At Prima, we’re lucky enough to coach a huge number of salespeople. Some sell directly, others indirectly through distributors, wholesalers or retailers.

Over time, we’ve come to realize that many salespeople have false beliefs about their possibilities and abilities to improve sales performance through distributors. These misconceptions limit their performance and prevent them from realizing their full potential. As a result, they are detrimental to their bottom line.

In this article, we take a look at some of these misconceptions to better understand them and how to counter them. We’ll talk about salespeople when we’re talking about a company offering a product or service, and we’ll talk about salespeople when we’re talking about the distributor.

Misconception 1: Once prices are set, I have no control over them

Some salespeople mistakenly believe that their influence ends when prices are agreed with the distributor. Even after prices have been set, many levers exist to improve sales. How does this misconception limit salespeople?

They believe they have no influence once they’ve established prices with the distributor. They believe that all control is in the hands of the distributor once prices have been set. The result? They rely solely on the distributor’s representatives to conclude the sale.

With this posture, salespeople lose all power over the sales process. Even once prices have been established, salespeople can influence the conclusion of the sale by sharing the elements of consultative selling with distributor representatives.

Misconception 2: Price alone determines sales

Salespeople often believe that price alone influences sales. This false belief has these effects on them: they don’t sell the added value of their products/services to the distributor, and believe that when they receive a call from a distributor it’s to give an additional discount.

They believe that price alone will influence the end customer’s purchasing decision, and do not focus on benefits and differentiation for the end customer. What’s more, they don’t get the distributor to sell value.

Perceived value, the product’s usefulness and its ability to solve a problem count as much, if not more, than price alone. By communicating added value more effectively, salespeople can persuade distributor reps to sell even at a higher price. And if these reps are paid on commission, they’ll be even more receptive to recommendations.

Misconception 3: Sales are only transactional

Salespeople who work through distributors often believe that their role is limited to processing transactions. As a result, they think they only have to wait for distributor requests to close sales. They don’t set up a sales process with clear steps with the distributor, and let distributors go straight to closing without properly qualifying prospects.

In fact, while salespeople use consultative selling, they don’t ask the same of their partners. They don’t get distributors to ask questions to understand the customer’s motivations, identify the compelling reason to buy, differentiate themselves from competitors and create the urgency to act.

Yet salespeople can structure the sales process with distributor representatives by defining key steps and best practices. This would have a net positive effect on results – both their own and those of distributors.

Misconception 4: I can’t help distributor reps

Some salespeople feel they can’t really help distributor reps, except with technical product knowledge.

As a result:

• They believe they can only train distributor reps on product features, benefits and advantages.
• They think that once this technical training is done, their work stops.
• They think that after the technical training, the sales reps will talk about it with the end customers.

Yes, after technical training, sales reps will know how to answer customers’ technical questions. But in reality, distributors rarely know how to sell product value effectively. They won’t bring out the value because they don’t know how.

Without ongoing coaching, salespeople’s products quickly become forgotten by distributors. Salespeople can do a lot to help reps sell value better. But this false belief prevents them from doing so. For example, salespeople don’t show distributor reps how to see beyond product features.

Misconception 5: I can’t coach distributor reps

Finally, another stumbling block is that salespeople don’t think it’s possible to coach distributor reps to improve their sales competency. They don’t feel they can influence distributors’ sales results. They don’t feel they can help them sell better to end-buyers. They feel they have to rely entirely on the distributors’ existing sales talents.

Unfortunately, most distributors lack sales training, coaching and clear processes. A salespeople with such training is in an ideal position to improve the sales competencies of a salesperson with little training. A little coaching could go a long way!

The negative impact of these misconceptions

These false beliefs have an impact that goes far beyond a salesperson’s sales results. They affect many factors, from the salespeople to the company and even the distributor.

These ideas lead to unreliable sales forecasts, making it difficult to plan inventory and cash flow. Sales are left to chance, and the territory that should be served by the distributor is not completely covered. Market coverage may be inadequate, as the distributor may be working on the wrong prospects instead of the ideal customer.

Poor representation of products and services can give a negative image of the company and its products, and fails to demonstrate the scale and impact they can have. In effect, it doesn’t allow distributors to sell the full value of the products.

Some distributor reps don’t have a global view of an account. This tunnel vision means they overlook opportunities. This reduces the chances of increasing market share and business volume by limiting upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

In short, sales performance is severely limited by these misconceptions. To avoid these adverse effects, salespeople need to be aware of their full power to positively influence distributors.

For salespeople to achieve better performance, they must first review their misconceptions and adopt a proactive posture.

Salespeople can pass on best practices to their distributors

Fortunately, it often only takes a minimum of sustained effort for a salespeople to help distributor reps.

Salespeople need to know that :

• Coaching isn’t just for managers; salespeople can do it too. They don’t need to be professional coaches. All they have to do is share best practices. For sales reps with little training, this is already a precious help.
• They can choose key reps to train, who will then train others in their team.
• They need to ensure that distributors are familiar with the products.
• They need to make frequent follow-up visits to distributors. Greater visibility helps to ensure that you’re not forgotten.
• It’s possible to get distributors to better sell value, not just product and price.

These simple actions focused on knowledge sharing, coaching and follow-up will enable salespeople to positively transform the results of distributor reps.

Conclusion

Misconceptions are often tenacious. However, by realizing their full power to influence and act, salespeople can move from a passive posture to an active role in supporting distributors.

Small gestures focused on training, coaching and follow-up can have very beneficial effects. It’s time to drop these sales-damaging misconceptions and adopt a proactive approach. The gains can be huge, and are within the reach of all salespeople who dare to step out of their comfort zone.