Notes for owners · Channel and customer growth
System integrators and OEMs: should you sell through them or to the end user?
If you make automation products, integrators and machine builders bring projects but own the plant relationship; this sets out which orders to route through them, which to sell direct, and the rules that stop the two clashing.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
On this page
- What each route gives you, and what it takes
- Three questions that decide the route for each order
- Getting plants to ask for your make without taking the order
- The rules to write down before the first clash
- Imagine a gantry maker in Nashik
- When the rule should bend
- Mark each product as a line part or a standalone item
You make a vision camera or a gripper. An integrator builds it into a plant's line, and the plant never learns your name. On the next line, the integrator picks the make again. So should you sell to plants yourself? Do both, with a rule for each order. Sell through integrators and machine builders when your product is one part of a line someone else designs. Sell direct when the plant buys it on its own, as a retrofit, a spare or a standalone cell. Write the conflict rules down before the first clash.
What each route gives you, and what it takes
Integrators bring projects you would never hear of: a new packing line, a plant expansion, a line moved from another state. They carry the site work and the engineering risk. In return they own the plant's trust and choose the make, and they can swap you for a cheaper one on the next job.
OEMs, the machine builders, put your product into a standard machine they build again and again. One approval can bring years of repeat orders without a single sales call to a plant. But the price is pressed hard, your name sits inside their machine, and when it stops the plant calls them.
Selling direct to the plant gives you the relationship, the margin and the service income. It also hands you the site visit, the commissioning and the breakdown call at night. A product company without field engineers takes on work it cannot staff, and does it badly in front of the customer it wanted to impress.
Three questions that decide the route for each order
Ask them in this order whenever an enquiry or a project comes in.
- Who is designing the line this goes into? If an integrator or a machine builder is, sell through them. A plant seldom buys a part for a line it is not designing, and going around the designer makes an enemy.
- Can the plant's own engineers install and run it? If yes, and the job is a retrofit, a replacement or a standalone cell, sell direct. If not, bring an integrator in and let it quote the site work.
- Who will take the breakdown call? Whoever takes that call owns the next order. If it will not be you, give the integrator your spares list and train its engineers, so the call does not end with a rival make.
A plant that passes the second question, with no integrator in the picture, is a direct customer. Everything else goes through a partner.
Getting plants to ask for your make without taking the order
You can sell to the end user without competing with your integrators. Here is how. Plants and their project consultants keep a list of approved makes for new lines. When your make is on that list, every integrator quoting the plant has to consider you. So market to the plant's engineering and maintenance teams for the specification, and let the integrators take the order.
That means application notes written around the plant's problems and open days at your works. Do it with your integrators, not around them.
The rules to write down before the first clash
Put these on one page and send them to every integrator and machine builder you work with.
Project registration. The first partner to register a named plant and project with us gets protected pricing on it for an agreed period.
Direct sales. We sell direct only for spares, retrofits and standalone cells where the plant has its own engineers. We tell the partner who installed the original system.
Price. Our direct price to a plant is never lower than our partner price for the same item.
Enquiries. A plant enquiry that needs site engineering goes to a partner in that region, named to the plant in writing.
Breakdown support. Partners who stock the agreed spares and send an engineer for training receive the service enquiries from their area.
Write-ups. Installations are written up jointly, naming both firms where the plant agrees.
Tiers and incentives beyond these rules are covered in designing a channel partner programme.
Imagine a gantry maker in Nashik
Imagine a maker of gantry pick-and-place units in Satpur, Nashik, selling to auto-component plants through one integrator in Pune and another in Chennai. The details are illustrative. A gear plant near Chakan, introduced by the Pune integrator, rings the maker directly for a second gantry. The maker's sales head quotes below the integrator's price and wins it. A few months later the Pune integrator specifies a rival make on two new lines.
The owner rings the Pune integrator personally. The integrator wants more than the margin back: it demands that the maker stop quoting to any plant it has registered, and that its engineers be trained on the gantry controller at the maker's cost, which means two days of the service engineer and a small training rig. The owner agrees that the gear plant's order will be invoiced through the integrator, with its margin restored, and takes some of the loss on that sale. The six rules follow, sent to both partners with a one-page registration form. The next open day at Satpur is run jointly with the Pune integrator, and plant engineers from Chakan are invited by both. When the gear plant plans a third line, the enquiry arrives through the integrator, registered in its name. The Chennai integrator, meanwhile, argues that the rules favour Pune, and the owner needs a second call to settle its protected-pricing period.
When the rule should bend
If no integrator in a region knows your product, they will specify what they know. Selling direct there, with your own engineers, is often the way to build a first reference. Tell partners in advance that the region is open until one of them takes it on.
A standard sensor or spare that needs no site engineering does not need an integrator at all. And do not sell around an integrator whose maintenance contract covers the line. That plant is theirs until the contract ends.
Mark each product as a line part or a standalone item
List your products and mark each one as a line part or a standalone item. Then write down which integrators you would trust with a plant's breakdown call, because those are the partners worth protecting. Turning the rules into tiers and a registration form partners will fill in is partner programme design, and how plants shortlist the firms that quote is on the industrial automation and robotics page. If you want a partner model worked out for your own range, tell us what you need.
