Are you getting enough sales out of your dealer network? For most manufacturers, the answer is likely no, because you can never have enough sales! It is frustrating watching your dealers sell competitor products knowing full well that your offerings are the best choice. So how do we go about getting your distributors to sell your product versus your competitors? There are two sides you will need to attack: the end users and your dealers.
Selling to Your End User
In order for your distributors to sell your product there first needs to be a demand for said product. You have to build a brand that customers want to buy, and force your dealers’ hands a bit. Let’s explore a few ways we can do that:
Build Brand Loyalty
We are starting off with probably the most difficult piece of the puzzle, because why not nip it in the butt? Building a brand is not for the faint of heart and takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you are a newer company in the market, or a company that has been around for years but never invested in marketing properly.
Building a reputable manufacturing brand starts with having a great product. If you have that, then the rest can be built over time. Here is the formula for building a successful brand that customers keep coming back to:
Consistency
Being consistent in everything you do instills trust in your customers. Consistent product features, consistent marketing, consistent customer service, and consistent values. Customers are humans of habit, and people thrive off of consistency.
Reliable Customer Service
Trust. We keep going back to this word trust, because that’s what leads to loyalty. Are you loyal to anyone or anything that you don’t trust? Unlikely. Creating responsive and helpful customer service for your brand isn’t flashy, but will give your customers faith in your brand. 60% of customers say they would buy more from a company that treated them better. Is it really that hard to be helpful and kind to your customers? Apparently with some companies it is…
Understand Your Customers
Knowing what your customers need before they do will make you a lot of money in anything you do, because it solves a need that proves you understand your industry. People like buying from experts, or at least those that appear knowledgeable, so get in the trenches and learn about your target audience!
Deliver Your Own Leads Directly to Your Dealers
Are you sitting back and letting your dealers drive their own leads? Most manufacturers are, and this is a major problem in the manufacturer-distributor sales model. Why? Because your product probably isn’t the only option in their inventory, so as your dealers are marketing for a type of product or a need in the market, they are driving customers to various brands of products, not just yours. So unless you are the biggest and everyone already knows you are the best (unlikely), then you are losing market share by not marketing and driving your own leads.
How do you drive your own leads to push to your dealers you ask? Marketing! Specifically, digital marketing, because it is the most ripe for opportunity in the manufacturing industry and it is the most trackable and quantifiable. Let’s look at a few strategies that can help build your brand and drive more sales:
Search Engine Optimization
Have you ever done a search for your product on Google and noticed your competitors and your distributors are ranking ahead of you? If so, this can be mitigated by investing in your website. By building out content and making your website more resourceful and credible, you will move up the Google search results page. Now, this is not an easy feat and will take some time, but in the long run, if done effectively, manufacturers who invest in SEO can make a lot of money driving leads from Google to their site and passing them off to dealers to close the sale.
Let’s take a look at a search term like “grain bins” as an example. None of the manufacturers of grain bins rank #1 for their very product, instead, a distributor does. Grain Handling Direct ranks #1 for the search term “grain bins” on Google and they benefit from the 3,500 people per month that land on this page because of it. For perspective, this is more organic traffic to one singular page than Brock (800), GSI (1200), Westeel (180), and Meridian’s (90) grain bin pages drive combined. For reference, these are all manufacturers that Grain Handling Direct sells on their website.
Online Advertising
Many manufacturers will run some ads in industry publications or even go to trade shows once or twice per year, but those manufacturers are missing out on the most valuable audience: people actively looking for your products online. To support your SEO efforts, running Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads on Google and social media is a great way to build awareness around your products and drive customers looking for your products directly to your website before they hit the retailers.
Most manufacturing keywords cost around $3.00 per click, and if you get 200 clicks from people looking for your products, you are likely to get at least one sale out of that $600 investment. Pretty good ROI for most companies.
Offer a Dealer Search Feature on Your Website
Giving customers the ability to find you and learn about your products is key, but you have to give them a place to buy. Funneling leads from your website to your dealers does several things for your sales strategy:
- Puts your product in front of customers before they ever hit the retailer.
- Tees your dealers up for an easier sales process since your customers already hit your site and learned about your product.
- Makes your dealers happy because you are sending them sales
- Makes you a lot more valuable to your distributors because you are driving their leads and revenue!
Selling to Your Dealer Network
This one might seem obvious, but selling to your dealers is especially difficult given there are likely several other choices of products your dealers can sell for the same need. Let’s go back to our grain bin example for a second. If distributors like Grain Handling Direct are selling four or five different manufacturers’ grain bins, who’s are they going to sell when a customer calls them?
Build a Relationship with Your Distributors
Not only is a relationship with your dealers important, but building trust is paramount. In a study by Harvard Business Review, retailers who indicated they had a high-level of trust in their manufacturers sold 78% more of that manufacturer’s product compared to dealers that had low trust in their supplier. This fact alone is too strong to ignore!
Building rapport does not take a lot of time or money. Just show up for your dealers. Drop in and buy them lunch, offer superb customer support when they need it, and offer a dependable product they can sell with confidence.
Educate Your Distributors
With knowledge comes power right? So why not invest in educating and training your distributors on the benefits of your product, how it compares to your competitors, and the best use cases for it?
Sphere 1 Coop offers online training modules for their dealer network, and when conducting a study, they found that customers who took their online training course go on to sell 14% more of their product than those who did not take their training.
Some examples of training topics to cover for your network include:
- Product Knowledge
- Sales
- Customer Service
- Inventory Management
- Safety & Compliance
Incentivize Your Network
There are many ways you can motivate your dealers to sell more of your products, you might just need to get creative!
Offer Co-op Marketing Dollars
Offering a co-op budget kills two birds with one stone. First, it incentivizes your dealers to market your products heavier, and second, it helps build your brand amongst your end users. Invest a bit of money in a cooperative program and help your dealers help you!
Even better than just providing the funds for the marketing, set your dealers up with a strategic marketing plan. Create digital ads for them to use on social media, Google, email, etc. Or find them a marketing partner who can help them create compelling ads and run an impactful ads campaign.
Sales Competitions
What salesperson doesn’t love a good competition? Offering prizes for the top sellers of your product each month or quarter is a great way to incentivize while also building some fun camaraderie amongst your dealer network.
Decide which products you want to push, and get the word out. It doesn’t even have to be something super official, just offer the team with the most sales next month with a dinner or happy hour.
Ask for Feedback
This might not seem like a big selling point for your distributors, but this goes back to the trust building component of the relationship. Giving your dealers the opportunity to give honest feedback about your products and the market allows for open communication which instills trust. This also helps give you a competitive advantage over competitors by understanding what other manufacturers are offering and doing with the distributors.
Your distributors might not willingly come to you to give feedback, so send out a quarterly email with a Google Form with a few open ended questions for them to fill out. Heck, throw them a $25 Amazon gift card for completing it. It will be well worth it for you to have this insight.
Ready to Grow Your Brand?
Even implementing half of these strategies will go a long way, and won’t cost you a ton of time or money, and Loading Leads is here to help save manufacturers both. We offer digital marketing strategies for manufacturers including SEO, paid advertising on Google and social media, website design, and general digital marketing strategy consulting. If you want to figure out a way to drive more sales to your dealer network, contact us for a free consultation and we will brainstorm some ideas together.
