Contract Feeders have the critical mass with "specific" product lines to enforce distributor listings country wide. Both distributor and manufacturer must be aggressive with their trade spend programs to secure this business. Contract Feeders will prioritise:
- Inside rebates given directly to procurement
- Pricing to the unit level
- Product quality and consistency
- Product support
- Marketing commitment
Product compliance into their units makes them an ideal partner with a secure volume for the manufacturer. They have had more challenge enforcing their preferred products into their buying group members and it is up to the manufacturer to often actively help convert competitive brands. The key to this conversion:
- Find members using competitive product through velocity reports (generated from the contract feeder)
- Active sales call conversion: features, benefits, costings, samples, distributor codes
- Incentives to member or account rep to convert
- Attend buying group meetings/trade shows to promote product compliance and extend product usage.
As Contract Feeders tend to hold a low personal brand profile in most of the locations they service, they will support and often market high profile national brands to enforce the fact that use "high quality" products and ingredients. They also prefer to work directly with the manufacturer for all of their key ingredients. To have exclusivity on a contract feeder buying guide is ideal for a manufacturer, but do not neglect to reinforce your product usage with marketing, merchandising and technical support to ensure you remain a top priority in each unit.
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