---
title: "Dealer Management Actions Decomposed (Part 7)"
description: "This section reviews common pitfalls in dealer selection and provides a detailed action process. It then focuses on techniques to stimulate dealer cooperation willingness, including negotiation skills, creating a conducive environment, being sincere yet shrewd, building momentum before negotiation, and using two-way communication to guide dealers."
author: "魏庆"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-08-11"
language: "en"
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---

# Dealer Management Actions Decomposed (Part 7)

> This section reviews common pitfalls in dealer selection and provides a detailed action process. It then focuses on techniques to stimulate dealer cooperation willingness, including negotiation skills, creating a conducive environment, being sincere yet shrewd, building momentum before negotiation, and using two-way communication to guide dealers.

**Review of Previous Section**
The previous section focused on common pitfalls encountered by sales representatives in the practical process of dealer selection, along with specific action process examples, including the following key points.

Common mistakes in the action process when salespeople select dealers in unfamiliar markets:
- Mistake 1: Preconceived notions—assuming that dealers must be well-known customers or that dealers are necessarily in wholesale markets.
- Mistake 2: Visiting dealers rashly—causing dealers to look down on the manufacturer and putting oneself at a disadvantage in negotiations.
- Mistake 3: Not paying attention to negotiations with new dealers, failing to stimulate cooperation willingness, which affects the dealer's willingness to cooperate.

Example of dealer selection work process:
1. First, the salesperson conducts an overall visit to various channels in the local market to achieve the goal of "knowing oneself, knowing the opponent, and knowing the environment."
2. Conduct terminal surveys to find target candidate customers.
3. After full preparation, negotiate with prospective dealers to ignite their confidence and stimulate their willingness to cooperate.

This section will focus on specific techniques for stimulating dealer cooperation willingness.

**Practical Action Training: Facilitating Dealer Cooperation Willingness**
Especially in the early stages of market development, whether dealers can vigorously cooperate by investing more personnel, vehicles, and energy to work with the manufacturer in distribution and promotions almost determines the success or failure of new market development. Therefore, the last step in dealer selection (which is also the first step in new market development) is crucial—designing a market development plan, encouraging dealers to actively invest, and starting the market in the shortest possible time.

**Basic Negotiation Skills for Facilitating Dealer Cooperation Willingness**

**1. Know What You're Doing**
- Begging is useless.
Small and medium brands often face a situation where "you love them, but they don't love you" when dealing with new dealers. Sometimes manufacturers beg and make various concessions (credit supply, home delivery, promising advertising and promotions, giving higher rebates) to get dealers to carry their products. This passive negotiation situation leading to an agreement is actually like drinking poison to quench thirst. Dealers buy goods to sell; they don't care how cheap the product is, but how much and at what price they can sell, and how much profit they can make in the future. Begging often backfires—most dealers won't fully invest in promoting such a pitiful brand; instead, they may take a batch of goods, intercept various market supports as their own profit, then dump the goods at low prices, and whether they even pay the manufacturer back is a question!

- Let dealers see the "money prospects," and they will come to "beg" you.
Calmly analyze the dealer's psychology. When a manufacturer approaches a dealer to become a distributor, the dealer must have two conflicting mindsets: first, excitement (a manufacturer came to me, so I must be doing well; if it works out, I'll have another profitable product); second, worry (can this product sell? What if it fails?). There is no dealer in the world who doesn't want to represent new products (that's how they make money). What they hesitate about is just "Can this product sell?" "Can it make money?" If they lack confidence in your product, even if you give them 100,000 yuan worth of goods on credit, they may not be interested. But if you gave them 100,000 yuan in cash, do you think they'd want it? Needless to say, they'd be overjoyed!

Similarly, what you need to do is balance these two conflicting mindsets—pull up their excitement and push down their worries. Specifically, go to them with a new market development plan, let them see a theoretically feasible launch model, and make them believe that with this launch method, the market can definitely be developed. Let them see your product as if it were money (these 100,000 yuan of goods equal 10,000 yuan in profit!). Then they will come to "beg you" for the distribution rights!

**2. Create the Right Environment**
Where should you discuss the new market development plan with the dealer? In the dealer's store? Of course not—there will be people buying goods, other salespeople visiting, too many distractions. Without a quiet environment, the communication of the market development plan will be disjointed, and the effect will be greatly reduced.

It's best to invite the dealer to a quiet place, such as having coffee together, having a meal, or simply going to a hotel room with a cup of tea and chatting quietly.

**3. Be Thick but Not Dull**
Outsiders always think that sales requires a certain talent (e.g., being sociable, eloquent). In reality, to do sales well, you must be down-to-earth, dedicated, and patient—like embroidering, doing the market and management stitch by stitch.

