Understanding your channel partner options

Watch this three-minute video of Paul Dibbayawan, NZTE Beachhead Advisor and James McLeod, Made4Baby sharing their tips on selecting and working with a channel partner to help your business grow in new markets.

If you want to learn more about how to select and qualify the right in-market partner for your business, register now for the next Export Essentials Workshop. We’ll give you practical tools and techniques to take your business global.

Paul Dibbayawan: What a Channel Partner means to me is the person or the entity or the organisation that’s going to help you get to the end consumer of your service or your product. 

James McLeod: Look, it’s important to select the right partner. Look, they are representing your interests within that country. They are holding your hopes and dreams of growing your business and achieving more volume within that country. So, that partnership, and finding that right distributor, is really important.

Paul Dibbayawan: The wrong Channel Partner could kill your brand before you actually before you’ve even had a chance to make it work if they are not the right fit from a brand culture perspective.

James McLeod: So, as a part of the criteria in selecting a brand distributor we send them a questionnaire, and there’s a bunch of questions on that questionnaire that will give us an outline of how serious and actually what their understanding of the market is. So, the questions are things like around their marketing strategy, their sales strategy, their existing distribution capabilities through the network that we’re looking for whether it’s baby stores, you know, health shops. So, it’s their understanding of the market.

Paul Dibbayawan: It’s important to have an assessment criteria when you’re selecting the Channel Partner because, as with anything, if you do the right level of homework and research you’re going to find the right partner, and that has to come back to you understanding what you want in the marketplace so that when you do get here you’re not just randomly selecting “Well, here’s a big guy, let’s just go with him” because that person may not be right for you if what you really want to do is get it to a niche market and they’re getting it to a mass market. So, the three tips that I would give for an exporter looking for a Channel Partner is firstly, pick the Channel Partner that understands the vision and the direction of where you want to go. Secondly, make sure that the Channel Partner understands where your brand is and where you want it to go in that marketplace. And thirdly, make sure you pick a Channel Partner that wants a relationship and a long-term partnership with you.

James McLeod: Look, one of the tips that I would give to someone who’s exporting for the first time, if you’re selecting a distributor ensure that they have established distribution networks first. Passion is not enough, love of your product is not enough, established distribution networks is so important.