---
title: "10 Wrong Mindsets in Distributor Market Operations"
description: "Distributors are the builders of a company's market channels and terminals, and strategic partners in product sales. A professional distributor team is crucial for a company's rapid development, while a poor one can hinder it. This article lists ten common mistakes distributors make in their operations, as identified by marketing expert Guo Han Yao, and emphasizes the importance of training and communication to build a successful distributor network."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-05-29"
language: "en"
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---

# 10 Wrong Mindsets in Distributor Market Operations

> Distributors are the builders of a company's market channels and terminals, and strategic partners in product sales. A professional distributor team is crucial for a company's rapid development, while a poor one can hinder it. This article lists ten common mistakes distributors make in their operations, as identified by marketing expert Guo Han Yao, and emphasizes the importance of training and communication to build a successful distributor network.

Distributors are the builders of a company's market channels and terminals, and strategic partners in the company's channel pathways and product terminal sales. The relationship between a company and its distributors is interdependent and close. A professional and excellent distributor team will effectively implement marketing strategic plans and promote rapid company development; conversely, it will cause the company to stagnate. This requires companies not only to carefully select and develop distributors but also to strengthen the management and training of the existing distributor team, building a new type of distributor team that is excellent, professional, and dedicated. Guo Han Yao, a practical terminal marketing management expert, based on his recent experience in providing marketing theory training to brand company distributors, lists the erroneous concepts in specific distributor management affairs:

**Mistake 1: Distributors think that the brand is not their business, but the manufacturer's.**
In today's highly homogeneous and competitive market, customers' purchases are mostly driven by their recognition of the brand. While sharing the benefits brought by the brand, distributors should not leave brand building solely to the manufacturer. They must actively participate in brand building because an important part of brand building is terminal display, sales, after-sales service, etc. The quality of products and services is the actual recognition customers have from purchase to use. The brand culture runs through many aspects of products and services. It is the result of joint efforts by the company, distributors, and even terminal stores. To achieve higher brand recognition, distributors must participate in brand building to better share the brand effect.

**Mistake 2: Distributors are unwilling to invest in brand advertising, showing serious short-term behavior.**
Distributors are at the forefront of product sales and often the biggest beneficiaries of brand profits. Wise distributors should be good at promoting the brand, creating the best sales atmosphere to leverage brand strength, attract more customers, achieve greater sales, and thus gain a larger market share in the region. This investment can be manifested as: sparing no effort to implement the headquarters' advertising strategy, using every advertising dollar and poster well, timely investing in advertising to promote the brand at the terminal and seize the market. However, some distributors are unwilling to invest in brand advertising, only taking without giving, even killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, showing serious short-term behavior.

**Mistake 3: Distributors wait for customers passively, only knowing how to be a "sitting merchant," not how to market proactively, and not knowing how to go out and expand customer resources.**
The era of "good wine needs no bush" is long gone. The market, with homogeneous and diverse products and fierce competition, requires refined and penetrating terminal sales. Distributors must go out, actively promote and guide, build more connections, and let more people know about your store, products, and services to achieve better sales. Connections are money connections; the ever-increasing network of contacts will effectively promote sales. A traveling merchant is more effective than a sitting merchant. As a distributor, you cannot wait for customers to come to you; you must learn to go out and expand your customer base.

**Mistake 4: Distributors sell special-priced items as regular products to make huge profits, harming the brand.**
Special sales items are part of a company's marketing strategy. Based on the characteristics of the special items (such as different quality, inventory, out-of-season products, trial new products, etc.), the company uses special sales to achieve strategic goals such as market research, new product development, and timely clearance. In this activity, distributors are the company's eyes and hands, playing a major role in market feedback. Selling special items as regular products is a petty advantage that directly prevents the company's strategic goals from being achieved and ultimately harms the distributor's own interests. It is like a "three-edged sword," harming the company, distributors, and consumers alike. Distributors must fully follow the brand manufacturer's deployment and sell special-priced items at special prices, not seeking short-term huge profits that affect the brand's reputation.

**Mistake 5: Distributors do not participate in the company's unified promotional activities, only pursuing high added value from product profits.**
The company's nationwide unified promotional activities are designed with important marketing strategic purposes, formulated after thorough market research. The purpose is to promote the brand, attack competitive brands, create sales highlights, and create a nationwide sales atmosphere, thereby driving rapid brand improvement and nationwide product promotion. Only when all distributors actively and consistently participate can a trend be formed and the expected strategic goals be achieved. At the same time, promotions are also an important means for regional distributors to activate regional consumers to buy actively, attract and increase new customers, and achieve expanded sales. Distributors participating in the company's nationwide unified promotional activities not only jointly promote brand growth and enhancement but also effectively expand the brand in the region, thereby improving terminal sales.

