Mastering the Middle Tier: Using Data to Drive Distributor Success
It’s no secret that gaining mindshare from your distribution partners has become challenging in the wine and spirits business.
After all, their portfolios are overflowing with things to sell. How can you stand out?
Avoid the most common pitfalls
Is your company guilty of any of these?
- You leave it up to your distributors to decide where to sell your products.
- You don’t spend time analyzing the data your distributors provide.
- You fail to make a compelling case for why your products deserve to be on the shelf or the wine list.
- You don’t spend enough time researching where the best account opportunities lay in key markets.
- You don’t appreciate that your distributors have thousands of brands to represent.
The best way to optimize the collaboration with your distributors is to study the data.
The data will tell you where the best opportunities are and where the “gaps” in distribution are so you can squeeze every last case available to your brands.
Not all distributors are alike
Depending on the market, each distributor has strengths and weaknesses.
Some are dialed into the chains and enjoy access to the biggest buyers in the state.
Some excel in the independent accounts.
Some distributors’ portfolios are jam-packed with competitive SKUs. Others, not so much.
Some distributors specialize in the on-premise. Others are stronger in off-premise.
Most have access to category data, but some do not.
Some distributors have market share dominance.
If you use a one-size-fits-all approach to your array of distributors, don’t be surprised when your sales results are falling below expectations.
Leveraging data to maximize distributor potential
Your primary aim should be to help your distributors help you. This requires continually studying key data points such as:
- Depletion growth year over year.
- Growth in accounts sold.
- Grown in points of distribution.
- A clear understanding of the top 25 accounts for your products and the share of total volume those top accounts represent.
- “Account penetration” of your target account lists. (It’s up to YOU to provide this to them).
- Velocity (sales per POD) in your top accounts.
- Days on hand of inventory.
- Accounts that are “at risk” of losing distribution.
- Which distribution points did your team achieve compared to those your distributors achieved on your behalf?
Thanks to modern sales execution software, this data is more accessible to obtain than ever before.
Always knowing where you stand is not solely the distributor’s job. You must do your part.
Allocate your resource where it will make the most impact
There are three primary resources to manage:
- Time: Identify high-performing distributors who deserve more direct engagement and support versus lower-performing ones who may require a different strategy.
- Money: How to allocate trade marketing budgets according to which distributors will most likely deliver the best results.
- People: Determine which distributor sales teams and distributor manager to provide with extra support from YOUR sales team members.
To ensure maximum sales impact, you must decide where to spend time, money, and people because not all accounts, markets, or distributors are equal.
How to tailor your approach to each distributor
This all comes down to collaboration.
Take goal-setting as an example. “Whose” goals are these? The distributors? Yours? Or are the goals jointly owned?
If a distributor falls short of your expectations, don’t be too quick to blame them. Nowadays, goals are met consistently only through the alignment of expectations and joint efforts in each market.
But HOW do you do it?
Here are a few keys to consider:
- Make sure your goals are realistic and in line with the market trends.
- Fully participate in the achievement of your goals, leveraging a do-it-first approach.
- Respect your distributors’ time by not asking for information you could easily obtain on your own.
- Become keenly aware of other products in the distributors’ portfolio that directly compete with your products.
- Take the time to learn (and follow) the distributors’ preferences for communicating with them (and how often).
- Strive to know the sales data better than your distributors do. They have a LOT on their plates!
A surefire way to be disappointed in your distributors is to use a one-size-fits-all approach. Building “customized” relationships driven by hard data would be best.
The cost of ignoring the data
Far too many supplier partners utilize a just-do-it, intuitive approach to working with distributors.
They go by “instincts,” relationships, and experience when they should be going by empirical data and facts.
It is simply too crowded and competitive to go by gut feel.
Suppliers must continually monitor the most essential KPIs and be ready to shift resources from lower-impact to higher-impact distributors.
Beware of the spoken (and unspoken) “silos” that exist inside your organization. It’s incumbent upon the sales leaders to regularly assess where, when, and how much these shifts in resources should take place.
Once again, relying on the data to guide your decisions is critical.
Modern methods for collaborating with distributors
Thanks to modern software platforms like BevPath, suppliers can quickly bring their entire distribution team to the table to collaborate and share things such as:
- Target accounts lists
- KPIs
- Sales execution data
- Sales results and performance
This “real-time” digital collaboration is a game changer!
The goal is to improve execution in the marketplace collaboratively and easily.
There’s no longer a need to email static spreadsheets back and forth, which makes maintaining “version control” nearly impossible.
The ability for both parties to have complete visibility in real-time to all sales-related data not only saves precious time but also allows for better execution and results.
We invite you to contact us for a full overview and demonstration of BevPath’s capabilities.
