Zach Selch breaks down how to screen distributors with three questions: Do they sell to your target customers? Do they carry comparable products and have the right sales assets? Does their sales process match yours? Filter out those who can't answer yes to all three.
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Once you have an idea of what you're looking for in a distributor, you can put together a couple of questions, say 3 questions, that really summarize what you're looking for in a distributor. Because what's going to happen is you are going to be introduced to people all the time. People are going to come up to you at trade shows. People are going to say, I know this distributor you should work with, etc. And you can pretty much summarize what you're looking for. For instance, are they selling to certain types of people? Okay? Do they have certain assets? Do they have the right type of assets for what you need? Are they experienced in the things that you need specifically? Okay? And what I like to do, I can really summarize this into 3 things. Are they selling right now to the certain— to the end users I'm dealing with? Do they have enough sales assets? How many products do they carry? And What I mostly want to know, I can really, if I ask somebody what products you carry today, I can get a good feel. Are they at a similar price point to what I sell? Do they have a similar sales process to what I sell? And are they sold to the same end users? Okay. Because within medical, for instance, you have distributors that sell a vast, wide range of different products. And what I'm looking for are people who can sell to the right end users, understand the type of sales process I have, have and are comfortable with my price point? Those are the real basics. After people pass that, I might be willing to talk to them. I'll ask them more questions. I'll dig down deeper. But if they can't answer those 3 questions the way I want them to, there's nothing to continue talking about. Okay? And I suggest that for any product, any market that you're dealing with, you can come up with questions like that. And then when you are introduced to potential distributors, you can do the same thing. You can basically Well, these are the questions I have. How do you answer them? Are you a good fit or not? Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
