---
title: "How Can Distributors Advance the Launch of Strategic New Products?"
description: "For manufacturers, one of the values of distributors is helping them distribute new products to local retail outlets. For distributors themselves, sales growth, channel stimulation, product structure optimization, and maintaining market activity all depend on introducing new products. However, launching new products is not easy, and a boss's confidence is often affected by factors such as fear that employees won't push the new products, concerns about terminal acceptance, high distribution costs, or slow sales leading to returns. The key is proper planning and preparation before the launch."
author: "潘文富"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-05-30"
language: "en"
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---

# How Can Distributors Advance the Launch of Strategic New Products?

> For manufacturers, one of the values of distributors is helping them distribute new products to local retail outlets. For distributors themselves, sales growth, channel stimulation, product structure optimization, and maintaining market activity all depend on introducing new products. However, launching new products is not easy, and a boss's confidence is often affected by factors such as fear that employees won't push the new products, concerns about terminal acceptance, high distribution costs, or slow sales leading to returns. The key is proper planning and preparation before the launch.

For manufacturers, one of the values of distributors is helping them distribute new products to local retail outlets.
For distributors themselves, sales growth, channel stimulation, product structure optimization, and maintaining market activity all depend on introducing new products. So distributors are almost constantly introducing and promoting new products throughout the year.
**Of course, launching new products is not easy, and a boss's confidence is often affected by these factors:**
1. Worry that employees are unwilling to distribute new products;
2. Worry that during distribution, terminal customers won't accept them;
3. Worry that the cost of distributing new products is too high, or that it will lead to large accounts receivable;
4. Worst of all, after distribution, the products don't sell, and after a few months, they become near-expiry items and are returned.
If new products are hard to distribute, you can't blame the market; it's more about the distributor's own lack of upfront planning and preparation. If the distribution push is too simple and direct, requiring all salespeople to directly distribute to all terminals, efficiency is naturally hard to guarantee.
For ordinary new products, simplicity might be acceptable, but for important strategic new products, it's essential to do careful preparation in advance:
**1. Functional positioning of the new product**
From a product portfolio perspective, each product should have a clear functional positioning, such as whether it's for volume and traffic, or to drive sales of other products? Or is it high-margin? Or does it have a strong brand that enhances the distributor's company image? Or is it to open new channels? Or to learn operational techniques and train the team? Or to use this new product to enter a completely new field?
No product is perfect, and don't expect one product to carry too many functions. So, it's necessary to give the new product a clear functional positioning in advance, determining what function it will serve in the overall product structure.
**2. Product presentation meeting**
Salespeople are naturally unfamiliar with new products, so you can't assume everyone will understand them. Therefore, it's very necessary to hold a dedicated product presentation meeting, preferably with the manufacturer's business manager to introduce the product, covering market background, competitor status, R&D experience, production process and raw material characteristics, functional features, pricing system, market positioning, operational philosophy, and rollout steps. If the product unit price is low, consider giving each salesperson a sample to further understand the product.
**3. Who will distribute**
Not all salespeople are willing to distribute new products, nor are they all capable. In the early stage, only select some willing and capable salespeople to do the new product distribution work, while also exploring and summarizing experience to prepare for full-scale distribution later.
**4. Where to distribute first**
Traditional distribution covers the entire region and all channels (though manufacturers often require this). In reality, not all terminals are suitable for new products. In the early stage, it's best to distribute locally, choosing terminals that meet two criteria: first, the terminal's current product tier matches the new product; second, the customer relationship is good.
**5. Preparation for the sales team before full distribution**
**Before full distribution, two points must be considered:**
1. Are salespeople willing to do this time-consuming and laborious distribution work? After all, in a distributor's sales team, there are many who do part-time jobs for other companies, sell their own goods, fabricate expenses, embezzle promotional resources, steal goods, or secretly withhold payments.
2. Do all salespeople master the complete new product distribution techniques?
**So, based on these two points, some work must be introduced before full distribution:**
1. Sign a supplementary labor contract attachment stating that the company does not allow part-time work, and if discovered, the employee can be dismissed immediately and economic losses pursued.
2. Arrange legal education lectures, inviting economic crime investigators from public security to explain to employees what constitutes misappropriation of public funds, embezzlement, occupational embezzlement, theft, and what amounts lead to how many years in prison, etc. It's best to say these things upfront; this isn't to scare employees but to be responsible for them, as some young people commit crimes because they don't know the legal consequences.
3. Centralize communication tools: the communication tools used by salespeople to contact customers, including phone numbers, WeChat, email, etc., must be registered under the company's name, then assigned to employees. This way, even if an employee leaves, the number belongs to the company and can be transferred to another employee.
4. The boss should proactively repair credibility: sometimes, because of poor memory, the boss forgets small promises to employees, and because the matters are small, employees are embarrassed to mention them, such as an employee advancing money for a cup of coffee. After a few such incidents, employees feel the boss lacks credibility. This affects the credibility of the boss's reward promises for new products. So, before the new product distribution, the boss should proactively ask everyone if there are any previous promises or expenses advanced by employees that the boss forgot, and ask them to raise them for centralized handling.
5. Specialized training and on-site drills: have the salespeople who executed the new product distribution in the early stage act as trainers, based on their actual distribution experience, to provide specialized technical training to all salespeople, and require all salespeople to conduct on-site simulated distribution drills one by one.
**6. Preparation for the customer base**
Among all the preparatory work before distribution, customer relationships are the most important. After all, in Chinese culture, face is more important than profit. So, several preparatory steps should be introduced for the customer base:
1. Verify current customer information one by one (via phone), to prevent situations like customers closing, long periods without maintenance, or changes in information;
2. Arrange internal staff to ask each verified customer about any historical issues, whether there are unresolved problems that cause customers to have complaints about the company, as this will affect the upcoming new product distribution. If historical issues are found, they should be resolved promptly, at least before the new product distribution;
3. Enhance customer relationships: through measures such as congratulating customer contacts on life events, giving books on store operations, and arranging gifts for their children, to strengthen relationships before distribution;
4. Functional classification of terminals: different types of terminals have different value for new products. Besides basic sales volume, some terminals have high image and status, which can enhance the new product's launch image; some terminals have high customer traffic, making them platforms for on-site promotional activities; some terminals serve as industry benchmarks, influencing other terminals' decisions to stock the new product; for such terminals, consider arranging buybacks if necessary.

Author: Pan Wenfu
Born into a private business owner family, he managed a family distributor company for many years, during which he also served as business manager and trainer for several production enterprises. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend construction, and veterans entering private enterprises. He continuously breaks down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises and keeps updating materials and solutions.

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