How To Recruit Dealer/Distributors To Sell For You

The dream of owning a business that draws in money like a supermassive black hole on steroids, where other people do all the work, and your only duties involve the approval of sales and cashing checks seems to be at the top of everybody's fantasy lifestyle list. It's the only way to go as a business owner.

The problem with this scenario is, however, very few people, if anybody seems to know how to "put together" such a business. What we're actually looking at here is a situation where you supply the product and someone else does all the selling - A prime source with a dealer or distributor network.

Supposing that you have developed a product, you'll also have to put together a sales kit as well, along with plenty of impressive, eye-catching promotional materials. If you fail to supply or offer to supply such materials to your sales force to assist them in selling the product, you'll certainly have a very difficult time recruiting or signing up distributors to sell that product for you. It's also very unlikely you will be setting any sales records relative to your product either.

Let's look at this another way. Perhaps you've got a book you're marketing (like mine – “SIMPLE GUIDE TO AFFILIATE MARKETING” - it's FREE, so go ahead and grab your copy, we'll wait). Okay, if you intend to sell this book, you'll need to get the word out to the market that you have such a book available, RIGHT?

Advertising Circulars

Advertising this book to the marketplace on your own is going to cost you a bit of money, and unless you've got a good understanding of the advertising business, you most likely will never reach the full sales potential of the book. Besides, the time and energy required to find the "best" place to advertise, placing your ads, monitoring your results, while dealing with the frustration of curiosity seekers and the like, will eventually just wear you out.

I'll bet this is not the way you envisioned your life would turn out when you initially got the idea to write that book. Your thoughts were probably closer to this - “Hey, I'm going to get rich and enjoy a lifestyle of freedom and leisure”.

Therefore, just as soon as you've got your book written (this book being your product, if it's a real, physical product and if you're self-publishing), you get a few "bids" out to the local advertising agencies in your area, the freelancers, and the advertising department at your local colleges. What you are really looking at these people to do is to draft an Advertising Circular that promotes and sells your book.

Now then, as I've discussed in previous articles, in a different, perhaps smaller type text, and kind of like an afterthought, at or near the bottom of this advertising circular, you just happen to include the phrase:

“Dealer Inquiries Invited”...

You have just developed a proven, results-oriented local advertising plan. (If your book is a digital product, your action steps will be somewhat different, but you're still looking for the same basic results – sells. I'll explain more on how to market a digital product in a minute.)

Look over all the submitted circulars and choose the one(s) you consider the best. Have a supply of these printed up at your local print shop, then obtain a mailing list of opportunity seekers, and get them in the mail.

For a more detailed explanation of this strategy check out these articles:

Advertising Tips Using Print Circulars

Advertising Tips By Mail Order

How to Get Your Print Advertising Paid by Someone Else

Advertising With Ad Sheets For Big Profits

Just as soon as you've dropped your first set of circulars in the mail, start writing your dealer/distributor letter. This should simply explain how you will drop-ship orders for their customers, paying them a specified commission on each sale and, your price per copy that you'll be selling your book to them for (in wholesale quantity lots). Also, the letter should include a copy of your advertising circular, with an explanation, reassuring your dealers that they can reproduce this circular with their name/address in place of yours on the order coupon.

You could even include a brief note that you will pre-print these circulars with the dealer's name/address and ship them to him for a wholesale printing price. This just means that you are supplying the dealer with everything they need to promote and sell copies of your book for you.

You must realize that you can only reach so many people, and sell so many books by yourself. By recruiting 1,000 people to help you, mailing advertising circulars and running small ads in hundreds of opportunity seeker publications, your costs of advertising your business becomes minimal while your book sale skyrocket.

Don't forget though, that you will still need:

• An impressive, eye-catching advertising circular or mailing package for your sales force to use as their own.

• A clear easy-to-understand book (in wholesale quantity lots), and the availability of advertising materials for your dealers.

Any advertising circular should be designed as a dual purpose piece:

• First – you send the circular out to solicit sales of your product,
• Yet at the same time, you're recruiting dealers (being so impressed with your advertising materials that they feel without a doubt that they can make some money for themselves by promoting your product).

Again, this doesn't require much more than adding this simple, three-word phrase “Dealer Inquiries Invited”...at the bottom of the circular.

The next thing you'll need to do is to contract to run as many small DEALERS WANTED ads, in as many of the mail order publications, as you can. These ads can be either a classified ad or a small, eye-catching one-inch display ad like this:

DEALERS WANTED! Unique new book. Selling like crazy! 

Make $12 profit on every $24 sale!

For Details send SASE to: [YOUR BUSINESS ADDRESS]

That is your basic "dealers wanted" ad, and with lots of exposure in as many of the mail order publications as you can get, over a sufficient period of time – six or eight months, you should have hundreds of people, possibly from all over the country, selling your book for you. Simple, easy, yet very effective – it works!

Now I'm sure you're probably thinking to yourself “I'm an internet marketer, when or why would I ever do anything in print?” Well, think about it this way:

• first – as a shrewd businessman you should always be learning new strategies and techniques to implement into your business practices.
• second – these techniques still work for physical products or for local marketing.
• third – it is always better to utilize as many different channels as you can in your advertising scheme to insure that you get the most exposure possible and also so that if one strategy should stop working, for whatever reason, you still have other strategies working for your business.

Okay, now that we've covered that, let's go over how to do the same thing - only now on a digital platform.

In the online world this is referred to as an 'affiliate program' and setting up an affiliate program definitely requires a unique set of skills.

For example, if you don't already know html and java script or some other programming language, it's probably best to outsource all your programming.

You'll need a website to house your product(s), a payment platform to pay your affiliates, and just like for a physical product as described above – some digital advertising material (i.e. banners and image files, sales letters, email and text swipe files (just to name a few), and some training materials on how to use and market the product would be nice too : )

You'll also need a Customer Support system to handle problems like refunds/returns, and field questions. And a fulfillment system to deliver product(s) (physical and/or digital).

There are a considerable number of tasks involved in setting all that stuff up. But this article isn't about starting a business from scratch. It's about recruiting distributors, isn't it? The only reason I mention all that in the previous several paragraphs is to not only illustrate what is involved in such an undertaking but also to give you an idea of what you should look for in any affiliate program that you decide to join.

In building my own business from scratch over the past 10 years, I've found that once you've established a basic dealer/distributor network, or a list of people selling for you. You can add hundreds of related products, and the orders just keep coming in. Give it a try and see for yourself just how easy and profitable it can be for you!

As always,

To your success!

Please leave a comment below to let us know how we’re doing.

Feel free to leave any suggestions for future posts or content. Or ask any questions regarding anything you don’t understand or need help with, I would be happy to help in any way I can.

I hope you find this information helpful. Thank you for reading.

P.S. Are you tired of wasting time and money on Affiliate Marketing that doesn't work? Want to copy a real business in just days? CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE