Who is a distributor? And how do you become a distributor of great brands?
A distributor distributes goods produced by the manufacturer to the next available users. Let me explain. Companies all over the world choose the pattern or ways to get to the final users through a means call route to market.
This is strategy is adopted to help the company define the roles each person plays in the business value chain. In this article, I am going to dwell more on the FMCG Distribution business. Fast Moving Consumer Goods is the industry that deals with what people consume daily. People eat daily, we drink daily but we don’t buy electrical appliances every day. The simple way to see FMCG is to call it daily essentials or necessities.
How to Become a Distributor: The Key Steps
In these simple steps, I am going to be showing you how to become a successful distributor:
Step 1 : Registration of Business Name
It is good business sense to register your business with government authority. If you are in Nigeria, Corporate Affairs Commission is your go-to agency to do this for you. Another alternative is the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDAN).
The major advantage of SMEDAN is that they can help you facilitate business loans from the Bank of Industry if you are registered with SMEDAN. But please do know that SMEDAN is NOT a loan agency. It only helps with matters related to loans and development.
Step one in business registration is to do a business search. An accredited agent can do this with a token. Please call Ezekiel Arowolo at +2348030740550 he has a reputation for registering businesses fast and affordable prices.
Step 2: Search for a Reliable Supplier
Now you have made up your mind to be a distributor, then you need to look for products to sell. How do you get products to sell? Your ideal place to find FMCG products is the open markets and neighbourhood stores around.
Make necessary inquiries about the products. Look for fast-moving goods please and brands you have a thorough understanding of it. You need to know if it is a seasonal product or a year-round demand product. One of the things that easily affects product performance in the market is availability.
Make sure to have brands that have a constant supply. One of the influential brands today in Nigeria. The company has stable and quality baby products such as Molfix diapers and other brands. Check out my article on how to become a distributor for Molfix.
Step 3: Do a Checklist of the Following
The following things are very important for the smooth operation of your distribution business.
- A standard warehouse
- Distribution vans
- Invoices and waybills (Office documents)
- Computer Systems and POS Materials
How to Grow your Distribution Business
Growing your distribution business is not going to be child’s play. But if you are ready to go the extra mile and give the best for your customers then growing your business will come easy.
Step One: Sell at Recommended Price
Price is key. Price determines a lot of things in your business growth. How you sell doesn’t matter like what price you are selling. A good pricing system gives you an advantage over your competitors.
If you sell right, you will steal your competitors’ customers. Take good pricing as a business strategy that works in the long term. You might not make the money immediately, but you will get back your funds later as customers begin to know, like, and trust you.
Step two: Hire the Right People with Right Experience
Not all people are right for you. It is not a must to employ people with multinational experience. Although this is not a bad idea. But look for the people with the right work experience. Being a start-up business, you need the right employees with the right skill sets. Possibly hire people with startup experience.
They understand what it means to roll up their sleeves and get the job done. Unlike people with a pure understanding of processes and operations.
Alternatively, you could hire a mixture of both start-up experience and people with thorough knowledge of processes from the onset if you could afford it.
Before going to the next point, let me point out that the best ways to know if your business is growing are
Revenue Growth
Number of employees
Profit margin
Read Also
How to Become Kings Oil Distributor
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Ultimate Guide on How to Sell on Marketplace
Mistakes to Avoid in Distribution Business
Yes! You read that right? I mean mistakes to avoid in the distribution business. Please avoid these mistakes if you want to last long in the business.
Mistake 1: Lack of Marketing Plan
If you failed to plan your marketing strategies, you will not grow in your business because these days competition is tougher than ever before. Different companies now adopt various means to steal customers from competitors legally. By all means, include offline and online ads in your marketing plan.
Mistake 2: Lack of Delegation
A good sign of a great business leader is the ability to delegate tasks to various employees based on their various capacities.
Most often I encourage business leaders to delegate operations while they focus on mapping out strategies to deploy to win in the marketplace. If you don’t know how to delegate, you will wear out or burn out very fast.
Mistake 3: Poor Record Keeping
Never allow your process and operation never to be documented. Keeping accurate records protects you from mistakes that can wreck your business. Make sure to keep all business documents intact. Such as account records or bookkeeping, invoices, payrolls and essential business documents. Visit www. smedigital.com to learn about record keeping
Mistake 4: Poor Retention of Employees
Having poor retention in business affects you immensely if you most know today. Poor retention means pure business doom for the business because whenever an employee leaves, they go with valuable business information that they may take alongside a competitor.
Conclusion
Becoming a successful distributor requires a lot of skills. Besides you need to be a distributor for a successful brand to become a successful businessman. I have explained all this in this article, the question is, does this article help? Share it. Don’t forget to implement what you have read.
