Dealer Locator

Commercial Web sites should make it very easy for customers to find dealers. This sounds like an obvious suggestion, but in fact it is often very difficult for manufacturers to provide a dealer locator. Most goods are sold through wholesalers or distributors. These folks keep the dealers’ names to themselves. Yet providing information to the ultimate consumer is a very efficient way of delivering customers to dealers and building total market share.

How can you find dealers? Follow the money trail. Make it easy and profitable for dealers to be identified. To do this, have a Web microsite where dealers can provide their location, phone number, directions, store hours, and other such information (Figure 3-2). When dealers come to your microsite to register, have them provide the name of the wholesaler or distributor that supplies your products to them. Once your Web site has captured the dealers’ name, the Web site can automatically send the information to the appropriate wholesaler or distributor for verification before it becomes a part of your consumer Web site dealer locator. Some wholesalers or distributors will help you in this process; others will not.

Figure 3-2: Finding a Dealer

The dealers provide you with their information plus their email address. Then, when customers come to your Web site and ask for a local dealer, if the customers give you permission, you can send their names to the dealer for follow-up.