Negotiation is even more so. If you leave the impression of being eloquent and overly shrewd, with "a turn of the eye and a ghost idea," then your negotiation will definitely not succeed. Others will "tighten their pockets" when they see you.

Successful negotiators must be "thick but not dull," giving an outward impression of being honest, loyal, even a bit dull, but knowing everything inside.

How can salespeople embody "thick but not dull" when facing dealers?

Don't make unfounded promises!

Many salespeople use "street talk" to motivate dealers, such as:
- "Don't worry, our product will definitely make money. Many wholesalers who became our agents turned their fortunes around in a year."
- "Don't worry, if it doesn't sell, I'll advertise for you and do promotions for you!"
- "Don't worry, if it doesn't sell, we'll take it back!"
- "Don't worry, with our brotherly relationship, how could I cheat you..."

Such baseless big talk only has the opposite effect. Dealers have heard too much of this kind of talk and have been fooled by it! When you say this, they just think you're dishonest, unreliable, and full of hot air—and the hot air is even standing up and running!

A professional and rigorous way of expression is: when discussing promotional support with dealers, be specific down to people/place/policy/time/target customers/responsibilities of both manufacturer and customer... The more detailed you are, the more credible and persuasive you are!

For example:
"Boss Zhang, if you stock 500 cases on May 1st, I plan to first do a wholesaler reward for you: 'Buy three boxes and get an umbrella.' I've brought the umbrella sample for you to see. From May 1st to 4th, I'll coordinate with you to distribute the promotional flyers. I've already printed them; here's a sample. Then on May 4th, our company will send two Iveco vans and four sales reps. Oh, by the way, I have a photo of our company's factory truck here (with large colorful ads on the body, very nice). Then you can provide two more vans and four people. Together, we'll have four vans and eight people to do mobile sales distribution to the 'Ximen Sugar and Wine Market,' 'Zhongshan Market,' and over 300 wholesalers and large retail stores on six main streets. I estimate the first round of mobile sales will take two days and should move about 300 cases. That means after you stock on May 1st, by May 6th, your inventory will be only a little over 100 cases..."

This kind of detailed description—who, when, which customers, what promotions, estimated sales volume—makes the dealer feel credible, thinking, "This young man is honest, a doer, not a big talker."

**4. The Skilled Move at the Highest Level**
If your product has no brand awareness locally, it's best not to rashly negotiate with dealers. No matter how well you've planned the launch plan, the other party will still have doubts.

What to do? Build momentum first, do distribution, then enter the market. The skilled move is at the highest level!

There are two main approaches:
1. Small and medium brands should not "plant crops on barren land."
For completely unfamiliar markets, consider deliberately shipping a batch of goods there to let the product sell naturally for a while. Once it has some recognition, then go to dealers and say, "We haven't even entered yet, but people are already buying our products from parallel channels. Currently, parallel imports alone sell over 300 cases a month. If you take the distribution rights, this sales volume is yours for the taking!"

2. Reverse channel building.
If you've already identified two dealers but they are cold to you, even ignoring you, what to do? First, send people to set up a local office, directly do terminal distribution, promotions, and community publicity (to build momentum), while spreading the word that the manufacturer is looking for a local dealer—soon dealers will come knocking.

Readers might have doubts: building momentum is right, but it costs money and time! How to calculate this cost?

I suggest thinking differently.

Yes, building momentum costs money and time, but it allows you to take the initiative in negotiations with dealers, find better dealers, secure better cooperation from customers, and make market development smoother.

Conversely, entering the market without building momentum and distribution may force you to settle for a less satisfactory dealer, make more concessions in contract negotiations, get less customer support, and have poor implementation of manufacturer policies. Market expansion might fail.

Business is like this: either you take the initiative or you're passive! Either you pay a price to be proactive, then earn profits to compensate for your earlier efforts. Or you don't pay, become passive, and then pay a bigger price later!

Besides, even if you directly find a dealer, wouldn't you still spend time and money helping them do promotions to start the market? It's just reversing the order—do promotion first, then find the dealer!

**5. Two-Way Communication**
When communicating the new market development plan with dealers, don't just do one-way indoctrination. First, your launch plan may not be entirely correct; after all, dealers know the market better than you, so listening to their opinions is beneficial. Second, no matter how detailed your launch plan is, if it's purely one-way, you'll "recite" it in less than 15 minutes. The dealer will listen at first, then just respond with absent-minded "uh-huh"—anyway, they'll remember one thing: "You planned the launch plan, and you want to do promotions for him." When it's time for the dealer to provide people and vehicles to assist, they might be reluctant because they think "these should be the manufacturer's job." If the promotion results are poor, they'll blame the manufacturer, thinking the product is bad or the launch plan is poor.

True negotiation experts can "shift positions" during negotiation, saying what the other party wants to say from their own mouth, and getting the other party to say what they want to say.