**Mistake 6: Distributors sell products at high prices, pursuing high added value per unit product, ignoring economies of scale, failing to achieve win-win cooperation between manufacturer and distributor, and failing to pursue a win-win value chain for social interests.**
Distributors who make this mistake first fail to recognize the economies of scale in product marketing. They only see the sky from the bottom of a well, winning temporary small money but losing precious integrity. In product sales, the most attention is paid to price. The market unified guidance price set by the company is formed through precise market analysis and is scientific and reasonable. The company requires unified terminal and price to form a brand product scale effect with unified price and service. At the same time, in today's era of rapid information transmission, raising prices can only win today but lose tomorrow. Secondly, good brands should have strong social win-win characteristics, pursuing a three-way win-win for the company, merchants, and consumers, creating a harmonious social supply-demand environment, and realizing the brand's social value is also the responsibility and obligation of merchants.

**Mistake 7: Distributors are content with small success and do not strive for progress, affecting the brand and product's local market share.**
"Learning is like rowing upstream; not advancing means falling behind." The same applies to business: the thought of being content with small success and easily satisfied is extremely wrong and dangerous. In today's fiercely competitive era, if you don't run, you die; if you run slowly, you are eliminated. Distributors who do not strive for progress not only affect the brand and product's local market share but may also be caught up by competing merchants who occupy your original market. Therefore, as a distributor, you must dare to grow, dare to think and act, and only then can you grow together with the brand and dominate the region.

**Mistake 8: Distributors do not cooperate enough with the brand headquarters, insufficient terminal image display, and cannot strengthen terminal image presentation according to the headquarters' intentions.**
Terminal image display is an important content for attracting customers and achieving sales. Good display not only effectively appeals to the brand image but also moves passersby, attracts attention, guides consumption, and promotes sales. The terminal image of a brand specialty store is usually carefully designed by the company: comprehensive consideration, exquisite design, reasonable display, strong brand culture and appeal, and requires all specialty stores to be the same, so that the brand is highly consistent and recognized. Only by strengthening the image presentation of terminal specialty stores can it be consistent with the company's brand promotion, making customers think of the brand when they see the sign and display, directly promoting sales.

**Mistake 9: Distributors do not attach importance to after-sales service, saving after-sales service costs, and short-term behavior cannot increase repeat purchases from old customers.**
After-sales service is an important part of product marketing and one of the important contents of brand building. Good products + good after-sales service = good brand. Customer recognition, satisfaction, and repeat purchase rate are 100% from good after-sales service. Therefore, distributors must do a good job in after-sales service to drive more old customers to buy and promote faster terminal development. Ignoring after-sales service, on the surface, saves costs, but in essence, it quickly loses existing customers. "Good deeds never go beyond the door, but bad deeds spread a thousand miles" quickly affects the entire market, making sales work impossible.

**Mistake 10: Distributors do not stock up during the peak season, do not understand that "abundant goods can rotate," order insufficiently, cannot replenish orders in the peak season, affecting sales performance.**
New distributors and old-timers are prone to this mistake. The former lack experience and dare not order enough; the latter often use their resource advantages to replenish goods when needed. The result of both is not only making themselves flustered but also disrupting the company's plans, making it impossible to respond, and ultimately having no goods to supply, affecting both parties' sales performance and greatly damaging the distributor's own interests and image. Therefore, during the peak season, you must fully investigate the demand market, stock up sufficiently, and do the peak season sales well and thoroughly. Only with abundant goods can they rotate; insufficient ordering leads to stockouts, and stockouts are equivalent to suicide. In the futures system era, the timeliness of replenishment orders is increasingly not guaranteed. Therefore, stocking up and ordering enough goods during the peak season is an important guarantee for improving sales.

There are many reasons for distributors making the above mistakes, such as cultural vision, sales common sense, regional conditions, etc. But all distributors want to earn more money. How to teach them to correct their views? Only better development can win a larger market. This is an important task for brand companies. No one is born knowing, and no one becomes excellent without learning. Brand companies must have an excellent new-type distributor team that keeps pace with the times. While providing comprehensive, complete, and sufficient technology and funds, they also need to pay attention to communication and training with distributors. Training is the fastest weapon for unifying thoughts. Only by continuously strengthening distributor training can the brand headquarters build a dedicated, professional, and attentive distributor team to win together.

-END-

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