---
title: "Dealer Crash Course: Learning from Manufacturers to Counter Them"
description: "Dealers can improve their overall quality, but it's a systematic project not achievable in the short term. However, there are ways to reduce passivity and increase success odds in dealings with manufacturers without major adjustments. By learning from manufacturers' sales personnel and using dialectical thinking, dealers can reverse-engineer strategies to their advantage."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2015-06-16"
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# Dealer Crash Course: Learning from Manufacturers to Counter Them

> Dealers can improve their overall quality, but it's a systematic project not achievable in the short term. However, there are ways to reduce passivity and increase success odds in dealings with manufacturers without major adjustments. By learning from manufacturers' sales personnel and using dialectical thinking, dealers can reverse-engineer strategies to their advantage.

Dealers need to improve their overall quality, which is a systematic project that cannot be achieved in the short term. Many articles discuss dealer transformation. But for dealers, is there a way to reduce the passive situation in dealings with manufacturers and increase success odds without major adjustments (which carry higher risk)? The answer is yes. Dealers interact with manufacturers' sales personnel daily, so they should learn from them using dialectical thinking. How? The matters between manufacturers and dealers are无非: how to do market, how to select dealers, how to formulate standardized scripts, how to set sales policies, how to reimburse market expenses, etc. Things are a unity of opposites and contradictions. While manufacturers are busy formulating policies and measures to control and constrain dealers, dealers can seize the opportunity to learn, because these policies target dealers. Dealers sit in their offices, read various manufacturers' policies, interact with their sales personnel, and then formulate counter-policies based on those. They get guidance from experts, professors, and professional managers without spending money—something to be secretly pleased about.

In the game with manufacturers, dealers can follow these points for reverse thinking.

**Why does the manufacturer choose me?**
The manufacturer chooses me because I have resources it urgently needs—network resources—that can help it quickly open the market. Understand that dealers are the vanguard for manufacturers, the entry ticket to unfamiliar markets, and the manufacturer's sales manager. No matter the form, entry tickets are valuable. If the manufacturer says dealers are its sales managers, then demand salary and market development fees—this manager isn't free! For dealers, that's another income!

**The basis for the manufacturer's choice of me**
Manufacturers evaluate dealers on aspects like strength, market capability, management ability, reputation, and cooperation willingness. Dealers can use the same methods to evaluate manufacturers—how you look at me, I look at you.

- History: Check the manufacturer's founding time to verify its market competitiveness.
- Products: Examine main products, quality, packaging, and other indicators to verify product competitiveness.
- Management: Assess overall management style; strict ones are serious, loose ones may have problems now or later. Better avoid them now.
- Corporate awareness: Refers to marketing philosophy, product awareness, market awareness, service awareness, etc.
- Strength: Has sustainable development backup.

These can be learned through casual questions with manufacturer's marketing personnel, company documents, brochures, websites, mature market plans, etc.

**Familiarize with the manufacturer's recruitment policies and thinking**
This refers to general recruitment policies and thinking. When manufacturers come to you, carefully read all conditions and restrictions on market expense reimbursement. Don't fall into the trap of slick marketing talk.

1. Most importantly, focus on integrity; without it, there's no real cooperation. In recruitment policies, pay attention to reimbursement methods. Do this:
   - Compare sales methods, prices, and market policies in similar regions and for similar products.
   - Understand sales situations in similar regions and for similar products.
   - Learn about sales and expense reimbursement in other markets (through the manufacturer's other dealers).
   - Understand restrictions on market networks, startup capital, and team size. Because if the manufacturer hasn't found a suitable dealer, it may patch together. Once it finds a better one, it will find excuses to drop you.

2. Pay attention to prices, operating space, and reimbursement cycles for similar products. If prices are too high or cycles too long, be cautious.

3. Finally, ask for detailed market expenses and their proportions and placement methods.

**Understand whether the manufacturer is building a brand or doing market**
If building a brand, focus on brand advertising investment methods and expected effects. Brands aren't built overnight; they need culture, history, capital, market accumulation, and consumer recognition. If there's no ad spending or product connotation, but they talk brand, that's a trap. Without measures to guarantee brand, like initial ad placement, it's empty-handed trickery, no different from fraud under the brand banner.

If doing market, dealers need the manufacturer's market expansion progress plan.

A rule for dealers: price is key for brand. Low price means no brand; high price, without guaranteed market expenses, dealers shouldn't take the product. Doing market requires attention to two points: price factor and the manufacturer's market advancement speed.

**Manufacturer's detailed market promotion plan**
Dealers often encounter requests to make a market plan to verify their capability. Similarly, dealers can counter-encircle and demand the manufacturer provide market expansion progress. If the manufacturer lacks one or has a bad attitude, it shows insincerity. It only demands dealers achieve certain levels but doesn't fulfill its obligations, meaning its market expansion plan. Dealers should also consider if the manufacturer can assist in doing the market. If relying solely on dealers, be very cautious—a cliff lies ahead.

**Methods to ask for policies**
Dealers need art in facing manufacturers. While the manufacturer paints a big pie, you paint a small one, discussing market advancement speed, share, and sales volume. Of course, don't paint pies without basis; while considering yourself, use data to show your importance to the manufacturer. If it benefits the manufacturer, who else would pay?

Also show absolute loyalty to gain trust. Once the manufacturer likes you, you succeed, because your region gets extra resources. But when visiting the manufacturer, don't go empty-handed; bring a gift—not a physical gift, but a market expansion progress and expected effect plan. Your gift will be reciprocated—reciprocity is a Chinese habit—and you'll get market expense support. Don't forget, don't accept empty promises.

**Countermeasure—respond to changes with constancy**
Manufacturers think about expanding markets, generating sales, and controlling dealers. Dealers shouldn't think that way—it's thankless and futile. Here's a trick: don't guess the manufacturer's next move; just do your own things well and precisely.

Face various policies with constancy. Counter moves as they come. It's simple to wait at ease; the key is how well you counter: make every market operation step airtight, like one man guarding a pass.

**Change perspective**
This means role reversal. Dealers should view dealers from the manufacturer's standpoint. There are many books on channels and markets; read them. To gain initiative in negotiations and manufacturer-dealer games, stand in the manufacturer's shoes, understand issues, then proactively negotiate. Once your professionalism and capability exceed the manufacturer's, how will it view you? The result will make you smile: you can set conditions freely.

Hope dealer friends walk each step well. As the saying goes, "The future is bright, the road is tough." With dedication, nothing is impossible.

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