Praxis Communications, Inc.

CREATING AWARENESS WITH REPS AND DISTRIBUTORS
Challenge:
Companies that depend on independent channels (representatives, agents or distributors) to sell their products frequently encounter resistance in many forms. Most of the time, channels represent several principals, so keeping them focused on your business can be difficult, particularly if your product is a complicated sell. Sales reps or distributors usually go for the quick kill, and anything with a long or complex sales cycle tends to get back-burnered. But there’s a reason these folks signed up with you in the first place, and it’s a good idea to remind them frequently of your value to their bottom line, and to help them in any way possible.

Solution:
There are a number of ways a smart marketing manager can create more loyalty – and sales opportunities – from his/her channels. One of the simplest is to send a regular e-mail news brief highlighting sales tips, new product announcements, links to new web content, or a variety of other specific information. The trick is to make sure it gets done regularly, and that it’s not too long or demands too much of the reader. The real value, aside from delivering important content, is to create top-of-mind awareness so the sales person keeps your company in mind when making calls.

Another way is to create a channel-only intranet that provides valuable content to help the sales agent sell your product in his markets. This site would deliver product-specific material to aid in presenting to his customers, provide competitive comparisons to illustrate your value benefits, and, if appropriate, offer specifications and pricing models. Such intranets require secure log-ins, so customers can’t accidentally get their hands on it. Once built, however, the site needs to be promoted to the channels as a valuable resource, so this becomes a further argument for the e-mail news brief above. Sales folks would much rather be out on the road than spending time in the office, so content on this site needs to be compelling, easy to navigate, and frequently refreshed.

Getting it done:
  1. Establish a schedule for the e-mail news brief. How often is it reasonable to provide fresh, interesting content? How often is too often, running the risk of spamming your audience and turning them against you?
  2. Design an inviting HTML layout that doesn’t take up a lot of room in the recipient’s e-mail window.
  3. Before you launch, write main topics for the first four or five news briefs. You can always use some worthwhile filler for the secondary topics, but make sure you have strong main ideas for each issue several weeks or months ahead of the actual distribution dates.
  4. Develop the intranet resource and start populating the site with good content. For this, you may first want to ask your sales staff what they’re interested in. Also, consider ways for the sales person to find company contacts to help with his field issues, or even offer a users’ group to share selling ideas with other participants.
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