How to Find a New Dealer in Turkey?

In traditional dealership systems, we have defined new dealership work as "finding a dealer". New dealership work requires a special effort and concentration. So how do we do this?

 First of all, you should identify the regions in need of a dealership. You can do this at the province, district, neighborhood or even street and street level. You should identify the locations where your target customers are concentrated.

 You should prioritize the regions and decide where to start.

 I recommend that you give importance to this planning. Such planning is essential to use your time and energy effectively. If you are planned and goal-oriented, you will go a long way in a short time. Otherwise, you will go straight down the stream and go nowhere.

 Now you can start the work of finding dealers. 

 You must first create a dealer candidate pool. Your dealer candidates may come from among the tradesmen operating in your current sector, or they may come from among the tradesmen selling complementary products or in neighboring sectors, selling neighboring products. You should also include this second group of tradesmen in the dealer candidate pool.

After your candidate pool, you should identify the sales points in the field with a preliminary research. There are 4 ways to do this,

 

- Actively conducting screening work in the field

 

- Finding dealers from competitors' websites

 

- To identify points of sale by entering the product group and sector in Yandex navigation. (For example, when I typed "carpet stores" in Yandex while writing these lines, it showed 7,468 companies, and when I typed furniture stores, it showed 74,137 companies)

 

- Finding dealer candidates by entering the product group, sector and region into Google.

 Even if you do the last three, you need to be in the field to find dealers. You cannot find dealers at a desk or at a keyboard. Your dealer candidates are in the field. You cannot reach your potential dealers without traveling by car or even on foot. (I know from experience that traveling on foot is very effective. There may be tradesmen with high potential at points that cannot be reached by car. Travel by car, but be sure to walk around on foot in certain areas)

After identifying the candidates, a detailed list should be created with excel. The list should include details such as the dealer's name, title, location, store size, product groups it sells, which competitors it sells, and estimated sales turnover. (Start this list with basic data. Improve it by adding the information you obtain as you conduct interviews. Thus, you will have a solid inventory).

 If you segment the dealer candidates based on location and/or mark them on the map, you can see clues showing where you should focus. This is how you can determine the region and candidates to concentrate on. (In our study for a company, we determined that the stores in that line of business were concentrated in Ümraniye and Pendik in Istanbul. For this, it was enough to enter the data into excel and analyze it.)

 After that, you should visit the dealer candidates one by one and start the dealer acquisition process by conducting active interviews.

In a nutshell;

 Set yourself daily and weekly visit and dealer acquisition goals. Such as 10 new visits per day, 5 new dealer acquisitions per week, a certain amount of new turnover per month. Since your activities with your existing dealers will continue, you should definitely link the new dealership work to targets and motivate yourself. Otherwise, you will focus more on your current business and neglect the new franchise. Aim to complete daily visits by a certain time of the day (for example, by 18.00). At 18.00, look at your visit success rate (10 out of 10, 8 out of 10, 5 out of 10, etc.) Similarly, track your dealer acquisition rate on a weekly basis. Calculate how much new turnover you generate at the end of the month.

 Record all the conversations you have had. Collect business cards, take interior and exterior photos of the point. Create files that answer questions such as who you met with, what you discussed, what your findings and comments are, should the franchise be granted, is there a possibility of granting a franchise. Report your meetings and details to your manager on a weekly or even daily basis.

  You and only you can find your dealer, your spouse, friend, manager, friend or another dealer cannot find you a dealer. There will be advice for you, take it into consideration, but do not trust anyone to find a dealer. Trust only yourself.