Community is important to your business. We all know that, that’s why we have annual dealers meetings. Relationships are formed, common ground is identified, and dealers join together to be stronger than their individual company. The leaders are singled out as models and everyone learns from each other, building friendships along the way..

Perhaps the annual dealer meeting is the most important event of the year for your company. Many manufacturers get their largest orders at this annual pilgrimage to your dealer meeting. Your annual dealer meeting generates friendships and brand loyalty that often lasts a lifetime. Your partners associate many of their best friends, lifelong associates, with your brand.

You can have a year around on-line community. Your partners can visit daily, or weekly, or only when they need help. Your on-line community (forums) can be broken down into groups much like your annual meeting. Sales, service, accounting, can all have their own focus.

Nurturing your community integrates friendships, best of breed model businesses, and your support staff into your brand. Your community is a fantastic addition to conventional sales and support staff. Many times your best and brightest dealers will happily show off and answer questions faster and better than your own staff.

You may have seen the term “forum” bandied about, on the web or in email. These forums are simply an on-line community where an individual can ask a question, and anyone can answer the question. With the kind of closed system we offer, only your dealers will have access to this special forum. So a dealer can pose a question, and another dealer, or your staff may answer the question. When we set up the forum, you can choose to have your staff edit every remark before it is posted, or to allow your dealers to post and immediately see their question (or answer). Even if you allow dealers to post without review, it’s your system, so you may delete any comment or question.

With a closed (user id and password required) system, we can deliver the documentation, forms, on-line configuration, warranty registration, and other functions that your dealers need to perform every day. Consider the value of regaining a large part of your top technician’s time, every day, as dealers find solutions using your web based forum.

At Nauvou (na-voo) we are focused on the manufacturer to dealer interaction. We want to help you communicate better with your dealers. Our product Nauvou Partner Portal, includes everything you need to get your dealer community off the ground. We make it easy to set up, and administer your dealer community site. Perhaps you already participate in a forum about something that you care about? Look around at our offering, we can provide a turn-key web based system for communicating with your dealers. Our system is affordable for even the smallest manufacturer. We can also deliver for large manufacturers who have 1000’s of dealers. With our web based solution scalability is never a problem.

(The evils of password sharing)

1. Know who your customers really are.
2. Allow key users more authority.
3. Speak with authority about who placed an order.
4. Hold individuals responsible for their actions.
5. Lock out partner employees when terminated.
6. Sell to individual employee classes.
7. Thank the individual who makes a comment.

Password sharing reduces your knowledge about your customer. Individual employees drive your sales, pay attention to those people who help further your cause. Communicate personally to drive more business.

The Nauvou partner portal, pushes responsibility and the authority to grant individuals the right to access your partner portal to the lead person at your partner’s business. You can of course revoke access to anyone, but it’s nice to put the authority in the proper place.

Social media, you can influence your existing dealers and distributors for very little money or effort.  I expect that you like myself believe that everyone would buy your product, if only they understood all of the value that you provide.  Now you can use social media to cost effectively make your partners understand your value.

Here are our tweets, just to give you an idea of the value we bring.
Tweets by @Nauvou

With Nauvou Partner Portal, you have a host for your very own articles. You write the articles, and once you post the article using our system, it’s just the click of the tweet button for everyone who cares to know about your latest accomplishment. With Nauvou Partner Portal, you may limit viewers to only your dealers or distributors.

Start today, begin to gain the social edge now, before everyone is on the bandwagon. Remember Nauvou will always keep you out in front of your partners!

B2B websites are like Boats, while there are many differences, the basic functions must remain the same. With a boat, there is a hull, engine, seats, lights. If you borrow a boat or rent a boat, it only takes a few minutes to get underway. Web sites work the same way, there is a way to configure a product, retrieve technical information, ask a question and so on.

People feel a lot of comfort when they can get immediate results. Your dealer website needs to have this comfort. Your dealer portal is the vehicle that makes it easy to do business with your company any time of day or night. If your dealers get frustrated with your dealer portal, they call, to many calls can really gum up the works of your business.

