Because of these limitations, many companies simply recruit dealers and pretty much leave them on their own, which is no good to anyone. In this situation, the outcome's obvious: dealers founder and drop out, everybody loses. Well, with the Internet things are different.

The Two Key Components Of Your Internet-Based Dealer Program

For an Internet-based dealer program to work you must have two components: dealer-centered training materials and absolutely complete client-centered marketing communications into which the dealer need only insert his company i.d. and personal follow up information. Let's look at each component in turn.

Dealer-Centered Training Materials

Recruiting dealers is never enough. Training them to be successful is essential. By this standard most people with dealer programs fail. They don't the kinds of step-by-step instructions that dealers need to succeed. One reason they don't, of course, is the shear expense and bother of doing so. The old "sink or swim" methods employed by most companies (including virtually every network marketing company in existence) don't work, but from the company's standpoint they're less bother.

Not least, when your distributor training materials are all paper-based, it's troublesome keeping them up to date. Whenever you want to say something new, you've got to go through all the expense and bother of updating, which automatically ages what you're already using. Bummer.

On the Internet, you still have to keep materials up-to-date, but you don't have the draining expense. Now when you want to change something, assuming you've got your own domain or web site, you do it, whenever you want to do it. There's absolutely no excuse (like "we've got 10,000 copies of that stuff left") preventing you from taking immediate action.

The real question becomes, then, what should be in your dealer materials? To be complete, dealer training materials should include step-by-step instructions on

generating prospect leads
dealing with these leads by phone, fax, e-mail, snail mail
what objections dealers might hear and what should be said in response to each one of them
following up prospect leads
working with both customers and any other dealers/independent distributors they may recruit.

In other words, your training materials must give the dealer everthing he needs to know to represent your company and must provide sensible details on how to build a profitable business.

You must think through the kinds of characteristic situations the dealer will encounter... and give your best information on how to deal with them.

Remember, what's great about the Internet is that everything your dealers need to know can be included in your dealer training package... which, remember, can be updated instantaneously as things develop.

Note: The place where you post your dealer training materials should not be austere or forbidding, but rather a kind of cyber clubhouse. Here's where you should also post:

tips that successful dealers are using.
dealer profiles. People like to read about other people, who they are, how they got here.
competitor information. Your company doesn't exist in a vacuum. What are your competitors doing and what can you learn from them?

The idea is to encourage people to come back often, to keep learning, and to keep sharing so that other dealers benefit!