--- title: "Distributor Selection Strategy" description: "Many distributors develop external markets by sending a delivery truck to periodically visit several counties/cities to drop off goods, with sales staff earning commissions based on sales. While this approach is quick and simple, it often leads to problems such as price confusion, low sell-through rates, poor display effectiveness, and stockouts. The root cause is the lack of a unified market manager. Selecting a suitable distributor to centralize supply, while the upstream distributor still provides vehicles and personnel for periodic visits to help with distribution and market maintenance, can solve these issues. The distributor is granted local \"general agency\" rights, making market maintenance directly tied to their interests, thus ensuring dedicated efforts. Choosing the right distributor is crucial for market development success." author: "New Distribution" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2014-07-14" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributor-selection-strategy-4a08f393/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributor-selection-strategy-4a08f393.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Z01U7GXD165lDp3W1HpmqQ" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%88%86%E9%94%80%E5%95%86%E7%9A%84%E9%80%89%E6%8B%A9%E7%AD%96%E7%95%A5-4a08f393.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributor-selection-strategy-4a08f393/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Distributor Selection Strategy > Many distributors develop external markets by sending a delivery truck to periodically visit several counties/cities to drop off goods, with sales staff earning commissions based on sales. While this approach is quick and simple, it often leads to problems such as price confusion, low sell-through rates, poor display effectiveness, and stockouts. The root cause is the lack of a unified market manager. Selecting a suitable distributor to centralize supply, while the upstream distributor still provides vehicles and personnel for periodic visits to help with distribution and market maintenance, can solve these issues. The distributor is granted local "general agency" rights, making market maintenance directly tied to their interests, thus ensuring dedicated efforts. Choosing the right distributor is crucial for market development success. **Friendly Reminder: Click the ↑ above to follow "FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting" for more marketing and distributor internal management content.** Many distributors' policy for developing external markets is: use a delivery truck to periodically visit several counties/cities to drop off goods, with sales staff earning commissions based on sales. The advantage of this approach is quick results and simple execution, but if you actually have the patience to visit the market, you'll find many problems: price confusion, low sell-through rates, poor display effectiveness, some merchants with overstocked goods, while many stores (small shops, supermarkets, etc.) have long been out of stock, but don't know where to get supplies, so they just wait eagerly for the next "delivery truck" to arrive... The root cause of all these problems is that there is no unified manager for this market; everyone is a second-tier distributor on equal footing, all buying and selling goods to earn the price difference, with no one taking responsibility, so naturally no one cares. Choosing a suitable distributor for centralized supply, while the upstream distributor still sends vehicles and personnel for periodic visits to the local market, but not to sell directly, rather to help the distributor with distribution and market maintenance. The distributor is granted local "general agency" rights, making the market his own, and issues like distribution rate and customer stockouts directly affect his interests, so he will naturally spare no effort to maintain it. With such a local customer "worrying" for the distributor, the distributor can save considerable manpower, transportation, and costs, and market performance and total sales will naturally rise. The relationship between the distributor and the dealer is relatively simple (since most dealers lack the strength to bypass the distributor and do "channel refinement" direct sales in external markets), all sales plans and strategies must be executed by the distributor, who acts as the dealer's local sales manager and business partner. For this reason, the success or failure of distributor selection often determines the success or failure of market development. **Key points for distributor selection are as follows:** 1. Treat the distributor as your own employee. Consider them as part of your marketing team and network; choose comprehensively, and after selection, provide more care, support, and guidance, building strong relationships through your service and credibility. 2. Selection criteria should have a global perspective. Don't approach it purely from a commercial or trade standpoint (e.g., size, wealth, or how much they can buy at once). Choosing a business partner is like choosing a spouse; being wealthy and powerful doesn't necessarily mean they're suitable. What matters is whether they love you (i.e., willingness to cooperate), and their business qualities (including business ethics, reputation, credibility, marketing awareness, and service capability to downstream customers) are also key to whether your "marriage" will be happy. 3. Selection criteria should have a long-term perspective. I. The customer network should match the designated area. The purpose of choosing a distributor is to incorporate their sales network (group purchase network, retail customer network) into your sales system, thereby widely distributing products in the target area, making it convenient for users who need your products to buy nearby. II. Pay attention to the external environment of the county/city: If the surrounding counties/townships are affluent and commercially valuable, then the distributor here should have sufficient strength (especially manpower and transportation), because you will also rely on them to further develop and maintain these surrounding areas. III. Try not to choose overly large customers: Consider the size of your designated area and choose a customer whose network strength matches that area. Avoid overly large customers for two reasons: first, they may not focus on your products; second, their strong sales network often becomes a tool for "holding the market to control the upstream" and for dumping goods and disrupting prices. IV. Channel richness of the customer: Consider your current main products and future product additions; the external distributor's sales network should ideally be "compatible" with all your main product lines. Otherwise, if you choose a distributor specializing in instant noodles, they may be great at selling noodles but helpless with your liquor products. --- **Like this article? Feel free to click the top right corner to share it to your Moments;** About us: WeChat ID: FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting Management Account intro: 20 years of FMCG distributor operation and management experience, professionally targeting distributor internal affairs: Click the "Read Original" below to enter our micro-community for interactive communication and questions. **Learning and exchange QQ group: 344257092** **Reply 1 to enter the micro-official website to view historical messages.** --- --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671