Strategic planning is the foundation for growth and business transformation. But a smart strategy must be built from the top down and supported from the bottom up.
Strategic planning is just the beginning.
Our 360° view
Channel Marketing Group has helped more than 150 manufacturers, distributors, and manufacturer representatives achieve stellar business outcomes and/or gain valuable insights, and we’ve done it by deploying what we call our 360° philosophy. We work with manufacturers, distributors, reps and others to assess their go-to-market strategies, recommend strategic plans, and position the company to capitalize on emerging trends while maintaining flexibility.
Strategic planning isn’t one-size-fits-all.
Most importantly, we believe your business is unique, so we don’t retread the same roadmap for every client. We apply our proven methodologies to your company to formulate a strategy and plan that will best utilize your resources, engage your employees and customers, and meet your business goals.
Growth Planning System for Distributors
Our Growth Planning System, or GPS, offers an integrated, comprehensive approach to help distributors excel and position themselves for the future.
We partner with your entire organization to gather business intelligence, identify pain points, solicit stakeholder input, analyze findings, set goals, determine operational needs, develop overall strategy, create a detailed plan to drive business outcomes, and help you execute the plan. We customize this approach for each and every client—from comprehensive on-site planning sessions to facilitating workshops and strategic retreats—to ensure it meets the needs of your people and operations.
Strategic Services for Manufacturers
For manufacturers, we tailor our services to align with the organization’s size, workforce, and market share.
For small to mid-sized manufacturers, we gather comprehensive data and business intelligence, identify pain points, solicit stakeholder input, develop sales and marketing strategy, and create a detailed plan to drive desired business outcomes.
For larger manufacturers, we facilitate strategic channel-oriented workshops, share industry and channel trends for better decision-making, and conduct sales organization and distribution research to evaluate market positioning and potential.
We also conduct rep and/or sales organization voice-of-customer research for manufacturers to gain insights into awareness and customer satisfaction. Additionally, we can help research and develop a “distributor” program, in which we evaluate brand perception, provide ideas to optimize rebate and co-op marketing support, and evaluate the competitiveness of your terms and conditions.
360º Insights
It’s difficult to understand your competitive environment when you’re not in tune with the current state of your business.
• Customer research
• Market research
• Supplier interviews for distributors and reps
• Competitive dynamics
• Quantitative analysis and forecasting
We believe in intensive information-gathering, talking to your customers, employees, sales organization, suppliers, and other stakeholders. We also thoroughly research the marketplace, so we’re in the best position possible to lay out your next steps.
Marketing & Sales Recommendations
Once we’ve gathered and processed your business intelligence, we make recommendations to ensure your marketing strategy supports your overall business goals.
• Growth objectives
• Cultural and communications initiatives
• Customer segmentation
• Product offering
• eCommerce
• Elements of profitable growth
• Business metrics
• Organizational Structure
• Paths to growth
• Acquisition
Once we’ve gathered and processed your business intelligence, we make recommendations to ensure your marketing strategy supports your overall business goals.
Advisory Services
The goal of our advisory services is to be an ongoing resource to you and your staff.
• Lumiere (low-cost telephone advisory services)
• Facilitating customer and sales advisory councils
• Joining your Board of Advisors or providing advice on an ongoing basis
• Fractional Sales Management services
The goal of our advisory services is to be an ongoing resource to you and your staff. A listener. An idea generator. A trusted ear and advisor. A resource to help you accelerate growth. We can quickly assess a situation, ask the right questions (even the uncomfortable ones) and share ideas…confidentially. Clients appreciate our ability to extract disparate pieces of information and distill them into potential workable solutions, which they know are thoughtfully considered based on our experience in the industry.