Dealer Lists on Manufacturers' Websites

Customers who start with the brand

Some customers choose the product before they choose the business. They have settled on a brand of chartplotter, furnace, hot tub or flooring, and now they need someone nearby to sell, install or service it.

So they go to the manufacturer's website and look for its dealer list, usually a page called find a dealer, where to buy or find an installer.

That list is often the last place anyone at your business looked. It may still show an address you left years ago, a number nobody answers, or no link at all.

The customer who starts with the brand has already decided to buy. The list decides who gets the call.

What the lists get wrong

• An old address, sometimes the one on the original dealer agreement.
• A phone number that has changed, or now belongs to someone who left.
• No website link, or one pointing at a domain you no longer use.
• A former business name, or a misspelling of the current one.
• Missing services, such as installation or warranty repairs.
• No entry at all, although you have carried the brand for years.

The second does the most damage. A customer who reaches a dead number assumes the business has closed, and the list is right there offering the next name.

Why the lists go stale

Most dealer lists are kept by a head office or a national distributor, often from a spreadsheet or from the accounts system that sends your invoices.

So the address shown can be your billing address, which may be your bookkeeper's office or your home rather than the shop.

Nobody at head office knows you moved unless someone tells them. Telling your sales representative does not always reach the person who maintains the website.

What a wrong entry costs

Most dealer locators sort results by distance from the postal code the customer types. An old address can put you behind dealers further away, or leave you out of a nearby search entirely.

A customer who drives to the old address finds another business there. One who rings the old number reaches a recording or a stranger, and rarely tries again.

Warranty work follows the same path, since some brands send owners with a fault to the service centres on their list.

What to send each supplier

Send your details as one block that can be pasted straight into their system, so nobody has to retype or interpret anything.

Include your trading name spelled just as your sign spells it, the street address, a local phone number, your hours, and what you offer for that brand: sales, installation, service or warranty work.

Add the address of the page on your website about their brand. Someone arriving from the manufacturer wants that brand, not your home page.

If you work from vans without a storefront, say so, and ask whether the list can show a service area instead of a street address.

A worked example

A marine electrician with two vans and a small shop near a marina installs chartplotters, radar, autopilots, inverters and battery chargers, and is a certified installer for several brands.

Two years ago the business moved from a unit at one marina to a larger shop at another, and its main number changed from a technician's mobile to a landline.

Most of the brands' installer lists still showed the old marina and the mobile number. The technician had since left to work on his own, and kept the phone.

The owner found out when one customer mentioned trying the old marina first, and another said the number on a brand's website reached somebody else.

He sent each brand and the Canadian distributor the same block of details, with a link to a page about that brand on his own site.

A month later he checked every list. Most were right, one needed a second email, and one distributor refreshes its list twice a year, so that date went in the calendar.

A page for the link to land on

Each brand you carry deserves its own page on your site: what you sell or install from that brand, whether you service it, and how to book.

That page is where the manufacturer's link should point. It answers the question the customer arrived with, in the brand's own terms.

And a manufacturer's link to a page about its own products is a relevant link from an established site, which counts for something in search.

The same details everywhere

On a local search, Google's map shows up to seven businesses, and Google compares what it finds about each one across the web. A dealer list with an old address is one more source disagreeing with your listing.

So the block you send manufacturers should match your Google My Business listing, the Google+ page attached to it, your website's contact page and your invoices, word for word.

If the details differ anywhere, decide which version is right first, then correct the others to match it.

Finding the lists you are on

Start with every brand you sell, install or service, then add the distributors who supply them, since many keep their own dealer lists.

Check each brand's Canadian website and its American one. A Canadian dealer can appear on both, maintained by different people.

Then search for your old phone numbers and old addresses in quotation marks. That turns up dealer lists, directories and trade association pages you had forgotten.

The counter-case

Not every business depends on brand lists. A shop selling mostly its own products, or a trade installing whatever the customer supplies, gets few customers this way.

Some lists show only top-tier dealers, and getting onto them is a question for your dealer agreement rather than an email.

And a few manufacturers never answer. Then ask your sales representative to pass the correction on, and note the date you asked.

For any business carrying a brand customers ask for by name, though, the list is a front door worth checking: correct details, a link to the right page, and a yearly look.

This month

1. List every brand you sell, install or service.
2. Find each dealer list, Canadian and American.
3. Search your old numbers and addresses in quotation marks.
4. Build a page on your site for each brand.
5. Send one block of details to every supplier.
6. Check each list a month later.
7. Repeat the check every spring.

Step five is the one customers actually see. Everything before it is preparation, and nothing on a list changes until the supplier has your details in a form they can paste.

Using the brand on your pages rather than in your web address is covered in a manufacturer's brand inside your domain.

Frequently asked questions

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