To follow up with the idea of supporting your distributors I shared in a previous post and my trip to Puerto Vallarta, it was nice to close the deal last week in the way we did.
We were originally brought into the relationship to help clean up a big mess in Mexico where one company had not supported its distributor for quite some time. When we first sat down with the distributor a few months ago he felt abandoned based on the sales support, service support and inventory he received. He wasn’t mad he just felt like the manufacture didn’t care about him or if they sold the product.
When we delivered the proposal last Thursday we were very clear about how much support we were planning on offering. To close we used a great line (perhaps a bit cliche) to win over the distributor thus winning a second chance – a “partnership”. We told the company president that we saw this as a long term partnership between our companies. This is an excellent terminology to use when trying to set up distributors in Mexico or when selling into Mexico. Let your Mexican distributors know that you see them as more than a customer. Consider it a partnership, like a marriage; where both sides have to work hard for the relationship to be successful.