Know-How Exchange : Strategy

You need to decide on your channel strategy and start to develop relationship accordingly. In this dialogue process you can drift between two extremes: to command and order or to attract and seduce. Seldom you have the market power to do the former, so start to develop partner program type of strategy.

Best first step is to ask the distributor. I always start with my customers a qualified interview process: go to most valuable distributors or gather them together if there is no competition between. An open 3 hour meeting where distributor can explain all his troubles and wants open your eyes more than any research or strategy book.

Next steps will follow automatically.

NOTE! Try to build a relationship also over your distributor to your end users: the more you know about them the less you're dependable on the polarised information distributor's typically provide.