When your dealer network stops at the district border

If your dealers sit in four districts and your enquiries come from eleven, the next dealer belongs in one of the other seven. Your own records already say which. Put twelve months of enquiries, direct orders and warranty addresses on one sheet, district by district. Mark where your dealers are. The districts with repeated demand and nobody who can deliver and fit there are where you recruit. The districts that never call can wait, however many applicants ring you.

Where do the calls from beyond your districts go now?

A family manufacturer in Maharashtra often grows outward from the factory gate. A Kolhapur unit may have dealers in Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara because the founder knew traders there, and the next ring of districts never gets anyone.

The calls still come from further out. A contractor in Latur saw your doors on a site in Pune. A hardware shop in Beed found you on IndiaMART. Someone at the factory says "we have no dealer there, you will have to pay the transport", and that is the end of it.

Nobody writes it down. So when the owner decides where to grow, the demand being turned away is invisible, and the decision goes to whoever phoned last.

Build the district sheet from what is already at the factory

You do not need a survey. The evidence sits in five places:

• IndiaMART and website enquiries, which carry a town.
• A call book by the landline, if anyone keeps one. Start one if not.
• Lorry receipts and courier bills for orders that went direct, with the delivery town on each.
• Warranty cards that came back with the buyer's address.
• Your dealers' own memory of buyers who crossed in from the next district.

Write each against its district, not its town, because buyers give the nearest market town and you will count one district three ways otherwise. Our note on reading enquiry data by city covers cleaning that column, so it is not repeated here. Then add one more column that matters only to a dealer network: who could have delivered, fitted and repaired for that buyer.

The rule for where to recruit next

A district earns a dealer when three things hold.

Repeated demand. Enquiries from at least three different talukas in twelve months, or two buyers who ordered direct and paid the freight themselves. One busy village is a customer. Three talukas are a market.

Nobody in reach. The nearest dealer cannot deliver, fit and replace a damaged piece there without a special trip. Distance on the map is not the test. Ask whether a buyer with a warped door would get someone to the house.

You can back it. Stock of hinges, locks and frames the dealer can draw on, a fitter to call, and someone at the factory who answers the phone.

Rank the districts that pass by direct orders first, then by the spread of talukas. A buyer who arranged their own tempo from Kolhapur wanted the product badly, and becomes the new dealer's first customer.

When an empty district should stay empty

Some gaps are better left alone. If every enquiry from a district came from one builder doing one project, sell to that builder direct and skip the dealer. If the calls arrived in a burst after one exhibition and stopped, wait for a second season.

Your neighbouring dealer may already sell across the border and want to keep doing it. Then give that dealer the district in writing rather than planting a stranger alongside. And if you cannot keep spares and a fitter there? Do not appoint anyone yet. A dealer who cannot service what is sold turns your name into a complaint across the whole district.

For example: doors from Kolhapur and the calls from Latur

Imagine a Kolhapur maker of PVC doors and bathroom cabinets, with seven dealers across Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara. The figures are illustrative.

Last year the owner appointed an eighth dealer in Solapur, because a Solapur trader rang twice and sounded keen. That dealer sold very little, about ₹90,000 of doors in a year (an invented figure). Meanwhile the call book, kept by the accounts clerk, showed nineteen enquiries from Latur district across five talukas. Four Latur contractors had ordered direct and sent their own tempo. Beed showed eleven enquiries, but nearly all from two talukas. Nobody had added any of it up.

The owner had chosen the district by who applied rather than by who asked. Once the sheet existed, two decisions followed. The owner recruited a Latur hardware dealer who already had a fitter and a godown, and handed over the names of every Latur enquirer from the call book as first calls, timed before the building rush that follows Dussehra. The Solapur dealer was told plainly what was happening and why, and was not pleased. Beed waits for its second season's figures.

Recruiting once the sheet points somewhere

Ask your past enquirers in that district where they buy hardware and plywood. The shops named twice are your shortlist, and the market walk covers the rest of the search. Take the sheet to the meeting. A dealer shown nineteen named enquiries from their own district is looking at customers, not a sales pitch.

The first ninety days then decide whether the dealer stays, and onboarding a new dealer sets those out. Where one stockist could feed several far districts with spares, a distributor may suit better than another dealer.

Add the district column to the call book

From tomorrow, whoever answers the factory phone writes the caller's district, not just the town, beside every call. Last year's lorry receipts and warranty cards fill in the past. Once the sheet points at a district, recruiting there is dealer development; tell us what you need to start.