Your Distributor Isn’t Underperforming. You Appointed the Wrong One.

Q2 Since Launch

It rarely begins as a crisis. It begins as a quarterly business review.

Head office has the plan open — the one everybody signed off, the one that reads the same in every vendor’s deck. So many leads, times a conversion rate, equals a number. Head office asks why the number is not there. The region defends, because the region is the one that found this distributor, negotiated the agreement and announced it internally with some fanfare.

That is where the second-guessing starts. Was this the right structure? Should we be doing something else? Are they even trying?

Ask the distributor and you will get one of two answers.

The defender. There is a big pipeline, it just is not converting yet. These things take time, don’t worry. The market is slow at the moment but it will pick up.

The blamer. Your pricing is too high. You are not doing enough marketing. The competing brand is making moves you are not. What we really need is one of your people sitting inside our team, pushing for you.

Both of those are reasonable things for a distributor to say and neither of them tells you anything. What is striking, looking at the conversation from outside, is that every question being asked is about effort — theirs, yours, whose fault the effort is. Nobody is asking a question about structure.

Which is unfortunate, because the answer is structural.

What You Screened For

Go back to how the partner was chosen.

There was a logo you recognised. There were coverage claims — offices in five countries, relationships across the sector, a customer list on slide four with names on it you had been trying to reach for a year. There was a first meeting that went extremely well.

All of that was real. None of it was predictive.

An impressive deck, recognisable customers and a request for exclusivity make an appointment feel like it has solved market access on the day it is signed. What it has actually done is put your product on a shelf inside an organisation that is larger, older and more complicated than you are, alongside a great many other things that are also for sale.

And the most prestigious partner is rarely the most committed. The leading houses have the largest portfolios and the most lines already producing revenue. Winning that agreement feels like the breakthrough. It can put you at the back of the best-stocked shelf in the market.

Flagship or Alternative

Here is the thing that decides it, and it is not a spectrum.

Most partners have one flagship line. It is the product they actively promote, build their identity around and are known for in the market. Everything else in the portfolio is an alternative — something they reach for when a particular project requires it, or when the flagship cannot be made to fit.

So the useful question is not where do I sit among their twenty lines. Counting lines measures nothing. The question is simpler and less comfortable.

That is not a criticism of the partner. It is the rational behaviour of a business allocating finite effort. If the specification permits an equivalent, and the equivalent carries better margin or an established relationship or simply less friction, the equivalent gets proposed. Your line survives a deal only where it cannot be swapped out of it.

Which means substitutability is the variable — and substitutability is largely yours to control. Specification position, technical requirements only you meet, an installed base that makes replacement expensive: those are the things that stop a partner from being able to substitute you, and none of them are motivational.

There is also a distinction most vendors miss entirely, because the two arrangements look identical on paper.

An exclusive agency is a mutual commitment. You win together or you lose together, which keeps both sides on the same page on price, technology, specification and solution design. It also means that when a vendor brings a range that does not work for that market, the partner will say so and expect to be heard, rather than quietly letting it die.

A multi-line portfolio is not that. It is a shelf, and you earn your place on it in every single deal.

Vendors routinely buy the second and expect the behaviour of the first.

You Are Talking to the Wrong Person

Distribution agreements are signed at the top. Almost nothing that matters afterwards is decided there.

The person who determines whether your product gets put forward is usually the second-in-command and the segment lead — whoever controls pricing and decides which line goes into which deal. Alongside them sits the pre-sales team, who are the best friends a vendor has in that building, because they are the ones assembling the proposal.

Make sure those people know what they need to know, and can reach you directly for a clarification or price support without going through a formal channel. If you are not in the proposal, you will never get presented.

And there is a specific misreading that costs vendors more than any other. The chief executive of the distributor has said yes, warmly, in a meeting. The vendor takes that as settled and moves on.

It is not settled. The operating team has to execute, and if they are not on board you will be in exactly the same position next quarter — with a chief executive who still says yes and a pipeline that still has not moved.

A note for this region in particular. The senior commercial people at Gulf distributors are the people who matter. They have been there twenty years, they have survived everything, and management trusts them to deliver. The risk is not that your champion leaves. The risk is that you never identified them, because you were only talking to whoever signed.

The chief executive gives them a target and they are the ones who deliver the number.

The Test That Costs Nothing

There is a single question that makes most of the rest redundant, and it should be asked out loud, of them and of yourself.

Why do they need you?

Not why they like you, or why the category is interesting, or what the market study says. Why does this business, with its existing portfolio and its existing customers, need this line specifically. If the answer is compelling and understood on both sides, most of the other problems solve themselves. If it is vague, nothing else you do will hold.

And there is one test that produces an unambiguous answer in a fortnight.

What Moves a Line Up the Stack

The single most effective thing we ever did was refuse an order.

Early in the Middle East business we had been specified into a project by the integrator who had done the work — engaged the consultant, developed the requirement, put our technology into the design. When the tender was awarded, it went to a different partner, one who had not used our product, because their overall price was lower.

The client then made a conditional award. Match the compliance and match the price, and the project is yours.

We could have won it that quarter. The partner who had spent months building the specification would have lost, and would have watched us hand their work to somebody who undercut them.

We refused — at the risk of losing the project altogether or being pushed into a retender, which for a young company with no references was not a small risk to take. And we made that decision on our own, without even informing head office.

The award eventually came back to the partner who had originally worked with us.

What it sent, though, was a message to the market. Both partners respected us for it. We had not taken the shortcut and we came out better for not taking it.

Both of them worked with us for years afterwards. Including the one who lost.

