Article 5: Collaboration and Evaluation in SPAs: Building Long-Term Success

Chapter 3: SPAs - Special Purchase Agreements: Enhancing Pricing Flexibility

Collaboration in SPAs:

Collaboration between suppliers and wholesalers is crucial for the effective implementation and execution of SPAs. By working together, both parties can align their strategies, leverage their respective strengths, and achieve shared goals. Collaboration means asking a lot of questions, active listening, and approaching different departments with those questions. Talk to sales leaders, sales consultants, and your portfolio manager.

If you implement an ongoing purchasing agreement, it can be hard to dial that back, because ultimately what you’re doing is giving the market a price increase. Be sure that what you’re supporting is impactful, and if it’s not, pull it back and rework your strategy.

Here are some key aspects of collaboration in SPAs:

Transparent Communication:

Establish open and transparent lines of communication with your wholesalers. Regularly discuss sales performance, market insights, and any challenges or opportunities that arise. Reviewing performance means looking at the % of business that uses the targeted and supported price points or price tiers.

Respectfully, don’t ask questions that you can find the answers to yourself. If you have an observation in the market, share that and build a dialog around it. There are opportunities to investigate sales portals that your distributor may offer or recommend, including third party options like VIP, Salesforce, etc.

Seek feedback and input to better understand needs and market dynamics. This will enable you to make informed decisions and tailor your strategies accordingly.

Joint Business Planning:

Collaborate with wholesalers on joint business planning to align objectives, establish targets, and develop action plans. Timing conflicts can be everywhere. If there is a gap in other priorities or objectives on the wholesale side, jump at the opportunity to align a short-term SPA and offer pulse pricing to the market. As important as catering to the end consumer, is providing tools to the sales force when they need them.

Training and Education:

You stand to make a greater impact on product education by making 20-30 second videos on social media and developing a following with the sales teams you work with, than by doing an hour-long training at a sales meeting. The presentation may feel better, but the regular constant reminders are of greater value long term. Again, this is good to work on regularly but if you’re offering a short-term incentive you need to turn up the presence on social media and marketing to lean into the opportunities.

If you’re offering financial support through SPAs you had better be focusing of fostering a collaborative learning environment where both suppliers and wholesalers can exchange insights and best practices. Provide training and education programs to wholesalers to enhance their product knowledge, selling skills, and customer service capabilities. The more passive and flexible the better.

Ongoing Evaluation in SPAs:

Regular evaluation is essential to assess the effectiveness of your SPAs, identify areas for improvement, and ensure long-term success.

Here are some key aspects of ongoing evaluation in SPAs:

Performance Metrics: