Wholesale distributors involved with a dealer channel that serves the end user have unique challenges in sales management. Ideally, this dealer channel should be strongly aligned with their wholesale distributors. That means a sharing of common goals and objectives with accountability on both sides of the equation. Dealers are not customers. They should be treated as channel partners. That means the wholesale distributor must focus on what the dealer is selling and not what they are buying.

Effective sales management in this channel includes planning sales growth, executing account strategies and using objective feedback to continuously improve performance and drive accountability. Maximizing success and profitability creates the necessity to manage this channel as a single integrated being. This means an effective sales process and structure must be in place which includes metrics, training and resources to support and improve sales performance for both the distributor and the dealer.

Effective sales management is not rocket science: