Finding Reps and Distributors
Finding the right partner is one of the most important investments you can make to develop your export market! Finding such a partner is not luck however.
We work with companies who are interested in penetrating the European market. Our clients include companies from the USA, Canada, UK and Ireland who wish to establish or grow rep or distributor sales channels.
Our strength is in finding technical sales partners including: manufacturer's representatives (manufacturer's reps), sales agents, systems integrators and value-adding distributors.
At Industrial Marketing Solutions we take a structured and planned approach to this. Here are steps we follow, depending upon your knowledge of the target market and local sales resources:
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Research the target market
We study at existing sales channels for competing and complimentary products and define the most profitable route-to-market for your products and services.
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Define channel partner profile
Like any new hire, one of the most important steps is a "job description" which sets out the profile of the ideal rep or distributor you are looking for. This description should summarise details such as existing products, target markets, geographic coverage, marketing capabilities, languages, etc
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Company Research
We focus on your target applications and end customers to identify a list of target companies in your target market(s). With in-house multilingual capabilities we have the experience to identify a quality list for qualification.
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Partner Qualification
Working on your behalf, we make contact with the companies to share information about your business and products. Our goal is to learn about their business and potential fit as a channel partner for you. We look at product and sales fit but also measure softer issues such as responsiveness, motivation and desire to adopt a new product line
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Partner Appointments
We will schedule meetings with the shortlisted partners. Our goal from each project is to arrange a minimum of 3 meetings with reps and distributors who meet your criteria and are genuinely interested in representing your product line.
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Our approach is hand-on which means we will manage channel development projects from start to finish, working closely with you at all times.