Should Your Distributor’s Staff Have Experience With Similar or Competing Instruments?

Yes. Whether the distributor’s sales and service people have hands-on experience with similar instruments is one of the strongest predictors of your first-year sales, and it is a question far too few manufacturers ask during vetting. A rep who has sold into your application area starts producing in weeks; a rep learning your technology from zero needs quarters. The same applies doubly to service engineers.

Why it matters more than the company logo

Distributor agreements are signed with companies, but instruments are sold by individuals. A distributor with an impressive catalog can still assign your line to a junior rep with no application knowledge. What you are really buying is the named people who will represent you, so vet the people, not only the firm.

The vetting questions we ask on manufacturers’ behalf

• Who exactly will carry our line, by name, and what share of their time is committed to it?
• What instruments in this application area have they sold or serviced in the last three years?
• How many training hours will the distributor commit for sales and for service, and who pays for them?
• What is the realistic first-year target this person signs up to, and what happened with the last new line they took on?

The competing-line question

Experience with a direct competitor cuts both ways. It brings exactly the ramp-up advantage you want, but if the competing line is still in the distributor’s portfolio, ask hard questions: which line gets priority when a customer is undecided, how are leads allocated internally, and is there any exclusivity or de-listing plan? A distributor earning more margin on your competitor will not favor you out of goodwill. Sometimes the right answer is a smaller distributor where your line is the flagship, not the afterthought.

Service experience is the quiet dealbreaker

Sales experience shortens the pipeline; service experience protects the reference. An engineer who has maintained comparable technology performs credible installations and demos from day one, and your first three installations in a new market become your reference list. One botched installation by an untrained engineer costs more than a year of marketing.