Hence, here are some strategies and tips to help you scale your distribution business for General Trade. 

1. Build Better Sales Strategy

For General Trade, salesmen take a vital role in achieving companies’ sales targets. Since they promote products on behalf of the distributors/principals, you should equip them with the right tool so that they can interact in a more personal and efficient manner with customers. 

With up to 1,000-15,000 stores per distributor to be covered, scheduling and route planning is important too. 

2. Track Your Delivery to Reach All Region

One of the important elements of distribution is tracking location updates. Having a digital tracking system allows for accurate monitoring of shipments (status, location, PIC, and accuracy of item delivered) in real time.

3. Digitalize Your Invoice Payment Collection

General Trade tends to have a more dynamic cash flow, to accommodate that, distributors often offer partial payment. By digitizing your process, you can follow up on invoices automatically, thus ensuring all of your payments are paid on time and minimizing bad debts. 

4. Audit Your Market Presence 

Product availability at the store level is increasingly becoming more important to maintain company competitiveness. Therefore, to maintain/improve your market position, you should start looking for ways to collect and monitor in-store data (shelf monitoring, stock level, selling prices in stores, expiry dates, planogram and more).