market tactical decisions lie in the fol-
lowing areas:
• Geographic distance from the manu-
facturers product
• Size of the accounts (customers) served
• Value of the product sold
• Complexity of the product itself or com-
plexity-in-use down the supply chain
In the simple two-dimensional diagram
pictured we are addressing only the last
two decision elements... Product value and
product complexity. CONCLUSION: The
greater the complexity and value the greater
the need for the supplier to market directly
to the customer.
The diagram below is typical of many
suppliers of complex or semi-complex
industrial products within the coatings
industry. The Raw Material supplier, in
this case, has two significant barriers
when gathering intelligence from the
market place:
1. His own Distributors
2. His own Formulator customers.
The Raw material supplier, therefore,
has no direct influence on the ultimate
OEM Customer and even more disturbing, according to our research; the supplier has less than a 40 percent chance
of building a product/service that is accurate for that OEM.
When a supplier with a semi to very
complicated product offering can select a distributor with highly skilled
technical sales people that markets no
competitive product lines and “walks
through the same doors” for all the
principles it represents, and that distributor brings it principles Product
Managers/Tech Service people into the
formulators environment in a timely
manner, there exists a decent chance of
ongoing success.
That being said, our experience indicates the aforementioned circumstance
rarely exists.
Therefore, when a semi-technical to
highly technical product line is being of-
fered to a set of targeted coatings or ad-
hesives formulators, direct sales is usually
the best tactic. Distributors, in this case,
can service the less strategic coveted ac-
counts and/or those accounts that are
geographically distant from the suppliers’
activity epicenter.
Even then, when the marketing is
devoted mostly through the supplier
company’s own sales/marketing force, a
call-load program must include not only
the formulators, as suggested, but to the
OEM End-Users themselves . . . . . your
customer’s customer.
In the diagram we depict an organi-
zation that has set aside the distributor
(therefore, no insulation exists from
it as a barrier) as a “seller/marketer”
(except in the cases mentioned above)
and recognizes that his own customer
(formulator) cannot possibly glean
all the pertinent intelligence from the
OEM End-Users and accurately pro-
vide same to you, the supplier, thus giv-
ing the supplier an opportunity to help
his formulator customer define needs
more accurately. CW
Diagram 2
Diagram 3
