Sales Partners Coasting

Situation: A manufacturer in the Boating Industry was struggling with finding a way to get more business out of their Sales Partners across the US. They felt their partners were not motivated to sell their products.

Solution: We immediately canvassed the entire Sales Partner network to get their take on the situation and their relationship with the manufacturer. These Partners had been assigned protected sales territories, but they were in many cases order takers and not working their territory to generate new business. To compound what we considered a fairly significant problem, sales people were not permitted to sell into these protected territories. Some Sales Partners were like a Jack of all trades and only selling the company’s products if someone came to them and asked for it. Others were selling but had limited resources or were happy with the status quo. (This is a common problem with companies that have a distributor/dealer/partner channel. These relationships often start with the wrong strategy in place, despite good intentions, and only get worse with time.)

It was clear money was being left on the table just from their lack of sales acumen or interest. We evaluated historic sales data along with external data points indicating the number of potential customers across the US. With this information we created new sales territories and assigned minimum quotas which the Sales Partners needed to reach or exceed in order to retain their status as a Sales Partner. Since the company also had their own sales people we created a model whereby they could sell into the formerly protected partner territories but provide a commission for the partner and required them to participate in the transaction as well. This was a force multiplier for the partners who in many cases had few if any dedicated sales people besides the owner or manager.

The original ordering process the Sales Partners were under kept valuable customer information in the hands of the Sales Partners and the company never knew who many of their customers were. We changed this by requiring all transactions be conducted through the company in terms of payment and customer details. Sales Partners were compensated in the form of commissions on sales they brought in as well as on sales the company’s salespeople sold in their territory.

Results: Sales Partners were no longer complacent, and those who were got replaced by another who was more proactive and willing to go out and sell. The new sales model also eliminated channel conflict since Sales Partners and company salespeople were compensated when they sold into the territory. It also added hundreds of end customer names and contact details into the company CRM which also facilitated greater reach in their e-marketing campaigns.