Distributor territories 101 (VIDEO)

This 7-minute video will show you how to set up distributor territories, navigate brand registration with territories, assign brands to distributors, and clone brands if distribution is the same across multiple brands. 

Subtopics and where they begin

Video transcript

Hannah:
Petra, I had this awful nightmare last night, where I had to keep all my distributor territory information in Manila folders.

Petra:
Yikes. Compared to that, Territory Management in ShipCompliant is a dream come true. We help you ditch those hard-to-manage spreadsheets and organize all of your distributor and territory relationships in one place. They're easy to find and easy to share.

Hannah:
Let's see how it works.

Petra:
Awesome.

Zoe:
In the next few minutes, I'll walk you through setting up your distributor territories. You can set up your distributor territories in ShipCompliant as you're creating your registration packet, or you can add the information in bulk upfront. First, I'm going to take you through how it works when you're just setting those up as you go, as you're creating registrations.

Zoe:
I'm going to create a new brand registration. I'm going to walk through this workflow pretty quickly here. I'm going to select a complete label that has products associated. Check it over. I'm going to select Illinois. I know it's a state that has territory management requirements, and in this step, you'll actually manage those territories. So, I'm going to deselect the territories for this distributor in the state, just select a few that might be applicable. If you save your changes permanently, it's going to save the changes to the distributor across all the distributor's brands. Or you can just save the changes, specifically to this registration. And that's it. When you go to print out that registration, that distributor territory information will be included.

Zoe:
So next, I'm going to show you how you would add that information up front. It is going to take a little bit of time to get it set up, but really, rest assured once entered, that is really going to streamline your workflow. So, in the wholesale wizard, I'm going to take a look at step four. In this step, you're telling our system which counties or territories per state your distributors are responsible for. So, in Kentucky, Kentucky has partial territories, so you can select the county that you know the distributor is working in. You can also designate this distributor to work in only particular cities. Other states work a little differently. I'm going to just click into North Carolina. Just so you know, as you click into different states within this step, we'll save your work. So, in North Carolina, again, I'm going to set up a partial distribution, and here we don't see the cities. So, you would just enter your distributor's description in the box like north of county road, 268 or two miles past the truck stop, on the right. Another thing to note is Same As. This isn't that commonly used, but what it allows you to do is clone your distribution information to a new distributor. So, say if you change distributors, you can really easily clone the distribution information from the old distributor. And then I'm going to take a look at the map. It's just a nice view to see, to see your setup. And then last on this step, states that require territory management to be included in output, like label registrations, will appear in the required section here. Other states will appear as not required. And this allows you to manage your territories in all states with ShipCompliant.

Zoe:
So now, I'm going to go to step 10 of the wizard. This is one of the last steps in your setup. There are some prerequisites to getting started with this step. First of all, you have to have labels attached to your products, or no brands are going to appear. So, the brand has to be complete to start this step. And for states to appear, you have to have distributors in that state and territory set up for that distributor. Once you get to that point, this will indicate which distributors are selling which brands. So, I'm going to go to the brand view here, select my brand, Great Dane, and assign this brand to the distributors in various states. So, I'm just going to take a look at Connecticut, and assign the brand to a couple of distributors by checking the boxes here. And you know, some of these other distributors look like they don't carry the brand. They might carry a different one. Selecting all of the distributors is really more common for breweries where distributors might carry all the brands in the territories where they work. Clicking over to the state view: The state view is great if you want to see all your brands in a single state at once. If you're only in around five states, this view might be easier for you. And you can select all if your distribution is the same across all of your brands.

Zoe:
So another thing to note is you can also clone brands. This is a really great feature if your distribution is the same across multiple brands. Cloning allows you to copy the distribution from one brand to another. And you can also clone your distribution when you're entering your brands and set up brands. That's it. So then you're ready. Everything is going to be set up for you for a really streamlined stress-free workflow. You know, maybe a little bit more manual, to set up those territories upfront, but it really does pay off. And, especially when you can start to create registrations, in under a minute.

Hannah:
Thanks for watching. Give it a try. With every click you're one step closer to not relying on spreadsheets or Manila folders to manage your distributor territories.