Building and Sustaining Effective Brand-Seller Relationships

In today's interconnected marketplace, building strong brand-seller relationships is essential for success. Trust and collaboration can significantly impact both parties involved. As businesses navigate an ever-changing landscape, cultivating these relationships becomes increasingly important. This post will explore effective strategies to build and sustain these vital connections, ensuring mutual success.

Scientific approach to building effective brand-seller relationships

Learn how each partner does business

• Identify what is important to them - margins, differentiation, scale, customer retention, high propensity cohorts or sharper targeting  

  
  

• Identify the overarching goal of partnership - Classify partners as growth drivers, profit drivers, scale builders or future bets

  
  

• Tailor account strategy, financial goals, key account manager skills to this classification

Commit to collaborate

• Build a shared understanding of what success in the partnership means. Break down long term goals into short term milestones and check-in regularly

  
  

• Broaden the scope of the partnership by exploring collaborations on product, tech, customer research or new revenue streams

  
  

• Calendarize joint meetings at regular cadence - do monthly business reviews with Key Account Managers, quarterly business reviews with leaders on either side, joint brown bag sessions with business or tech experts every alternate month

Be sensitive to margins and profitability of partners

• Negotiate effectively - Share customer value and business risk in equal measure. Plan the going-in and walking away commercial structure before every commercial negotiation

  
  

• Work with cross functional stakeholders in marketing, sales, operations, finance and data science to get negotiation guidance and do scenario planning

  
  

• Identify partner's investment appetite and customer reach. Assess their ability to scale, to invest upfront, to absorb cash flow concerns during the learning phase

  
  

  • Identify the partner's 'internal rate of return' or 'cost of capital' to predict their expectation of financial returns

Gather consumer insights

• Fine tune the product and marketing using a 'test and learn' approach. Improve the value proposition by running experiments on the selection, messaging and customer journey

  
  

• Integrate relevant data with partners and track joint deliverables with desired granularity e.g. real time sales and stock tracking

  
  

  • Monitor business health metrics such as inventory rotations, supply chain costs, efficiency of marketing spends, customer retention rates etc

• Share analytics and insights such as sales forecasts, high propensity customer segments and targeting opportunities

Selection and demand planning

• Select the products to compete on. Identify spread of demand across geos and for different product variants

  
  

• Forecast business size for the partner - Apply judgement initially to estimate market share, test and learn thereafter

  
  

  • Improve forecast accuracy using industry reports or sales trends of benchmark products which have same functionality, quality, performance and cost

Finalise the logistics, sales, service and data operations

• Design the logistic structure. Identify the facilities you will supply to, inventory you'll maintain and transportation modes you'll use.

  
  

  • Look at opportunities across the value chain to reduce logistic costs and operate lean, share cost savings with the seller

    
    

  • Align with brand/seller on reverse supply chain structure for returns and replacements

• Partner with brand/ seller in generating scale, work backwards from mutually agreed goals

  
  

  • Optimise market coverage in physical retail, ramping up coverage as you successfully cross milestones

    
    

  • Leverage digital capabilities of e-marketplaces - Use ad products to improve discoverability, use targeting tools to tailor offers/ messaging to customer preference