Career Empowerment Dealership: Increasing Sell-in (Purchase Orders from Dealers)

By: William on 4:42 AM

Sell-in is the amount of purchase orders a sales person generated from dealers.

It is easy to find dealers where you can put your products for selling. But it is difficult to negotiate with their owners. What the salesman should do is to highlight how they can be benefited if they will offer your product. Well of course you must also focus on what you are offering for them to know if your products fit their company but what always on businessman's mind is "Profit."

We always think that battle of salesmen ends if they already have closed deal with dealers. We think wrong. That is where there battle begins.

The number one problem that a salesman encounters is " will his dealer make reorders?" Below are some tips to increase sell-in:

1. Monitor Dealers inventory

The amount of inventory in the dealers greatly affects the sell-in rate. The bigger the amount of inventory the dealers have, the lesser the chance to receive reorders from them.

If you are monitoring your outstanding inventory in the dealers, you will know if they need repurchase. Take note that most of the dealers do not initiate the reorders especially when your products do not sell fast. It is the salesman who should call the attention of the dealers for their P.O's. Salesmen should build strong relationship with the dealers for their request be granted.

2. Visit the actual store

It is also important that salesmen visit the store where your products are directly offered to consumers. In this activity, salesmen will know if their products are given competitive location and if your products are displayed. Any negatives about these issues should immediately be reported to the dealer and make some suggestion. For example, if you noticed on your visit that not all SKU's of your products are displayed, or your products do not have displays, you can request to your dealer to add the amount of the display and discuss the benefit of you both parties will get if your wish will be granted.

Remember that having competitive location and having your products displayed completely boost sell-out. Low sell-out means dealers will always have big amount of inventory and big amount of inventory suggests no Purchase Orders.

Visiting the store is important to help Marketing Department if consumer programs that they make are effective. Salesmen could talk to Sales Promoters in the store and to the store officers as well to gather important data.

"At a car dealership, the person who sells the car is the hero, and also gets the commission. But if the mechanics don't service that car well, the customer won't return."
-Roger Staubach