1. Say what the other party wants to say from your own mouth—the "address concerns first" method.
If you know the dealer will definitely have a certain concern, don't avoid it (if the dealer raises the concern themselves, you'll be passive). Instead, proactively raise the concern yourself, and use a tone that minimizes the issue, making the dealer feel that "this difficulty is normal, a small matter, and can be resolved."

For example:
When getting a dealer to carry a new product, the dealer will inevitably worry: "This product has no local recognition; can it sell?" (If you let the dealer say this themselves, then you explain, it becomes serious.) What you need to do is preemptively voice the dealer's concern. "Boss Zhang, this is your first time carrying this new product, so don't rush to stock too much. I suggest you try 200 cases first, and I'll immediately follow up to help you distribute (specific distribution and promotion plan). If it sells, you've spent 10,000 yuan to 'try out' a good-selling product. If it doesn't sell, with your store location, network strength, plus my promotional assistance, you definitely won't be stuck with this stock."

2. Get the dealer to say what you want to say.
During the discussion of the specific launch plan, the manufacturer's personnel should pay attention to asking more questions and guiding the dealer to speak. If your questions and guidance are appropriate, you can completely "get the manufacturer's ideas out of the dealer's mouth."

For example:
Background: In a certain market, the mainstream product is 500ml PET apple juice, and 350ml paper-packaged juice also has some sales. The market has developed supermarkets, while wholesale and retail are declining. The manufacturer has three products: A, B, and C. A and B are 500ml PET juices, and C is 330ml paper-packaged juice. A and B have no advantage over competitors, while C, though not mainstream, has clear advantages in price and packaging.

Manufacturer's plan:
- Product strategy: Use product C as the entry point (use the advantageous product to quickly open the market, establish relationships with channels and supermarkets, and boost dealer confidence. Then follow up with other products).
- Channel strategy: Because the product has advantages, start with the mainstream channel—supermarkets.

Negotiation demonstration:
Sales rep asks: "Boss Zhang, if we cooperate, which product do you think we should use first to enter the market?"
Dealer answers: "I think we should start with A and B. People here mainly drink 500ml PET juice; this category has high sales volume."
Sales rep analysis: "Oh no! The dealer's idea is different from mine, and obviously his idea is a bit empirical and not smart. What to do? Directly refute the dealer? That often backfires, sometimes causing emotional opposition and arguments! What to do? Follow his words and 'draw a circle' to guide him."
Sales rep response: "Right, Boss Zhang, you're right. You understand this market thoroughly. Indeed, 500ml PET juice is mainstream here, and in the future, we'll definitely focus on A and B. But there's one thing I'm hesitant about, and I'm not sure if it's right. Let me share it and get your advice. Although 500ml PET is mainstream, if you compare our A and B products with competitors, you'll see they have no advantage. Product C, though not mainstream, has significant advantages in price and packaging. I'm thinking, maybe we shouldn't make it too hard on ourselves at the beginning! Let's start with the advantageous C product, quickly open the market, let downstream customers make money, build some confidence, and leave a good impression on supermarkets. Then we can follow up with A and B. What do you think?"
Dealer answers: "Hmm, that makes sense. Actually, I was thinking the same thing!"
Sales rep responds: "Great, we're on the same page!"

Sales rep asks the second question: "Boss Zhang, which channel should we attack first? Should we give concessions to wholesalers or supermarkets first?"
Dealer answers: "Of course, supermarkets first. Wholesale is already dead here!"
Sales rep analysis: "Good: this time the customer thinks the same as me."
Sales rep responds: "Right, Boss Zhang, we're on the same page again. I'm an outsider and don't know this market well. I was also thinking supermarkets should be the main channel, but I couldn't make up my mind. Your words make me more confident."

Sales rep asks the third question: "Boss Zhang, what promotions should we do for the first wave?"...

In this way, through question and answer, when the dealer's answer differs from the sales rep's original plan, first listen to the dealer's "reason"—if it makes sense, the sales rep adjusts his plan. If the dealer's idea is one-sided, the sales rep first praises ("You know the local market better"), then guides ("But I have another idea to discuss with you..."). If the dealer's idea matches the sales rep's, praise it and move to the next question.

In the end, the manufacturer's launch plan actually comes out of the dealer's mouth. A dealer executing a launch plan he "made" himself will definitely be seven points more proactive and three points less evasive.

This is like finding a partner: you can't just meet "her" and say, "My name is Zhang San, let's go see a movie." To succeed, you need to "intentionally or unintentionally" show your strengths in front of "her" (e.g., career success, erudition, cheerfulness, etc.). Once the "momentum" is built, "she" will discuss further development with you.

**Preview of Next Section**
How should a new market development plan be formulated? What are the common models? How should promotional priorities for new market development be arranged for different levels of markets? The next section will elaborate on these issues.

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