The primary purpose of your B2B portal is to be responsive to your dealers needs. Partners are happier when they can help themselves. Your portal facilitates this ability for dealers to find the answers that they need.

1. Configure Product – This is the ability for your dealers to choose product options, much like on your old fax order form. Web design elements have special rules, with “check boxes,” multiple options can be picked, with “radio buttons,” only one choice at a time is valid. These are standard conventions used across the software industry. When your dealers place orders for product on-line you get a clear copy of the order with the id of the actual person at your partners company who placed the order.
2. View order status – Partners want to know where their order is in your pipeline. Sometimes you can ship immediately, other times you may have to build the product. When you update the order status, your dealers can find where their order is in your pipeline at any time.
3. Register Warranties – No more paper warranty cards, all of your consumers in one database for you to contact any time you would like.
4. New product brochures – Available on the same day to everyone, regardless of their location. With as much color and detail as you want. Your brochures are delivered and printed free to you, since you provide the digital copy. Of course, you will still need to print consumer marketing material, but getting quick delivery to your partners provides value.
5. Technical Service Bulletins – You can change them yourself, any time of the day or night. If it’s important, feature it on your dealer home page.
6. Technical Service Manuals – No more inserting pages, provide this electronically. Cost reductions for both, you and your partners.
7. Clearance, specials, new-product releases, sales tips – All under your control, with instant delivery to your dealers.
8. Inventory Trades – Give your dealers the opportunity to trade or sell their inventory to other dealers.

Putting together a web portal for your dealers is mostly about thinking of the things that you do for your dealers manually, and delivering a better solution to your dealers. Being web based, any work that you do to clarify, make easier, and improve your solution will have a payoff. Every dealer will be able to take advantage of your efforts. With careful thought incentivizing dealers to submit questions can result in a powerful FAQ database.

Do you think of your partners as competitors or a team working together to conquer the competition? Your view may be affecting the effectiveness of your team. Yes, your dealer network is your team. They are or can be an organism that works as an entity, learning from failures as well as successes. This article will help you build your partner team.

Do you do your part in moving your network forward? Do you foster the sharing of stories of success? What works? Who is buying? How long do your partners work with a prospect before getting an order? Computer technology can help you build your team faster and easier than word of mouth.

Are your partners surviving on service work? If they are, perhaps you should be helping? Remember, Demosthene’s motto from 338 BC “He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.” Well, the economy is getting better, and when business picks up, you want to have a strong dealer network, poised for growth. As the economy continues to grow, you will be really happy with your toughened partners who are willing to and able to sell your product.

1. Call your partners and solicit some unique sales success stories. (or theatrical failures)
2. Package a partner sales story every month and include it on your partner home page. (attribute the story to your partner if possible)
3. Get engineering to put together some topical service sales opportunity every month.
4. Change your partner home page every month! (give your partners a reason to return)

Perhaps you should even consider giving a small prize, like a customized windbreaker for the most inspiring sales story of the month. In other words, encourage your partner network to share stories with your staff. Speaking of your staff, you should designate a staff person for your partners to call or email with their stories. Everyone likes to have a leadership roll, and set someone up to be the lead person for your partner home page. Get your partners talking about their collective strength.

Many years ago, while I was in college, I attempted to return a very expensive clock chip that I managed to blow up. I guess I had improperly used a piece of test equipment, and the ground was not correct, turned the chip into smoke. Being a financially challenged student, I mailed the cinders into the manufacturer said it was defective. Well, I got a real nice letter from the head of engineering asking to see my circuit diagram, and offering to set me straight on how to use the chip. I’m certain that he would still laugh about some kid calling his chip defective. The entire physics department got a laugh out of my letter, and I’m sure that his staff did the same. Sometimes those crazy stories make a sales pitch where reality is better than fiction. While I did not get a free replacement chip, I sure got a genuine offer of assistance, where none was required. And yes, I did buy more chips from that company, and learned that to make something you have to take risks. Take a risk, open a channel of communications with your partners.