Most manufacturers appoint a distributor the way they hire a friend. Good meeting, warm handshake, strong referral, signed within a month. Then they spend two years wondering why the territory is quiet.
The appointment is the cheap part. The expensive part is the contract you cannot easily exit and the market you have handed to someone who was never right for it. Qualify first. Appoint second.
Every distributor is good in a meeting. They know the buyers, they have the showroom, they mention the project they just finished. None of it is evidence that they will sell your product into your target accounts.
I have sat across the table from plenty of them. In my experience the ones who talk longest about relationships are often the ones with the thinnest pipeline. So I stopped scoring the pitch and started scoring the business.
First, who they already sell to. Not who they say they can reach. Ask for named accounts and the people inside them. A distributor with real access to the EPC contractors, the operators or the OEM buyers you need will name them without blinking. One who deflects is selling you hope.
Second, what the rest of their line card looks like. You are not appointing a distributor in a vacuum. You are appointing them next to everything else they sell. If a stronger competitor sits on the same shelf, you are the second call at best. If your product is the only one of its kind in the range, you are a gap they can fill.
Third, whether the sale fits how they sell. This is the one most people miss.
A distributor who sells on price and availability cannot sell a product that needs a technical conversation.
At Hughes the Middle East channel ran through a PPE distributor. They sold safety equipment as a commodity item. Our product was specified into projects, so the sale was a different sale entirely. The fit was wrong from day one, and nobody had ever scored it.
Fourth, capacity. How many people will actually work your line? One person with forty brands is not a channel, it is a mailbox. Ask who will carry the bag, who will handle the technical queries and who will chase the EPC procurement team when the quotation goes quiet.
Here is the pattern worth knowing. A distributor can look like a success for years and still be holding you back. At Hughes, the numbers through that channel landed in roughly the same place almost every year. It would reach a level and stop.
A flat number year after year is not stability. It is a ceiling. It tells you the distributor has reached the limit of what they can or will do with your product, and that there is more market out there that they are never going to touch.
I spent nine months out of twelve in the GCC that year, building relationships on the ground. I replaced the distributors who were no longer fit for purpose, built a relationship with fire safety players whose customers matched our product far better, and got close to the EPC contractors directly. Then I ran a two prong approach, direct where I could and bidding alongside the partners where it made sense. The Middle East number was up 167% in 2024.
I did not get there by working harder through the old channel. I got there by scoring it honestly and then changing it.
Scoring before you appoint is the minimum. The same discipline applies after. Review every partner against the same four questions each year. Who are they selling to now? Has the line card changed? Is the fit still right? Is the capacity still there?
If you only ask these questions at the start, you are working from a snapshot. Markets move, distributors get bought, key people leave and a partner that scored well in year one can be a drag by year three.
It is also why I think structured partner discovery and scoring matters. Parteloa, our channel partner intelligence software, exists to give manufacturers a consistent way to find and score partners in a territory, so the choice rests on evidence and not on who happened to be at the exhibition. Whether you use software or a spreadsheet, the principle is the same. Write the criteria down before you meet anyone.
Take your current partners, or your shortlist, and score each one on the four questions. Be blunt. If you cannot answer a question, that is your answer.
Then ask yourself one thing. If this partner never grew your number past where it is today, would you know? If the honest answer is no, you have a channel you are not managing.
If you want a straight view on whether your channel is the right one for the markets you are targeting, I run Ground Truth. It is a paid go or no go call, direct with me, with a $250 refundable deposit. It is credited in full against Commercial Launchpad or the Fractional retainer if you proceed, and refunded if I decide it is not the right fit. You can book it at https://cal.com/scott-robinson-hn8vga/ground-truth
Ground Truth is a paid call that gives you an honest go or no-go on your market, direct with Scott. The $250 deposit is credited if you go ahead, and refunded if we are not the right fit.