Several manufacturers and distributors have applied this approach to help their staff locate reps or dealers who carry a certain line of products within a geographic area.
To begin with, you can track all the “lines” that their dealers carry in the Details tab. Then they build groups based on those Details in order to have dealer list by line to select from. (Under Groups, create a new Group based on “Contact Supplemental Data.” Sort the members of the Group by Zip.)
This way, when you get a call from a prospective customer looking for a dealer near them who carriers a specific line, you can simply view that Group and enter the first few digits of the caller’s zip into the “Find” box. Bingo – You have it!
These Groups will also come in handy for your own dealer communications.
Think ahead in naming your product lines in the Detail Reference Lookup list. By using a standard convention, which contains more than the specific line, you can do some clever things with searches, reports, etc. (e.g. maybe you add to the name of the line, the qualification level or the year they became active).
By the way, with GoldBox you can automatically rebuild your Groups, so that they are always up-to-date based on the Details in all your records.
