B2B channel study
Distribution Channels
Accelerating sales through optimal distribution. The study asks the people in the channel how they really feel about your line, then helps you choose the mix that moves it.
Chapter 01
Channel partners who do not push your line
A manufacturer can have a strong product and still stall, because the product never reaches the buyer with any energy behind it. A distributor stocks the line but leads with a competitor. A dealer quotes your price without ever explaining why the product earns it. None of this shows up in a sales report as a problem. It shows up as flat share in territories where the product should be doing better, and it is easy to blame on the market instead of the path to the market.
Distribution research starts from a plain question: what does each link in the chain think of you, and what do they do about it? Dealers and distributors are customers in their own right, with their own margins, their own service burdens and their own opinions about which suppliers return calls. The end users downstream have a separate set of views about where they prefer to buy and why. If the two sets of views are not in conflict, the channel is probably healthy. If they are, you have found the work.
Thomas Brown scopes each study around the decision you actually face, whether that is adding a channel, dropping one, rebalancing support between partners, or understanding why a region is lagging. The engagement plan is tailored to your goals and situation and approved by you before any interviewing begins.
A rail yard and highway interchange fanning out across Western farmland at dusk
Dealer and user attitude research, in practice
The closest published precedent among the Power Decisions success stories is the Dealer & User Attitude & Usage Study. For a major farm implement and tools manufacturer, the research was conducted throughout the Western states among farm supply dealers and farm operators, using a hybrid phone survey and mail survey method. It identified new product, customer satisfaction, branding and advertising opportunities for strengthening customer loyalty, product adoption and market share growth. The design is the point: dealers and the farm operators who buy from them were both asked, so the manufacturer could see the channel from both sides at once.
Not every channel question calls for a survey that size. Where the audience is small and senior, such as a handful of national distributors, one-to-one Kinetic Depth Interviews do the work. These are peer-level conversations led by an interview plan rather than a questionnaire, which lets a distributor explain in their own words what they would change about your terms, training or product mix. Where you need to know how widely a view is held across a larger and more varied set of dealers or users, we may recommend a quantitative component alongside the interviews.
Online forums are another option when the people you need to hear from are busy and spread out. An actively moderated, multi-day forum gives managers and buyers room to respond when it suits them, and it lets one participant's comment prompt another's, which often surfaces the thing no one planned to ask.
Chapter 03
Choosing the channel mix
Findings only matter when they turn into a choice. A channel study ends in a tightly constructed executive brief that translates themes, quotes and partner narratives into clear recommendations. It shows which partners are carrying the line, which are neutral and which are working against it, and it says what each group wants from you in exchange for more of their attention.
This is where the decision model Power Decisions uses elsewhere earns its keep. A thin decision offers one option, go with it or do not. A robust decision puts two or more real options on the table, A or B or C, built from a deep understanding of buyer behavior and customer preferences. For channels, that usually means laying out several complete mixes, with the support, margin structure and risks that go with each, so leadership is choosing between real alternatives rather than defending the one already in place.
If your sales are flat and the channel is a suspect, call Thomas Brown at 415-328-7927 or email Tom@powerdecisions.com from Forest Knolls, California. Typically he can offer some immediate, valuable ideas on that first call, before any proposal is written.
Power Decisions, Forest Knolls, California. Call Thomas Brown at 415-328-7927.