Your stockist is not reading the brand deck

A company launches a range with a deck full of market size. The stockist in the town that is supposed to carry it has a godown, a collection problem, and eight companies already shouting about expiry. He will stock you if the arithmetic works and if someone from your side is still reachable after the launch lunch. He will not stock you because the deck used a good typeface.

Distribution and channel-partner work at The Pharma Partners Private Limited is the search for that stockist, that carrying-and-forwarding agent, that propaganda-cum-distribution partner, and the terms that will still make sense in month four. We introduce. We also write the territory down, because “exclusive” is the word that causes the most fights in this business, and it is usually the word nobody defined.

Pick the model before you pick the person

A CFA holds your stock in a region and feeds stockists. A stockist sells to chemists. A PCD partner, in the way the trade uses the phrase, often carries your brand into a territory with his own field effort, against a margin and a scheme, sometimes with an understanding that the territory is his. A hospital-supply agent is a different animal again. These people do not want the same pitch, and they should not be offered the same territory promise.

We ask what you can support. If you have no medical representatives of your own, do not design a plan that assumes you do. If your credit policy is fifteen days, do not recruit a partner whose whole business runs on forty-five. If you cannot take back short-expiry, say that at the first meeting. He will find out. Better he finds out from you, while he still has the option to decline politely.

What we check, and what we refuse to pretend

We ask a prospective partner where he is already strong, which companies he currently carries, and which of those companies would be unhappy to see your range in the same bag. Overlap is not always fatal. Hidden overlap is. We ask for the districts he really covers, not the state printed on his card. A card is a wish. Invoices are a map.

We will not promise you an all-India network next Monday. Anyone who does is introducing you to a spreadsheet. A serious start is one region, two or three partners, and a review after a quarter on secondary sales, not on the mood at the appointment. Companies that want a plant as well as a channel should read the note on third-party manufacturing first. There is no point appointing a stockist for a strip the plant cannot ship.

If you have a product permission and a region you want to enter, email info@thepharmapartners.com or call +91 95056 51342. Name the districts. If you say “pan India” we will ask you to pick a state and start there.