The Distributor “Value-Add” Report Card: Is Your Distributor a Strategic Partner? Or a Middleman With a Price Sheet…
The Hidden Cost of Unexamined Partnerships
Some of the highest performing distributor representatives in our industry have earned that distinction not just through sales, but through their ability to almost operate as an extension of the vet clinic’s team. Top performing reps calmly navigate logistical and stock challenges, serve as strategic partners in pricing decisions, educate clinical teams on new products and initiatives, and sometimes even act as trusted sounding boards for hospital staff. While many in our industry do their best to rise to that standard in an increasingly complex, high pressure environment, some simply just add cost to already expensive clinic supplies.
Here’s the challenge: as vet clinics grow more operationally sophisticated, the definition of value will continue to shift….sometimes dramatically. What used to feel like “great service” before the Covid 19 pandemic may now feel insufficient. Practice managers, inventory managers, and buyers are asking smarter questions, tracking margins far more closely, and expecting their external distribution and supply partners to raise their game as well.
In an attempt to create and deliver new and evolved value, some distributors have carefully repositioned themselves not merely as logistics partners, but as full-fledged strategic allies to the practices they serve. The titles reflect this shift with some companies: reps are no longer “territory managers” or “account managers,” but “practice consultants,” “solution specialists,” and “business advisors.”
It’s an attractive narrative. It also raises a serious question: Do these new titles deliver new value?
In a climate where loyalty is no longer automatic, and where purchasing decisions are tied directly to financial survival, clinics are increasingly justified in asking 3 important questions:
Is your distributor truly acting like a strategic partner?
Does the support you’ve been led to expect from your distributor align with what’s really being delivered?
How do you actually measure the quality of the support you get from your distributor and distributor rep?
Just as distributors track practice purchasing compliance with supply agreements and policies, veterinary hospitals should feel empowered to assess whether their supply partners are truly fulfilling their end of the partnership clearly, transparently, and with structure.
That’s where the Distributor “Value-Add” Report Card comes in.
The Report Card: Five Areas To Assess Distributor Value
Each of the following categories reflects a common promise made by distributors as well as a critical function for modern veterinary hospitals and clinics. Grade each area A through F based on what your distributor is actually delivering.
1. Enhancing Clinic Profitability & Financial Insight: Helping you make smarter financial decisions? Or just selling by the case?
A strong distributor sales rep will explain ROI, talk through margins, and help you understand how a new piece of equipment or recurring purchase will impact your bottom line. They don’t need to be a CFO, but they should be comfortable having the occasional uncomfortable financial conversation if it will ultimately make your hospital more profitable and competitive.
If your distributor has never proactively approached you to discuss things like net revenue per square foot, cost-per-use, or how you can shorten equipment investment payback periods, it’s worth asking: why not?
Grades:
A: Helps us analyze ROI, cost recovery, and long term financial impacts that would not otherwise be uncovered.
B: Discusses pricing and savings opportunities clearly and proactively.
C: Able to answer basic pricing questions but avoids deeper coinciding financial layers.
D: Focuses almost solely on discounting and promotions with no other strategic lens or framework.
F: Avoids financial discussions entirely or seems unprepared for them.
2. Objective Product Recommendations: Do your distributor’s suggestions serve your clinic? Or the distributor’s vendor agreements?
Most distributors have preferred partnerships, sales targets, and incentive programs with their suppliers. Most of the time, these “behind the scenes” terms between distributors and manufacturers can lower overall costs and tend to benefit their mutual veterinary hospital customers….as long as they are transparent and their advice stays rooted in your clinic’s needs. You shouldn’t have to wonder whether a recommendation is based on performance or pressure from above.
The best distributor sales reps will help you to compare options, acknowledge competing products even if they don’t carry them, and explain trade-offs. A biased one will push the same brands over and over, regardless of clinical fit.
Grades:
A: Consistently gives us objective, sound, and expert product advice…even when it’s not the house brand.
B: Generally recommends good fit products but rarely discusses what problems they solve and why.
C: Focuses heavily on distributor preferred SKUs with minimal explanation or product knowledge.
D: Pushes products based on sales incentives or promotions without any alignment to clinic needs.
F: Offers no rationale for recommendations; we actually dread every visit because it feels like a product pitch.
3. Inventory Management Support: Are they helping you manage inventory strategically? Or just reacting to reorders?
Inventory management isn’t glamorous, but it’s one of the most powerful tools for controlling clinic costs. A rep who understands and can offer insight into your reorder points, stocking levels, expiration risks, and system limitations can save your practice thousands each year in product costs, time, waste, and missed charges.