Deal protection is not a policy in a partner agreement. It is a demonstration, made once, publicly, at a cost that is visible to everybody watching. Every partner in that market knew within a month what we had done, and what it had nearly cost us, and no clause in any document would have bought the same thing.

The other levers are more ordinary and all of them work. Margin set with reference to what it costs to sell in this market rather than at head office. Demand pull — once customers begin specifying you, partners who showed no interest need you in order to stay competitive, which is the only reliable way a channel ever really turns on. And being present: in the room, in front of the client, taking the difficult question alongside them rather than sending an email afterwards.

The best vendors I dealt with, from the other side of the table, were the ones who would face the customer with you. Win or lose together, and actually mean it.

Staying Close Enough to Matter

If your review cadence is quarterly, you are already too late.

By the time a quarterly review tells you something has gone wrong, the quarter is gone and so are the deals in it. What works is a set of information flows, formal and informal, that tell you what is happening without waiting for anybody to compile a report.

A pricing or quotation tool that shows you how many quotes went out, on what, at what level — without the distributor having to send you anything. A weekly check on actions rather than a quarterly check on outcomes. Scheduled activity at their demonstration centres, so the equipment you paid for is in front of customers rather than in a corner. And regular visits to their offices in the markets away from the head office, so the people there know a vendor is coming back next month and keep their reports ready.

That last one sounds trivial and it is not. It is the difference between being a line in a system and being a person somebody expects to see.

The review itself is worth structuring around leading indicators rather than the number:

If you lose touch, you lose control. Not because anybody is acting in bad faith, but because a portfolio business allocates attention to whoever is currently in the room.

And when the pipeline is not producing, the useful response is not to ask for a better forecast. It is to go and find the work yourself, inside their business.

Look at the projects they are already winning and work out where you could have a play. Look at the accounts they are already inside and find an angle for cold outreach into the parts of them nobody has touched. Mandate a proactive demonstration cadence rather than waiting for a customer to request one. Show up in front of their customers, and in front of their own channel partners. Talk to their sales people about where they are spending their time, and hand them pitch ideas they can use tomorrow. Build a generic pitch document out of the cases you have already won, in a form they can drop straight into their own decks and take to anybody.

When It Genuinely Isn’t Working

Sometimes it really is over, and it is worth describing one that ended badly.

This was early in the company’s life and not in my region. The distributor was a highly reputable audiovisual business — they still are — and the start was genuinely good. They brought reputation, visibility, logistics and a promise of technical support, which for a young vendor is most of what you want.

Then the projects started, and so did the friction. Who was responsible for which task. What the per-hour manpower cost was, and who paid it. Head office began questioning what the distributor was actually adding for the margin it was taking. Experienced regional leadership could not hold it together, and it ended in acrimony — and in a lasting mistrust, inside the company, of the whole distribution model as against direct partner sales.

Looking at it now, the conclusion is uncomfortable and clear.

Penny wise and pound foolish.

We moved to direct channel sales in that market and it worked well for years, which appeared at the time to settle the argument.

It did not. Years later, in the Middle East, a distributor bought deliberately — with the costs understood and planned for — was what gave the region continuity and stability at the point when the company itself was faltering. Same structure. Opposite outcome. The variable both times was the vendor.

And when a vendor does decide to change, there is one predictable mistake. The answer to a distributor who is not delivering is not another distributor.

It is introspection first. Is it our offering? Is it the market? Is it that this category’s buyers here would rather deal with the vendor directly? If the honest answer, having asked properly, is still that a different partner is needed — then go, and go wiser for having asked. But replacing the partner without changing the specification of what you are buying produces the same conversation, eighteen months later, with a different logo on it.

The Part That Is Yours

There is a version of this article that lets the reader off, and it would be dishonest.

We appointed and then under-supported. The marketing campaigns and the multiple road shows we promised were beyond what we could fund, and we compensated by being personally present — which helped, and was not the same thing. Partners who fully intended to prioritise our line sometimes stopped, because what we said would arrive to help them never arrived.

The uncomfortable part is that the expensive thing was not the thing that mattered.

Eight years on the other side of the table, deciding which vendor lines were worth the effort, taught me what was actually missing — and it was never the campaign budget. Vendors have to appreciate the logistics of selling: what it costs, in hours and effort, to create an opportunity rather than to fulfil one. Simply outsourcing that does not work.

What a partner wants is far cheaper than a road show. Cases shared properly, with enough detail to be useful in front of a customer. Marketing material customised to the way that distributor actually sells, rather than the way head office writes. Anything that shortens the distance between the vendor’s material and the partner’s proposal.

We knew that. We still spent our energy apologising for the campaigns we could not fund, instead of producing the cheap things that would have gone further.

The other half is conviction.

Do not be apologetic about a high price or an unfamiliar technology stack. Have the reasons ready and know why the value is real, because if the belief is not there internally the market will read it immediately. If your own assessment says you are weak somewhere, fix it until you are convinced yourself, and then go — they will see through anything less.

Prysm was the most expensive display in its category, from an unknown vendor, with no track record anywhere in the world. We built that market on our own terms because we were certain about what it was worth.

And the last one is the hardest to admit. We complained that the addressable market had narrowed and that we had no enterprise play in this region — and our two largest projects of that entire period came out of exactly that segment. If we had changed the motion earlier instead of explaining why it was difficult, the outcome would have been better.

A distributor amplifies whatever you actually are. If the proposition is clear, the protection is real and the presence is constant, they will carry it further than you could alone. If it is vague, they will do what any rational portfolio business does, which is put their effort where the return is more certain.

That is not underperformance. That is arithmetic.

Connektions MEA assesses partner networks already in place — who is performing, who is holding your line, and who should be replaced. That work is described under Regional Reset.