If you sell a large company’s products in your store who is more dependent on whom? Are you more dependent on the supplier because of their products and brand or are they more dependent on you because you are the local point of contact and sale? This relatively simple question is one that needs to be addressed by manufacturers and dealers alike. The resulting answers could be the difference in success or failure as the world of business and marketing changes due to the online space.

For this post we will concentrate on the manufacturers side of the ledger. The reason for this is quite simple. Your success truly depends on the ability of the local dealer / agent to move your product. If they don’t move it, they can’t buy more from you. Everyone loses. As a result it is extremely important for the manufacturer to be actively involved in the local aspect of their dealer’s business.

Some ways to do this:

• Ensure that the local listing of your independent agent is created and optimized in Google, Yahoo and bing search engines. It is imperative to remember that in Google a search for any keyword like “carpet store” without a local qualifier (i.e a town name) could STILL produce a map of the local providers that shows up before the organic search results.

• Fully understand your agent’s online capabilities – If you have 1,000 independent dealers / agents it is likely that the vast majority are small businesses. As a result it is quite possible that up to 40% of those businesses have no web presence. The rest could be antiquated. You need to know that because the less they advertise in traditional channels (newspapers, Yellow Pages etc) to sell your product you need to find a way to help them get in front of buyers.

• Provide some sense of community support – It is likely that this small business owner is not getting very strong support from any of his manufacturers / suppliers. This is your chance to shine and get a bigger part of their marketing mind. Help them navigate through the local marketing mess. They’ll sell your product before anything else.

• Know how local Internet marketing works – There are plenty of resources. Try www.smallbusinesssem.com for starters. What you don’t know will hurt you.

So take to heart the cry to “think global, act local” when it comes to selling through an independent agent. They are not concerned with anything other than selling locally so you need to help them market locally. Simple right?

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