If your rep is only involved when something goes wrong, that’s not support. That’s reactive fulfillment.
Grades:
A: Helps us to develop, create, and continuosly refine inventory systems that all but guarantee stock health.
B: Flags problems early and is knowledgeable about inventory management.
C: Responds when asked, but doesn’t help manage our inventory structure or visibility.
D: Only addresses orders or stockouts without any discussions of an inventory strategy.
F: Provides no inventory related support at all.
4. Product Knowledge & Education: Do they deepen your team’s understanding? Or just drop off brochures?
Great reps don’t just drop off sell sheets or brochures. They explain the product’s clinical applications, product limitations and competitor options, and what the experience of using the product actually looks and feels like in the real world. They provide useful training and know when not to oversell. They sometimes can use their manufacturer relationships to secure a demo unit for you to test. And perhaps most importantly, they understand your clinic’s individual needs and nuances on a deep level before blindly recommending a product or solution.
The world we live in has become absolutely flooded with new devices, technology, and solutions. In this new era, education is not an option but needs to be part of the value proposition. A rep who can’t explain what they’re selling or why it is a fit for your hospital isn’t adding knowledge.
Grades:
A: Offers accessible and relevant product training education that empowers our team.
B: Answers questions confidently and knows the product features and benefits inside and out.
C: Knows the basics but rarely offers any clinical context or insight into other options.
D: Struggles to explain product fit, clinical value, or basic functions. Sells it, but not much more.
F: No education provided. Just pricing, part numbers, and a link to the manufacturer’s homepage.
5. Simplifying & Improving Workflows: Are they helping reduce complexity? Or are they adding to it?
Your distributor rep shouldn’t just know what you order; they should understand why you order it and if a better way to do something exists. That means peeling back deeper layers and going beyond recognizing your hospital’s appointment structure or where handoffs occur. It means grasping how supplies physically move through treatment areas, where bottlenecks routinely emerge, and how the smallest inefficiencies can ripple across the day’s caseload.
But the highest level distributor reps go even further….
They understand the human layer beneath the workflow and the individual strengths and limitations of your staff, the dynamics of your team, and how new purchases or initiatives will land operationally in your clinic (not just in theory). They don’t recommend solutions without considering whether it fits your people, your pace, and your priorities. And they know that sometimes, the smartest move isn’t adding a new product….it’s protecting a process that’s already working.
A rep who doesn’t understand your workflows can unintentionally introduce more complexity with tools you don’t need, systems that don’t fit, or purchases that sit unused.
Grades:
A: Identifies our subtle points of workflow friction that are quietly but drastically impacting hospital/clinic performance.
B: Brings the occasional workflow suggestions and recommends appropriate products to alleviate glaring workflow issues.
C: Shows interest in hospital/clinic operations but rarely offers actionable changes.
D: Focuses solely on product fulfillment with no attention or interest in helping us to alleviate workflow issues.
F: Has never even asked about how our hospital operations or workflow.
What Your Score Means
Take a moment and grade your distributor honestly, then ask yourself: Is our clinic/hospital getting the value we’ve been promised and told to expect? Or just the value we’ve been sold on….
Mostly A’s? You’ve got a real, experienced partner. A diamond in the rough. Invest in that relationship.
Mostly B’s? You’re working with someone who really cares but might just need a touch more experience to be epic.
Mostly C’s? Your distributor cares about you, but the relationship is transactional at best. You deserve better.
Mostly D’s and F’s? You’re paying partnership pricing for box moving behavior.
Conclusion: Accountability Is the New Loyalty
Veterinary distributors have played and will continue to have an instrumental role have played a meaningful role in shaping our industry and the care that is delivered by veterinary clinical teams. Most of them are depended upon for supplies and services that clinics rely on and could otherwise not function without. That said, as the market continues to rapidly mature, the expectations placed on distributor reps have expanded from logistics and product access to consulting, operational insight, and strategic business support.
These expectations are reasonable given the dynamic changes in buying behavior, but these expectations now need to be matched by real, consistent execution.
At the same time, vet clinics must move beyond the assumption that loyalty automatically equals value. If a distributor partner or rep is presented and perceived as a member of your extended team, it’s fair to evaluate them with the same standards you’d apply to an internal hire. If the performance isn’t there, the relationship deserves a second look.
The highest performing and most enduring reps will embrace this kind of accountability because they understand that the era of automatic trust has passed. Our industry and veterinary hospital customers have now rightfully declared that value must be demonstrated. It’s on us to heed this call.
