To hit your aggressive growth goals, you need to keep up with brisk progress on two fronts. First, you need to make sure your existing dealers are flourishing. This you do with great training programs, solid networking opportunities, and by manufacturing an excellent product.

Plus you can check in on your current dealers with our 10-Minute Dealer Checkup Guide! Download it below.

The second front for growing your business is new dealer recruitment – by attracting more dealers and better dealers, you can drastically boost your businesses’ bottom line. Here are 10 strategies we see working for the best and fastest growing dealer networks in the country:

1) Incentivize 

The end-all, be-all strategy for expanding your dealer network is to simply have better incentives than the competition. Whether it’s lead-generation through a great corporate website, or business-in-a-box style management training, you need to add value beyond just selling the best made product on the market.

2) Generate leads

Have you ever met a remodeler who would turn down a sales lead? They probably weren’t in business for long. If you can offer your dealers a steady, proven source of leads, you can drastically strengthen your new dealer sales team’s position in recruiting new partners.

3) Strategic referrals

Referrals are always a strong selling tool. The problem is, if you’re not careful, referral dealers can lead to a bunch of new dealers in one market. You don’t want to compete with yourself, so be sure to be strategic in requesting referrals.

Your dealers are well-connected with like-minded companies, though – so just be sure to ask for company referrals in specific open markets to get the dealers you want in the locations you need!

4) Publish or perish

Your ideal customer reads trade magazines. The best trade magazines accept articles from industry insiders. Write your best, and reach out to editors to get the word out!

5) Work the floor at events

At national and regional conferences, your sales team can act as canvassers on the expo floor. Hand out business cards with a good call-to-action to ensure that remodelers follow up.

Remodelers at conferences love free drink tickets, so that’s a great way to network, plus you know where they’ll be later on!

6) Recruit champions

Have you noticed that all of your new dealers already know one or two of your well-connected existing dealers? Those existing dealers are your champions, folks who enthusiastically talk about your brand to anyone who will listen.

Incentivize your champions to get the word out, and put particular effort into getting your large and well-networked dealers talking, and you will see a definite uptick in sales results.

7) Provide proof

Hold up your best dealers to show that partnering with your dealer network is a win-win proposition for new dealers. Ask your best dealers to explain how you have helped their business – on video is best! – and then put that in front of prospective dealers to close the deal.

8) Have killer collateral

There’s no excuse to not have brilliant photos of your products. If you don’t already have great marketing collateral, get off the bench and start acquiring it, since you start by selling new dealers just like you sell new consumers – with photos of your products.

9) Build a list

How many potential new dealers does your sales team reach out to – 500? 1,000? Arm your sales team for success by building them a larger list of potential remodelers. 10,000 contacts is a great starting point.

Here at Spectrum, we work with the best remodelers in the industry, across a wide variety of specialties from coast-to-coast. If you’re looking for marketing support to grow your network, we can help! Let’s get started with a free Dealer Expansion Analysis, where we show you the market opportunity you are missing and the best new areas you can expand into.

10) Know your markets

Do you have room for one more dealer in a market, or have you already hit the saturation point? It’s hard to say, without a good amount of statistical work. Luckily, we’re happy to do the heavy lifting for you! We can provide you a data-driven breakdown of the population and the online searches for your product in a given area to give you a definite answer of how many dealers you can sustain!

There you have it! Ten actionable ways to grow your dealer network to hit your aggressive expansion goals. Do you have everything you need to get started? If you don’t have the collateral you need, or if you are looking for expert insights into what is working for other great manufacturers, reach out and let us know! We work with the best remodeling manufacturers, and would be happy to share new and highly effective methods to grow your dealer base.