How to effectively manage your distribution network

One of the secrets to boosting your sales in supermarkets?

Effectively managing and coordinating your distribution network!

Indeed, as we will see throughout this article, brands offering their products in supermarkets have many techniques at their disposal to encourage their retailers to increase sales of their products. Between cross-departmental collaboration and field network animation techniques, Sidely shares all its secrets with you. The key benefit: increasing your brand's visibility among consumers!

And to achieve this, the first thing to do is to set up an organization that supports the animation process. This is what we will look at now.

Adopt sales enablement for better commercial performance

One of the keys to dynamic management of your distribution network: collaboration.

Like most brands that go through a retailer network, you realize the importance of setting up field animation actions to boost your sales. But before tackling the improvement of field animation, we advise you to establish effective collaboration between marketing and your sales force.

Making your marketing and sales departments work in synergy is Sales Enablement. This strategy is based on two simple observations:

1. Although they serve a common goal—increasing your product's sales—marketing and sales operate at different stages of the sales cycle. The marketing department handles the early phases, known as "awareness" and "consideration," and promotes the product to the target audience. The sales department, on the other hand, closes the sales and handles follow-up, as well as building customer loyalty and sharing information on after-sales services. Sales representatives are also the guardians of marketing in retail locations. It is up to them to implement it during appointments.

2. Thus, each department collects and uses different data, which actually turns out to be highly valuable once shared and centralized to pursue their common goal: increasing sales!

Marketing and sales teams, although in the same company, tend to work in isolation. They are often separated operationally and hierarchically. On one side, marketing plans its strategy in advance, while sales adapts to field reality and its unexpected changes, requiring them to remain flexible.

Faced with this loss of efficiency, companies are trying to break down these silos. The objective? To improve collaboration between departments. Marketing then feeds on field data and feedback to evaluate and improve the relevance of its message, while sales benefits from marketing insights and concepts that give them a more global view of the market and their product. Ultimately, this collaboration leads to an improved business strategy and raises the skills and efficiency of each stakeholder.

To implement good animation of your distribution network and sales/marketing alignment, certain actions are necessary: a reorganization of human resources, the implementation of collaborative processes throughout the buyer journey, tools to coordinate everything...

A CRM designed for brands distributed in supermarkets will centralize the data that matters to all stakeholders. And when this knowledge is shared and serves as the foundation for a joint sales strategy, performance is achieved: sales reps close more deals and are better prepared for their negotiations!

Finally, the marketing department sometimes chooses to opt for a "category management" strategy. This category-centric approach aims to analyze in depth what consumers want for a specific category of products. This helps promote them better and increase revenue in that product segment. This expertise provides valuable support for the sales rep during negotiations and sales to external distributors.

Thus, combining the expertise of the marketing and sales departments helps significantly reinforce their respective impact on sales and subsequently allows you to optimize the management of your external distributor network.

For all these reasons, it is vital that you give your sales representatives all the tools they need to excel in their roles.

Invest in training your sales representatives

The strategies mentioned above allow you to expand the skill set of both your marketing and sales teams. Thanks to appropriate management, you can maintain these processes. This management sometimes justifies creating a Sales Enablement Manager position. A good manager is one who improves and solidifies winning processes by strengthening the capabilities and skills of their teams.

Training your sales reps is therefore the secret to success. Consequently, your sales force becomes highly effective in managing your networks when you guide them to:

• Master marketing concepts;

• Know their market, their target, and that of their retailers;

• Know how to highlight the features and potential of your products;

• Have access to marketing data collected during the first phases of the sales cycle, and know how to interpret it;

• Be aware of the communication channels used, the marketing strategies deployed to reach the target audience, and their outcomes;

• Be able to rely on tailored sales collateral, which they may have helped create;

• Be capable of targeting and segmenting retailers and prioritizing their commercial calendar;

• Know how to convince, sell, and ideally also train their retailers' sales reps effectively.

Rewarding your sales reps is a way to maintain their motivation and their eagerness to acquire new skills to boost their performance. They are, after all, at the heart of animating your external distribution network.

Sidely's advice

A fun and effective way to raise your sales reps' awareness of marketing logic is to offer them a joint training session with marketing, where you cover the famous 4 Ps of your marketing strategy:

• Product: product strategy;

• Price: pricing strategy;

• Place: distribution strategy;

• Promotion: communication strategy.

By integrating all stakeholders of the marketing mix, you allow everyone to position themselves within sales enablement and understand the importance of contributing to the ultimate goal: performance!

Now, let's move on to the next step: segmenting your retailers.

Segment your retailer network to adapt your animation actions

So, how can you better manage your network? Remember to get to know your distributors well! To do this, an analysis of the various distributors of your products can help you.

Identify the most important or high-potential stores

Which retailers bring in the most revenue? As a sales representative, you must prioritize your efforts and your animation budget on the distributors that sell the most of your products.

You probably already have some field data to find this out: numeric distribution (ND), weighted distribution (WD)...

Analyzing your sell-out, via cash register receipts, will allow you to identify the sales outlets that generate the most revenue on your products.

Indeed, the revenue generated (sell-out) by your distributors is undeniably a key criterion, but do not overlook their untapped potential. Good network management also means knowing how to boost sales of your product in a high-potential sales outlet that has not sufficiently highlighted your product, for example by not offering you the best shelf-facing.

This potential may lie not only in its market share compared to competing retailers in the area, but it could also be linked to its ability to attract your target audience through its brand image, its capacity to train its sales reps, or even the number of sales representatives it employs. These criteria matter to your end customers, and physical retailers as well as to you.

Value your exclusive distributors

Exclusivity is earned: pamper your exclusive distributors! In the long run, maintaining this exclusivity requires you to make significant efforts to preserve this privilege. The distributor prevents your products from getting lost among the competition. So, return the favor: nurture this relationship, listen to their needs, and give them the right tools and advice so they can sell even better, in a win-win partnership.

But that's not all: animating your distributors also relies on the knowledge and energy you pass on to them.

Train, equip, and motivate your retailers

Your retailers' sales reps sell products they know well, well. Therefore, you will need to put in the effort to ensure they know how to sell your brand!

Train and motivate your retailers' sales reps

It is possible to train your retailers' sales reps when their manager does not object. After all, they are their teams. To make these training sessions appealing, offer short, easy-to-access, and fun formats, either in person or online. Don't hesitate to "gamify" your training. Furthermore, try to offer training that is non-restrictive and ensures that participants retain the essentials to sell effectively.

Why not spark their competitive spirit by running best-seller contests with exciting rewards?

Finally, in cases where it is difficult to contact the store's sales reps directly, you can offer solutions to their manager or higher-level supervisors.

Merchandising solutions and sales collateral

This brings us to the proven classics! You can indeed offer your supermarket partner merchandising solutions for your product. Whether it's cross-merchandising suggestions, advertising displays to highlight your brand or product, POS (point-of-sale) advertising, or other promotional actions, these offers are various ways to reduce your distributor's expenses, boost their revenue, and therefore yours. Sales collateral is useful for promoting your product's different qualities and features. Learn how to present them well and suggest them to your distributors. Their sales reps will also use them as support for their sales arguments.

Thus, as we have seen throughout this article, there are many ways to stimulate the management of your external distributor network. People are at the center of this win-win system, and you should invest the necessary resources in training sales forces. It is also essential to make marketing and sales collaborate. Finally, field animation plays a crucial role alongside classic merchandising techniques.

Feel like your CRM isn't ready for these changes? Request an online demo without delay!