Are these the types of annoying things you have to deal with as a sales channel manager?
You are annoyed by the resellers who are violating the MAP price policies they signed with you. You are shocked to see that sellers on Amazon and Walmart you didn’t know with terrible customer reviews are selling your products at shockingly low prices. You didn’t know your products were getting sold in digital channels like eBay you were not intending to sell, and in countries you didn’t want to sell directly.
You purchased the best Minimum Advertised Price Monitoring tool to understand these violations in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and now this solution is opening your eyes to the health of your sales channel. However, just knowing isn’t helpful if you can’t act.
To stop sales from these unknown retailers and in digital channels you don’t trust, you may have important questions to begin reaching out to these bad actors and active your MAP enforcement. We list below two common questions that we have heard working with many brands. We also share information and service providers to help you.
1. How do I contact the resellers that I didn’t know sold my products?
You may learn that your products are sold by dozens to hundreds to thousands of resellers you had no idea sold your product. You wonder – who are these guys, how did they get my products, which wholesaler is the culprit doing this, and most importantly – how do I contact them? Some of these seem like bigger companies with many staff and a physical office, while some look like a one-person shop with little digital identity. You ask – who is the right brand or category manager at this reseller that you should contact? What is his/her email address and phone number? Who is the compliance person responsible for responding to these questions?
You may have the contact name, email, and phone number of the authorized representative from your resellers. However, even those contacts may have changed over time. Most likely, you have no clue who are the right folks at these resellers you haven’t heard of.
You may be tempted to do a Google and LinkedIn search and figure out who is the right person. You may try to call their main number or estimate the contact’s email and message. However, this may be highly inaccurate, ineffective, and frustrating for you.
We recommend that you use companies that specialize in having and selling contact information. Here are a few companies that may have retailers’ contact names, emails, and phone numbers of the right person at the resellers you want to contact.
There may be more contact data providers. However, if you need to find the right contact and reach out, we suggest you buy a contact list from companies like the above vs trying to do this on your own to increase your effectiveness of stopping minimum advertised price policy violators. If you have the right contact and message, at least you have gotten on his/her radar.