Zach Selch advises against letting distributors push you into wrong markets. Define target countries first, then selectively approach distributors that fit. Partnering with the wrong distributor, even an eager one, drains resources and sinks companies faster than having none at all.
Chapters
Once you have a good product offering and people hear about you, everybody's going to want to be your distributor. You're going to get contacted every day by people, maybe 20 people for every spot you have, and typically they're not going to be the right people. All right, I've found I have not had good luck over the years working with people who have reached out and contacted me. Typically, I want to reach out to the distributors. I want to choose the ones that I want. I want to find the ones with the right profile in the right countries and reach out to them. And when people reach out and contact me, now the first thing I'm gonna do is look at if they're from the right country. If they're not from the right country, if they're not from a country that I've already chosen strategically, if they're a really good distributor, I might put them aside. Otherwise, I'm just— and put them in a file so that I can remember them in the future when I might be ready for that country. But typically, I'm just going to thank them and say, you know what, at this point, I'm not moving into that country. Thank you very much for your interest. I already talked about how I choose the countries I go into. Strategic countries, and then countries that might help me get into strategic countries. And if the country isn't one of the countries I've already decided I wanted to go into, I will virtually always decide— hey, I will virtually always decide that I'm not going into that country. Because going into the wrong country is a surefire way to sink your company by wasting money. Once I decide if it's a country I want to go into or not, I'll take a look at the distributor and if they fit.
Because I will not work with a distributor who doesn't fit the right profile.
Every time I've done that, and believe me, I've done it over the years, it's always been a mistake. So it's very easy, you get a contact and you say, you know what, I don't have a distributor in Greece. I should probably work with this guy. He's interested. He's enthusiastic. Don't fall into that trap. Because that's a surefire way to suck up resources, waste your time and money, and it's not going to help you strategically. I don't want to pick somebody just because they want to be my distributor, or somebody says they might be good. I'll tell you, like, as an example, I'll have people who are in the garment business who want to be my distributors. I'll, I'll have people reach out to me who, who have donut shops. I had a guy reach out to me who wanted to be my distributor who had a chain of donut shops, and he said, you know, I'm very successful with donut shops. I can sell Capital Medical Equipment. When you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. Maybe we can help.
When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
