Manufacturer 2009 Sales & Profit Drivers
Earlier this year we surveyed manufacturers about their 2009 sales and profit drivers. We had over 130 responses from more than 75 companies.
Manufacturers said:
- Their highest priority is new product introductions, albeit other questions in the survey inducate that this area continues to be a challenge for the industry (successful new product introductions is an industry challenge.)
- They are taking a laser-like focus on end-users and are adjusting their sales and marketing budgets accordingly.
- They are focused on becoming more productive and efficient in their operations, as evidenced in corporate reductions and continued expectation of their sales organization to focus on training adn the end-user. Essentially they need “the same or more with less resources.”
- Training distributor salespeople is important to them to enable them to benefit from the multiplier effect (more feet on the street who will promote their products). This is balanced by manufacturer comments that expressed frustration with distributor training adoption and distributor salesperson absorption of training information.
Interestingly, manfucturers expressed some dissatisfaction with their distribution coverage, ranking “expenading of distributors sell to” as their fourth highest priority.
The manufacturers’ top 10 priorities, based upon a scale of 1 to 10, were:
To achieve objectives, it is important for each element of the channel to understand the goals of their other channel partners, but more importantly, for plans to be developed, and implemented, to drive success.
Manufacturers … how are distributors delivering for you? Distributors, how are manufacturers acting upon their desires?