Getting north Karnataka dealers to pass enquiries back to you

Imagine a drip-set maker saying: "Our dealer in Jamkhandi has sold to half the cane farmers around him, and we cannot name one of them." (An invented complaint, and a common one.) Dealers between Belagavi and Kalaburagi are more likely to pass enquiries back when it costs one WhatsApp message and earns something they cannot get alone. Promise in writing that you will never quote their buyers directly. Send them the leads your own advertising brings in, and a technician when a big job needs one. Then give them a four-line message format, and call each dealer on Saturday to ask what happened.

Why a dealer in Vijayapura keeps the enquiry to themselves

In north Karnataka, many farmers buy on the dealer's word more than on the brand. Look at it from the counter. A grape farmer from Tikota walks in asking about drip for three acres. If the dealer sends that name to you, two outcomes come to mind and neither is good. Your rep quotes the farmer directly, a little cheaper. Or nothing happens, which is what the dealer remembers from the last brand that asked.

And the enquiry lives in the dealer's head. A dealer stocks four brands and runs the counter with a nephew. In the sowing weeks farmers queue for seed from opening time, so writing anything down for a manufacturer comes last.

So the request has to answer two questions. What does this cost me? And what comes back?

What the dealer gets back, in writing

Put the offer in a one-page letter signed by the owner, in Kannada and English. Four things belong in it.

• No direct quote to the dealer's buyer. An enquiry the dealer shares stays theirs. Your team will not quote that farmer, contractor or shop without the dealer.
• Leads from your own advertising, sent to the dealer for that taluk with the buyer's name, village and need, the day they arrive.
• A technician for the big job. When an enquiry is a ten-acre cane field or a grape garden needing a layout, your field person visits with the dealer. The material is billed through the dealer's shop.
• Spares and fast-moving stock held for sharing dealers in the busy weeks.

The first line decides it. Without it, every name shared looks like a customer handed to someone else. Drawing that territory line is in preventing channel conflict.

Which enquiries to ask for

Do not ask for every walk-in; a dealer told to report every buyer of a battery sprayer will report nobody. Ask for four kinds, and say so in the letter:

1. Anything larger than the usual counter sale. Set the line in units a dealer understands, such as drip for more than two acres or five sprayers in one order.
2. Institutions: a sugar factory's cane office, a farmer producer organisation, a nursery or a contractor.
3. Questions the dealer could not answer, or a product the shop does not stock.
4. Complaints about your product, however small.

Everything else stays in the dealer's own book.

One courtesy matters: the dealer tells the buyer that someone from the company will call. A farmer who gets a call from a stranger hangs up, then blames the dealer.

The four-line message and the Saturday call

Print this on a card for the counter, and pin the same text in your WhatsApp chat with each dealer.

Buyer: Basavaraj, Tikota, mobile number

Needs: drip for 3 acres of grapes, has a borewell

Done so far: gave lateral prices, wants a layout

Help needed: technician visit, any day but Tuesday

Accept it in Kannada, in English or as a voice note; someone in your office types the voice notes up.

That person, not the sales head, also calls each dealer on Saturday afternoon. What came in? What happened to the leads we sent? What do you need from us? The answers go into one register.

The last column is the one that matters. A row with no outcome by the next call gets one question; a row blank for three calls is closed as lost, with the reason written in.

For example: a sprayer maker and the Mudhol dealer

Imagine a Davanagere maker of battery sprayers and drip kits with eleven dealers across Bagalkot, Vijayapura and Belagavi districts. The owner wanted to know which villages were buying, and sent every dealer a Google Form link and offered ₹100 per enquiry, an illustrative figure.

Two dealers used it. One sent thirty names copied from a credit book. Then the company's rep quoted a cane farmer near Mudhol directly, and the Mudhol dealer heard about it from the farmer. After that, nobody sent anything.

The owner dropped the fee and the form. Every dealer received the signed letter saying shared enquiries stay with the dealer. Before asking for a single name, the company sent each one the leads its newspaper ads had raised in that dealer's taluk. The rep was told in writing that any farmer a dealer had named was off the rep's list. The four-line message took the form's place, and the accounts assistant took over the Saturday calls.

The Mudhol dealer held out longest. That dealer came round after the technician spent a morning laying out a large cane field, and the order was billed through the shop. Five of eleven dealers sent regular enquiries after six months, and three never did.

When this is not worth setting up

With three or four dealers you speak to daily, just ask on the phone. A register is overhead you do not need yet.

If you sell through a distributor who runs sub-dealers, ask the distributor, not the sub-dealers. Going around the distributor creates the same fear one level up.

If you cannot send anything back, do not start. Asking and returning nothing teaches dealers that the next request is empty too. And do not send the letter in the sowing rush, when no counter has time to read it.

Send one lead before you ask for one

Choose the three dealers who sell the most of your product. Before you ask them for anything, send each one a lead from your own advertising, with the buyer's name and village. The letter can follow a few days later. Setting up the letter, the register and the routing is a dealer and distributor programme, and tell us what you need is where it starts.