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Success Strategies in Channel Management

Distributor and Agent Selection Criteria

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Distributor and Agent Selection

CriteriaRecruiting and Screening New

Prospects

Recruiting as a Continuous Process.

Screening

Credit

Personality

Business and Operational Criteria

Final Selection Criteria - SPEAR

Channel Candidate Inducements

Business Policies that Bond Your Channel to You

Preparing a Business Policy

Statement

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Distributor and Agent Selection Criteria

The selection of distributors and agents is an important task.

There must be an organisational, personal and individual commitment to the product.

The second and related requirement for successful distributors is that they must be successful with the product.

The only way to keep a good distributor is to work closely with them to ensure that he or she is making money on the product. Any distributor who does not make money on a line will drop it.

If a distributor is not working out, in general, it is wise to terminate the agreement and find another one.

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Recruiting and Screening New Prospects

Successful business organizations are almost always built around a few core competencies - key activities such as quality

manufacturing or low-cost distribution that they perform with great effectiveness.

Organizations should never assign the responsibility for performing these key competencies to other channel members.

Conversely, all other functions performed within the business may be sourced out to other organizations.

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Recruiting and Screening New Prospects

Recruiting involves those plans and actions aimed at actively soliciting participation by a new channel member.

Before active recruiting can begin, key personnel from the recruiting organization must consider and reach agreement on several important issues, including:

•The precise role of the prospective channel members.

•The specific qualifications necessary for success in this channel role.

•The precise products or channel assignments for which the prospective channel member will be responsible.

•The bounds of authority of the prospective channel member.

•The way in which the role might be expected to change over time.

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Guidelines for Active Recruiting.

Once these parameters have been established, active recruiting can begin in earnest. Three principles, summarized in Exhibit 2, will guide the

When recruiting prospective channel partners, think about:

How your firm's needs relate to the prospects' qualifications and needs, and vice versa.

Communicating honestly with all prospects about the constraints and realities of the anticipated channel role.

Learning all you can about the prospective firms' expectations and being prepared to fulfill them.

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Guidelines for Active Recruiting

First, keep in mind that the attractiveness of a given channel role largely depends on whether the role fits the potential intermediary's real needs. As such, not only should information regarding how well the candidate's qualifications meet the recruiting organization's needs be considered, attention should be paid to whether or not the recruiting firm matches the prospect's needs, as well.

Next, recruiters should communicate honestly with all prospects. If an accurate picture of the anticipated channel role, and the resources and expectations involved with it are presented from the start, the chances of recruiting and retaining top channel partners increases significantly.

Finally, to ensure that only the best firms are recruited, the recruiting organization needs to understand and be prepared to fulfil the prospect firm's expectations.

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Recruiting as a Continuous Process.

For several reasons, the recruitment of new channel members should be viewed as a continuous process. One reason is that an organization's intermediaries sometimes withdraw from the channel relationship of their own accord, and the organization needs to be prepared to respond quickly.

Another reason for viewing recruiting as a continuous process is that marketers may need to contract with new intermediaries to help launch new products.

Organizations, particularly producers, also may have to change intermediaries as their products pass through stages in their product life cycle, when buyer behaviour changes, or in response to changes in the distribution strategies of competitors.

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Screening

Screening involves the systematic consideration, evaluation, and, ultimately, rejection of most of a set of people, things, or ideas. Screening is inherently a negatively oriented process.

First, the organization should think about market segments. Too many marketers think primarily in terms of geographic coverage when screening intermediaries, rather than considering market or customer segments.

Second, the selling and distribution requirements for a product change during its life cycle, yet marketers frequently fail to account for these changes in their distribution strategies.

Third, manufacturers and retailers tend to recruit distributors that are already overloaded with products, while shying away from smaller, newer, or temporarily underfinanced intermediaries.

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Screening

The fourth criteria that should be weighed by channel members engaged in this screening process pertains to the level of support required by the various prospects.

Clearly, this support may be financial in nature.

It may involve the exchange of technical or marketing expertise between the recruiting firm and its prospective channel partner.

Or, the support might merely involve some "hand-holding" or positive-reinforcement during an extended start-up period.

Guidelines for Screening Prospective Channel PartnersWhen screening prospective channel partners, think about:

•Market segments other than geographic coverage.

•Fitting the prospective channel partner's strengths and competencies to the stage of your product's life cycle.

•The fact that bigger is not always better.

•The support likely to be required by the various prospects.

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Credit Reports.

Ask your bank to get you a credit report.

The most important questions you need answers to are "Does he pay on time?" If not, "Under what circumstances are they late?" and "How late?"

See The Operations Up Close.

Make a personal visit to evaluate the distributor yourself. Watch for the little things that say a lot

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Personality Type.

It can help or hurt you. As with people, distributor organisations have personalities, too.

The capitulator is cooperative and accedes readily to your demands but needs excessive support and direction from you. At first you might think this is a perfect partner - cooperative and eager to follow your advice.

In execution, however, the capitulator stumbles badly. He's not especially aggressive or imaginative - he has trouble helping himself, much less you.

The initiator is just the opposite: independent and difficult to deal with. This firm wants to do things its own way and knows exactly where it's going - up! Whether large or small, this distributor is confident, self- reliant, growth oriented, just the sort to knock off big numbers any way it can. Your job is to make this firm toe the line in your own best interests. Clearly, the initiator can help you far more than the capitulator can.

