distributor orders. Could it be better? Difficult to say without being able to relate it to the three pillars that generate sales numbers: 1) the amount of efforts, 2) the direction of those efforts and 3) the effectiveness of the distributor's efforts.

Especially since most distributors are multi-brand…

And let's not forget that most distributors are multi-brand. Distributor salespeople divide their time and energy between several brands. How much of it is devoted to your brand? This is another difficult question to answer, due to lack of information.

You can only manage sales efforts, not sales results!

In the absence of precise measurement of the time, energy, visits, targeting and effectiveness of your distributors' salespeople in promoting your products, the analysis and judgment of a distributor's sales is bound to be subjective, and it is difficult for a brand to negotiate a relevant action plan with a distributor during the monthly and quarterly Business Reviews it conducts with them.

Managing is all about measuring

If sales results are the consequence of sales efforts, a brand must first be able to measure these efforts precisely. That's why, sooner or later, brands are thinking about setting up C.R.M.s and requiring their distributors to ask their sales reps to connect to the brand's CRM for visit reports.

But a brand’s C.R.M. is not the solution…

Because it just never works! For a number of reasons:

1. Salespeople generally don't like to do visit reports. If they do, it's only for their direct employer, who forces them to do so. Doing additional reports for a brand is very unpopular, and very few companies succeed in getting them.

2. What's more, as we've said, most distributors are multi-brand. If each brand wanted to impose the use of its own C.R.M., distributor salespeople would have to juggle 5 or 10 C.R.M.s, which is unimaginable.

3. Finally, the implementation of a C.R.M. implies the purchase of a large number of licenses to register hundreds of sales reps all over the world, which generates very high costs. The profitability of setting up a C.R.M. under these conditions is very low, given the cost of the C.R.M. and the small number of salespeople who will comply (under duress) with the injunction to use these tools for their activity reports.

Motivation is the key

The source of all effort is always motivation. A company wishing to obtain information must first ask itself the question of the motivation of those from whom it is requesting this information. The greater the motivation of the distributor's salesperson, and the lower the effort required, the greater the chance of obtaining the desired information.

WWIDER© : the good compromise

WWINDER Sales Consulting adopts a pragmatic approach based on its founder's 30 years of experience in the specific field of distributor sales. WWINDER Sales Consulting's offer covers brand management training for distributors, the construction of e-learning modules to teach distributor salespeople how to sell the brand's products effectively, and the implementation of practical, relevant tools such as WWIDER©️, the first D.R.M.* which motivates distributor salespeople to produce visit reports on the activity they deploy to promote the brand's products.

And since motivation is the source of all efforts, motivation is in fact the digital DNA of the WWIDER©️ D.R.M.*.

*Distribution Relationship Manager

Benefits of WWIDER© for distributor sales staff

WWIDER© offers distributors' sales staff:

- a free app for iOS or Android,

- a sales competition with attractive rewards for those who make the most and best efforts to promote the brand,

- news and scientific or technical articles about the brand,

- a 40-lesson digital solution selling course by WWINDER Sales Consulting, synthesizing the best practices taught for 30 years by Winfried Windegger, former Mercuri international consultant and ex-World Sales Training Director of an international biotech group,

- customized sales tips for successful sales meetings with the brand's products (customer benefits, relevant questions to ask, answers to the most frequent objections),

- and the chance for the world's best distributor salespeople to shine by sharing their best sales practices with the community of distributors who use WWIDER©,

In short, a wealth of information and rewards.

...in exchange for a very tiny effort

Once a month, a visit report that only lasts 1 minute. Yes, WWIDER© activity reports only last 1 minute a month. Nothing to discourage salespeople!

All in all, a lot of benefits for very little effort.

Benefits of WWIDER© for distributors themselves

Distributors also benefit:

- no C.R.M. to set up, no costs or technical hassles to deal with,

- the brand will be able to share with them their strengths and areas for improvement in their sales activity to achieve better results,

- and, if the brand so wishes, it can even reward distributors who encourage their sales staff to use WWIDER©️.

Benefits of WWIDER©  for the brand

Finally, for the brand, the advantages of WWIDER©  are of course very significant:

- WWIDER©  is not a C.R.M.: no exorbitant costs, no installation fees, no maintenance fees.

- WWIDER©  enables the brand to share useful knowledge with distributor sales staff: articles, news, specific sales tips, training.

- the brand's dashboard automatically and effortlessly collects and summarizes all the indicators used to analyze the activity of each distributor

- the brand will know in real time the strengths and areas for improvement of each distributor's business,

- the brand can compare the activity of each distributor with all its other distributors,

- and it will be able to prepare its monthly or quarterly Business Review meetings much more effectively and efficiently, making path for better sales results.

Confidentiality of information

- like all information systems, WWIDER© complies with legal requirements concerning the collection of sensitive information

- the brand dashboard is, of course, totally secure; only the brand and its authorized employees can access the information it contains

- WWIDER© publishes, updates and scrupulously respects its privacy policy,

- WWIDER© requires brands to publish their own privacy policies too in the WWIDER© app,

- no user will be able to connect to a brand's information without prior acceptance of these policies,

- no user will be able to connect to a brand unless he or she is employed by a distributor of that brand.

Read our full Confidentiality Policy...