Having a strategy around marketing co-op will help you to optimize your product mix, supplier relationships, and develop a strong sales and marketing game that will make you invaluable to the channel.

Know where the co-op is coming from.

Identifying the source of your funds is essential to an effective strategy.

Optimize your product mix.

Optimizing which products and suppliers you’ll carry is the first step toward concentrating your spend.

Conduct line reviews to leverage spend.

Find the most optimal supplier relationship, affecting everything from pricing to rebates and co-op. Then, do regular line reviews. But be careful. Know your channel power.

Have three tiers of suppliers.

Divide your suppliers into three tiers: strategic, secondary and tertiary.

Use strategic purchasing agreements (SPAs).

You should have SPAs with all your key vendors to maximize price, rebates and co-op funds. 

Build annual plans with strategic vendors.

When you have annual planning sessions with your strategic vendors, you get to lay out your separate objectives and align your efforts to be more successful. 

Develop a marketing plan with company-wide buy-in.

A company-wide buy-in to your marketing plan will reach your suppliers and instill confidence in you for them.

Conduct an annual supplier summit.

Host all strategic and most secondary suppliers for an annual summit and deliver your plans for the next year in terms of events, merchandising, sales collateral and support, online training, ecommerce and more. 

Involve suppliers in promotions and discounts.

When you involve your suppliers in promotions, you’ll:

• Get reimbursed by the supplier.
• Get special pricing vs. your competitors.
• Show the supplier you’re effective with promotions and marketing.
• Learn which suppliers will come to the table with you.

Use supplier resources.

Suppliers offer many resources apart from co-op funding, such as training, technical support, marketing support and joint calls. These are valuable to distributors.