How to onboard a new dealer or distributor

Commercial: the agreement signed, the credit limit set and any security in place, the price list and scheme terms issued in writing, the invoicing and payment mechanics agreed — who raises, when, how disputes are handled. Legal: the agreement references the partner programme, defines the territory and its protection, the responsibilities on both sides, exclusivity conditions, and how the arrangement ends. Data: the partner is set up in your CRM and accounts as a partner, not a customer; their team’s contacts recorded; their reporting obligations — secondary sales, stock, end-customer registrations — and the format agreed; and, if you pass leads, the routing configured.

Territory: the map, the accounts within it that you already know, any existing customers you will hand over and on what terms, and the rule for enquiries that arrive with you from the territory. Ambiguity here becomes the first conflict; write it down while everyone is still pleased.

Training happens before the stock arrives and at the partner’s premises, with everyone who will touch the product — the salespeople, the counter staff, the service technician, the owner. Product: what it is, what it does, how it compares with what they already sell, how to demonstrate it, how to handle it and store it. Positioning: who buys it and why, the value proposition in a sentence, the proof, the objections and the answers — the same playbook your own team uses, cut down. Process: how to order, how to get support, how to register a warranty or a lead, whom to call, what happens when a customer has a problem.

Half a day, with samples, done twice — once at the start and once at sixty days when they have questions from real customers. Leave the material behind, in the language the counter speaks. A partner’s salesperson who cannot explain your product sells the one they can.

The first order is a range the partner can sell from in the first month — enough breadth to cover the customers in the plan, not enough depth to sit for a year — with the second order planned for week four on the basis of what moved. Overloading the first order is the commonest onboarding mistake; the stock ages, the credit is stretched, and the partner’s attention goes to the line that turns. Pipeline creation is joint work in the first month: a list of the twenty accounts in the territory the partner will approach first, a joint visit to five of them with your salesperson present, and the demand you generate in the territory — the profile, a campaign, an exhibition — pointed at the partner.

The thirty-day review is a phone call on activity: training done, first accounts approached, stock moving, problems on either side. The ninety-day review is a visit on the numbers against the first-quarter plan: secondary sales, accounts opened, stock turn, payments — and a decision to continue as planned, correct something specific, or exit while the exposure is small. A partner who has not sold in ninety days will not sell in a year, and the review is where that is said.

The mistakes: stock before the agreement; the large opening order; no training, or training the owner only; no joint visits, so the partner learns to sell your product from your brochure; leads from the territory kept by your team; no reviews, so the first sign of trouble is an unpaid invoice; and treating onboarding as finished when the truck leaves. A safeguard: at thirty days, ask the partner’s counter staff what your product does — the answer tells you whether onboarding happened.

Measure onboarding by activation: the share of new partners with secondary sales in month one, reordering by month three, and meeting the first-quarter plan. An onboarded partner knows the product, has customers of its own for it, reorders on a rhythm, reports without chasing, and calls you before a problem becomes a dispute. This is the partner-onboarding work we do — the pack, the setup, the training at their premises, the first-quarter plan and joint visits, and the thirty- and ninety-day reviews — and the free audit begins by checking how many partners appointed last year are active now.