“Distribution is 90%…” – Business Tip 6

“If it is not offered, it will not be chosen” says Mario Pretorius on the all-important role of product distribution. Get the product to the customer – and if he is in the rural bush, do it with a pickup that can handle barren tracks, adds the management strategist in this daily tip.  GK

Distribution Mario unconventional CEODistribution is 90% of the game. Your offering has to be at hand for your potential customer. If not, he will choose whatever IS at hand, notwithstanding your other efforts.

My time at SAB in Johannesburg was a turbo to the few ideas of management that I had. But it was a handful of years later that SAB cracked the code for growth, even though they had been the “temporary sole supplier’ of beer in South Africa. They deserved their monopoly, they were that good.

But they became a world-force though application of an obvious strategy hidden in the blind-spot of established best practice.

A man will ask for a nice, cold beer only if it is on offer.

You need to get it to him. In the rural bush. Under trees at shebeens (local African informal taverns). Where he lives, not just where you off-loaded from your big truck. You need to get down to pick-up level, on barren tracks.

With this they conquered Miller, South America, and Europe. They kept their focus not on price of quality or operations, but getting the best distribution to potential clients.

I saw first-hand a family business trucking unheard-of quantities of beer to Groblersdal – a speck on the map. No-one had bothered to determine the appetite of distribution-neglected thirst-plagued people.

 

So ditto your offering. If it is not offered, it will not be chosen. Distribute – and listen to how the distributors want to buy the product – they need to sell it too.

This tip is an extract from the manuscript of “The Unconventional CEO: Common sense outside of conventional Management thinking” (by Mario Pretorius).

 

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