Dealer Challenges That Have You Bending Over Backwards

And what to do about them.

While attending the World of Asphalt Conference in Nashville earlier this year, I talked with various manufacturers about what they’re doing to increase the effectiveness of their channel partners. 

As the CEO of a sales enablement provider, I stopped by all our customers’ booths first. They told me that not much had changed in the past few years. They were still challenged with lack of visibility into sales opportunities, follow-up issues and gaining dealer mindshare.

Manufacturers who weren’t our customers added that their dealers regularly complain that their sales reps couldn’t find the right content to send to their customers, even though they had a portal. Why not? Too slow, too clunky, can’t find things, and/or no WiFi access.

Even though all these manufacturers felt like they were bending over backward to support their dealers, they still weren’t getting the results they’d hoped for. 

Here are the questions that kept popping up in our conversations:

⦁ How can we better leverage marketing technology to help our dealer marketing and sales? 
⦁ How can our product launches be more effective?
⦁ How can we help our dealers close more qualified leads? 
⦁ How can we better engage the customer to mitigate channel conflict?

This post focuses on the first challenge of leveraging marketing technology—and how manufacturers can address it. Future posts will deal with the other challenges.

Leveraging Marketing Technology to Increase Dealer Sales
 
Historically, manufacturers have some level of tension with their distribution channels. Fear that manufacturers could go direct or pull products has forced distributors/dealers to erect protections for their business.

These come in the form of technical and legal agreements isolating sensitive data and customer relationships. Unfortunately, these legacy IT and legal firewalls often prevent the smooth flow of lead and sales information. 

The good news is that these barriers are beginning to come down as senior management on both sides recognizes the benefits of closer cooperation.

Another big issue is the manufacturers’ reliance on legacy dealer sales support models. This linear model has them handing off sales and marketing media to dealers to implement as they see fit. Dealer engagement is typically low, and they often fill in the gaps with their own materials.

This traditional model drives mind-blowing statistics such as the Sirius Decisions study that revealed that their dealers ignore 60% to 70% of all the marketing content produced by manufacturers. Or the OneAffinity/Forrester study that showed only 12% of channel partners leverage brand-provided marketing programs and portals.

The New Collaborative Ecosystem Model

Advances in marketing technologies are leading to innovative solutions where manufacturers and dealer can pool their resources to create a community for customers.

This Collaborative Ecosystem supports the new digital buying process by allowing buyers to get information on their terms and engage sales when they want to. It also allows non-customers to interact with existing customers, enabling buyers to gain confidence in their decisions, thus reducing the number of “deals lost to no decision.”

Even better, dealers and manufacturers gain valuable insights into marketing effectiveness and buyer behavior. Dealer sales reps get intent data and personalized media for their prospective buyers. By supporting all the stakeholders’ needs, sales, and customer experience benefit.

If this sounds far out, it’s not. The technologies exist today to make this happen, and you probably already have most of them. The key is the seamless integration among the different pieces of what’s called a “composable CX.”

Here’s how Forbes defines it:

Composable CX helps businesses keep up with the lightning speed of change. It flexes as circumstances shift, allowing for the real-time assembly, combination, and orchestration of individual customer service and employee experience capabilities from a robust set of building blocks: product, marketplace, CX ecosystem, and development.

Think of it as LEGO® bricks that are easily added, removed, changed, or exchanged to create and evolve timely, unique experiences that keep customers connected to your brand and employees more engaged.

Leveraging a composable CX architecture, content management, digital asset management (DAM), eCommerce, marketing automation, intelligent search, and CRM work together seamlessly to engage buyers and support dealer sales reps.

No more costly, monolithic, all-in-one solutions. Composable CX is best of breed for what your specific need requires. And easier to maintain. Fortunately, many solution providers are available to put the new model in place for you.

Manufacturers and dealers need to take advantage of advances in these marketing and sales technologies. 

At first, it may seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t all have to be done at once. The important thing is to get going on it.

Look at your current practices. Talk to your dealer network. Brainstorm with them. Analyze what would have the highest impact. Then, find a way to get a “quick win.” 

The important thing is to get going!