--- title: "The Terminal That No One Can Take Away" description: "A distributor's terminal customer files are often fabricated out of fear that manufacturers will bypass them and serve end customers directly. To secure these assets, distributors must build service dependency and excellence, while manufacturers must uphold commercial ethics and form strategic alliances." author: "New Distribution" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2014-09-04" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-terminal-that-no-one-can-take-away-e00b5376/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-terminal-that-no-one-can-take-away-e00b5376.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/l6mn6k7nWQwIoDFaq1OPuA" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E8%B0%81%E4%B9%9F%E6%8B%BF%E4%B8%8D%E8%B5%B0%E7%9A%84%E7%BB%88%E7%AB%AF-e00b5376.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-terminal-that-no-one-can-take-away-e00b5376/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # The Terminal That No One Can Take Away > A distributor's terminal customer files are often fabricated out of fear that manufacturers will bypass them and serve end customers directly. To secure these assets, distributors must build service dependency and excellence, while manufacturers must uphold commercial ethics and form strategic alliances. **Warm Tip: Click the blue text above “FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting” to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management.** A few years ago, during a market research study on distributors, I found that the terminal customer files provided by distributors were largely inaccurate. After some hesitation, a distributor with whom I had a good personal relationship admitted with embarrassment: the reason for providing fabricated lists was the fear that the manufacturer would bypass the distributor to serve terminals directly and take them away. The hardships distributors typically endure in building retail terminals are hard to put into words. If there is any considerable wealth for distributors, the number of terminal customers and their interdependence occupy the most prominent position. In recent years, manufacturers committed to brand building have mostly extended their market service tentacles to terminal customers, shifting from simply pursuing sales volume growth to pursuing sales quality improvement, pulling distributors along to do terminal service together. In plain terms, the brand war is already burning fiercely at the terminal level! Against this backdrop, terminal customer files have become a focal point. The manufacturer says: Distributors gain terminal trust relying on the manufacturer's brand and service. To ensure service quality, please hand over the terminal list. We will provide more, more direct, and more detailed services for your terminals, thereby making your market more stable and higher quality. The distributor thinks: This is my only wealth. If I hand it all to you, and you directly manage and serve, although it may promote development now, if you replace me one day, wouldn't all my efforts be in vain? I later found that this mentality is more or less common among distributors. The contradiction between manufacturers and distributors on this issue seriously affects the quality of terminal development, service, and management. In the long run, the interests of both sides suffer undue damage. On the terminal issue, how to step out of the misunderstanding and achieve a win-win situation is crucial for both manufacturers and distributors! First, from the distributor's perspective, an important indicator to consider is how your terminal network was established: was it passively developed relying on the manufacturer's brand, or was it built through your own strong services under the brand's impetus? Going deeper, does your terminal depend on your service? If so, then no one can take this terminal away from you. Conversely, if not, then this terminal largely belongs to the manufacturer, and hiding the terminal list anywhere is unreliable. Some distributors say dejectedly: The reason I fear the manufacturer taking away my terminals is that the brand power is too strong, and my service is relatively weak. Some say: Manufacturer and distributor factors are complementary; lacking any one factor may cause terminals to drift away. Some even say they are unclear whether their service position or brand power matters more in the minds of terminals. My view is: - Believe that in the development of bulk product markets, the distribution system is hard to bypass. It is difficult and unnecessary for manufacturers to replace distributors in directly serving terminals. - Any manufacturer hopes to cooperate with the best distributors in the market, just as all distributors hope to obtain the best manufacturer brands. - Regardless of the state of the relationship between the distributor and terminal customers, if you clearly understand this relationship and want the terminal network to become your stable wealth, you must seize the important opportunities brought by the manufacturer's brand, act quickly, spare no effort to improve the quality and intensity of terminal services, continuously introduce new methods and projects, make your terminal customers more satisfied, and become closer to each other, becoming the undisputed choice for terminals! Only then can you have sufficient and equal say, and only then can you be fearless of the manufacturer. - Distributors must continuously strive to surpass peers and pursue leadership in capital assurance, service control, logistics efficiency, new product promotion, and complaint handling capabilities. Only then can you be worthy of the manufacturer. - Only by building yourself into an excellent service brand can a distributor, through cooperation with an excellent manufacturer brand, jointly create an excellent and lasting market! Of course, on the manufacturer's side, avoiding and eliminating distributors' concerns about terminal sharing is equally crucial. A profit-driven manufacturer that, after achieving certain results, becomes arrogant and ignores distributor interests will fundamentally lose trust in the market, causing enormous harm to terminals. Many brands have had bloody lessons in their development. The manufacturer's commercial ethics are the foundation for developing a lasting market! Increasingly mature distributors are also keeping a close eye on manufacturers, scrutinizing their commercial ethics. Caring for distributors, sparing no effort to help them improve service quality and enhance closeness with terminal customers, is becoming the central task of brand channel construction. Undoubtedly, only by forming a strategic alliance among manufacturers and distributors, with three-in-one interdependence in terminal construction, can true win-win be achieved! --- **Like this article? 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