Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Hi Philips,

That is a very challanging question to answer without having an insight of your potential customer. when you try to serve a domestic market, you need to find out the week points of big brands serving large set of customers. Find out your USP and this will come only after you will do your research on what customer is not getting from big players or even small player who is your competitor. DOn;t try to be every tom dick and herry. find out your differentiation quote.

one you have that, then chossing out a medium to market yourself will also require little bit of research. What to communicate and how to communicate, both makes huge difference to yor overall growth.

I wish you all the best for your venture.

Nishant Manchanda
www.virtualroundtable.wordpress.com

First, look at it from the broker point of view. Your goal is to make them money. When I approach this market, I am totally clear in my mind-- if I cannot make them money I have no value

Remember the broker/dealer puts their reputation on the line when they use you. There is a lot more at stake than the loss of one sale-- the lifetime value of these clients is large. Therefore the way to sell this is one on one. Make appointments with the brokers and start talking. It is going to take more than one call so don't get discouraged. They have been approached by more than one "flash in the pan" who make a great "pitch" and are never heard from again. Your dealer wants someone who will be with them -- thick and thin and weather the storms with them.

PK's (product knowledge) classes are very good sales tools. And you want a long term buddy-- make them money. Pull thru sales for them. Drop a couple in their lap. They'll turn a lot quicker. So support their efforts by doing marketing to the end user. Feed the leads to the broker and follow up-- make sure they did what you expect them to do.

I used to cover a 300K Square mile territory for a group of manufacturers-- all sold via dealer/distributor network. I remember coming into one town and just having a terrible reception. No one could see the value of my products and no one would give me time of day. I identifed a major user and made a sales call. The loved the product and could see what the dealers didn'(I knew they would). So I asked "who do you purchase this type of thing from"? And went back to the very dealer who gave me the brush off. I had a sale for him -- from the largest end users in the area. He was my first dealer. Then because this end user was so large the other retailers wanted a piece of their business. So they started calling me "can I retail this product". I ended up turning some down-- I limited the # of dealers in the area. This is an example of what I mean by "pull thru" sales.