Why your distributors keep selling the same five products

Ask a manufacturer which of their products their distributors actually sell and you'll usually get a short list. Ask which ones they wish their distributors sold and you'll get most of the catalogue.

It's tempting to call that a sales problem. It isn't. Your distributors aren't trying to undersell your range. They just can't hold forty manufacturers' catalogues in their head.

What happens at the counter

A distributor carries dozens of brands, plus yours. A customer is at the counter, or on the phone, and wants an answer now. Nobody has time to become an expert on every line they stock.

So they sell what they know. The handful of products they've quoted a hundred times and can explain without looking anything up. The rest of your range sits in a catalogue or on a website that nobody opens mid-call.

The brand that's easiest to explain wins. Not the best fit for the job, and not the best price. The one nobody has to think about.

What it costs you

• Products that never get offered. Often the newer or higher-margin ones, because they need a bit more explaining.
• Your technical team becomes the help desk. Every tricky question in the network ends up with your people, answering the same things for different distributors.
• Wrong picks carry your name. When a distributor guesses and gets it wrong, the return or the warranty claim lands on your brand, not theirs.
• You can't see any of it. You know what distributors order. You don't know what they recommended, what they skipped, or why.

Why training doesn't stick

Product training helps for a few weeks. Then staff move on, the range changes, and the branch goes back to the five products it knows. You can't train your way out of it, and you can't control it from head office.

What you can do instead

Put your product knowledge at the point of sale. A guided selector built on your range asks the customer a few plain questions, the ones your own technical people would ask, and brings up the right product. Including the ones that distributor would never have thought to offer.

You build it once. Each distributor gets their own version with their branding and the products they stock. When your range changes, you update it in one place and every version follows. And for the first time, you can see what's being recommended across your network, and where customers drop off.

Your distributors want to sell more of your range. Make it the easiest one to sell.

Selling through distributors? Talk to us about putting your range in front of every counter. See also SelectPro for manufacturers.