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Business and Operational Criteria

1. Business age of the candidate

2. Reputation

Among customers

Among other manufacturers the distributor currently represents

Among peers

Among trade publications

Among trade organizations

In local community

3. Professional background of key executives

4. Business and managerial stability

5. Financial strength

6. Sales revenue performance

Overall sales

Complementary value offer line sales

7. Branch locations

8. Number of active customer accounts

9. Present territorial coverage

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Business and Operational Criteria

10. Complementary manufacturer value offer lines represented

11. Competitive value offer lines represented

12. Value offer variables

Technical expertise

Perishability

Bulk and weight

Individual unit value

Newness

Knowledge of existing Product Lines

13. Repair and service capabilities

14. Knowledge of local market conditions

15. Employee quality

16. Managerial "chemistry"

17. Overall condition of facilities

Sales and Marketing Criteria

18. Type of market coverage offered

Horizontal/ Vertical/Both

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Business and Operational Criteria

19. Proportion of internal to external salespeople

20. Sales force compensation

21. Sales cycle performance requirements

Presale

Transaction

Post-sale

22. Sales competency

Number and quality of salespeople

Technical competence of salespeople

23. Sales and marketing aggressiveness

Local marketing activities

Customer and order pursuit

Dealing with their competition

24. Internal sales and marketing support resources and capabilities

25. Ordering and payment policies

26. Customer order fulfilment performance

Typical time required for compete delivery of a customer's purchase order

Accuracy of shipment of order contents

Percentage of out-of-stock occurrences

27. Price integrity

28. Ability to develop new markets

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Business and Operational Criteria

29. Distributor advertising and sales promotional programs

30. Training programs

31. Consent to sign a contract

32. Agreement to accept a sales quota

33. Willingness to share data and local market information

34. Willingness to participate in joint sales and marketing programs

35. Inventory management expertise

36. Adequate inventory commitment

37. Future growth prospects "Coup de Grace" Factors That Indicate a Motivated Candidate

38. True desire for your value offer line

39. Willingness to share key customer list

40. Willingness to commit resources to your value offer line

41. Existence of a strategic business plan

42. Willingness to participate in strategic business planning with your organisation

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Selecting the Right Channel Partners

The goal in channels development, as always, should be to find the best channel partner available from among a small pool. So the selection process continues and is now conducted at a

more refined level.

Several selection criteria should be considered during this final evaluation of channel members. Recruiting channel members

therefore might be described as seeking to spear the best channel partner from among of the remaining pool of

prospects.

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Final Selection Criteria - SPEAR

Sales factors The ultimate justification for using intermediaries is to improve market share, sales, and profitability. Thus, sales and market

factors head the list of evaluative criteria.

Product factors Product factors include the intermediary's knowledge of the product and of its service or stocking requirements. The quality of the

prospect's service staff should also be considered.

Experience factors Indicators of intermediary experience and expertise can be obtained by evaluating the prospect's previous customers' satisfaction, whether the prospect has worked successfully with similar products in the past, the prestige of its prior or current channel partners, and the prospect's

current technology.

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SPEAR

Administrative factors The administrative and contractual conformance of prospects can be evaluated by examining the prospect's workload and determining whether it

is overworked.

Risk factors Considerations of risk include evaluations of a prospect's commitment to the relationship and of how much the proposed channel arrangement will cost the recruiting organization. The prospect's enthusiasm for the product should also be

considered. Costs, the extent of a prospect's dealing with competitors, and the career histories of its key personnel should likewise be evaluated.

Recruiting organizations can exert only limited influence over the business conduct of their intermediaries. This is true even when recruiters enjoy dominant channel

positions and are willing to exercise power in pursuit of their interests.

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Channel Candidate Inducements

Creating inducements for channel members to link with you and to perform at optimum effectiveness is like any value exchange. Like all marketing we

start with two basic questions:

Who are they? – Each distributor is unique. Do not treat distributors as if they all had the same needs and motivations

What do they want? – What are their motivations and specific needs?

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Business Policies that Bond Your Channel to You

A starting point for developing good relationships is to make expectations clear to both parties.

Prepare a clearly stated summary of your most important business policies, and give it to your distributor candidates. Such a document indicates that it

is easy to do business with your organisation.

A clear, concise policy statement - one that summarizes what the distributor can expect of you and what you can expect of the distributor - can prevent

misunderstandings

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Preparing a Business Policy Statement

Circulated internally, it also helps everyone in your organisation follow these policies consistently.

Your business policy statement should describe policies regarding the presale, post-sale, and transaction phases of channel business, including:

•Contracts and agreements

•Authorized primary area of sales and service responsibility

•Penalties for selling outside the authorized sales territory

•Organisation marketing plans, including space advertisements, public relations releases, direct mail, national and local exhibits, and cooperative advertising

•Pricing, pricing assistance, and price protection

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Preparing a Business Policy Statement

•Value offer quality and warranties

•Required inventory levels

•Order size in units or total dollars

•National house or special accounts

•Major account support

•Value offer customization, private labels, and original equipment manufacturer (OEM)

•New value offer launches

•Discontinued Products

•Priority replacement

•Billing and payment terms, credit procedures

•Freight and shipment, including drop shipment

•Delivery guarantees

•How performance will be evaluated

•Grounds for termination