For start ups and established guiding businesses, equipment is often a significant expense. On Thursday May 11, MWGO hosted a virtual panel discussion about our all new list of pro deals for members as well as tips on how guides can negotiate their own pro deals. Attendees learned about individual brand or company deals, groups of deals through aggregators, and the code of ethics that goes along with access to these deals. In this month’s eNews, we’ll share a summary of the discussions that took place during the virtual event.

Your partnership as a brand ambassador

Most brands offer discounts, often significant discounts, for professionals who use their products in public facing manners. These brands see these professionals as brand ambassadors who will be in positions to showcase the products to potential customers who, recognizing the professional’s positive opinion about the product, will purchase the products for themselves at retail prices. Recognizing this relationship, it is important that beneficiaries of pro deals see themselves in a partnership rather than as one-way recipients of discounts.

As a recipient of a pro deal, you therefore bear a responsibility to represent the products positively to your clients. Taking it a step further and expanding your reach beyond your own clients, it helps to post positive reviews online for the products, especially when you make it known that you are an industry professional (“As a Registered Maine Guide who takes clients in the field in all weather conditions, I know the value of a high quality rain jacket and this one is certainly high quality…”). As a professional in the industry, you provide a level of reputability for the review that other random reviewers don’t often have and brands value that professional experience and reputability. If by chance a product doesn’t meet your standards, that should be made known directly to the brand in a discreet manner (NOT by posting a negative review online). This provides brands important feedback so they can make adjustments and improvements in their products.

The big secret

OK, it’s not really a secret that professionals in the industry receive pro deals, but that doesn’t mean you should go about broadcasting the deals you get as an industry professional. Brands expect that you will keep your discounts quietly to yourself. Broadcasting to your clients or others that you get discounts on products from brand X waters down the value of your positive reviews and creates an atmosphere that doesn’t benefit you or the brand.

Likewise, these brands have other relationships with retailers who sell their products. Using a retail store to try on a product and then announcing that you can get a better price using your pro deal is very highly frowned upon! Just don’t do it.

For your eyes only…

… and heads, and hands, and feet, and bodies, etc. Pro deals are offered to the industry professional, not the friends and family of the industry professional. Many brands will ask for clothing and footwear sizes when establishing your pro deal in an effort to limit recipients from buying gifts or products on behalf of friends and family. Occasionally, you may find that a brand will offer a limited time opportunity to share your discount with friends and family via single use codes, but these are rare and should never be expected. Products you purchase via a pro deal are for your own use as an industry professional, not to do your Christmas shopping (unless of course you’re buying “presents” for yourself)!

Individual deals vs aggregators

Some brands (often the smaller or more local brands) will offer pro deals directly to industry professionals such as yourself. Often these are negotiated directly between you, the professional, and the brand. In this case, an industry professional should contact the brand directly to inquire about pro deal availability. This conversation typically will include which products or types of products from the brand you would use in your work as well as what volume of use and exposure to potential customers your use would provide.

Other brands, (often the larger or national brands) aren’t in a position to negotiate pro deals with each individual industry professional. In this case, the brands often will hand off the negotiating to a third party, offering pro deals to anyone that the third party determines to be eligible. This is the case with aggregators like ExpertVoice (formerly Experticity, formerly ProMotive) and OutdoorProLink. And even then, those aggregators often rely on an additional layer of review to justify access to the deals. This is the case for MWGO’s ExpertVoice access. MWGO has negotiated access for MWGO members to an industry specific selection of ExpertVoice’s brands and when anyone applies to ExpertVoice using the MWGO affiliation it is an MWGO board representative (not someone at ExpertVoice) who will check our membership roster and approve or deny that application.

Deals vary widely

Some brands (again, especially the larger national brands) are able to offer large discounts in their pro deals, typically in the 25-50% range. These brands often have massive manufacturing facilities and work in large volumes with significant use of automation.

Other brands (typically the smaller or more local brands) are only able to offer small discounts, typically in the 10-25% range. These brands often have significant labor involved in the creation of their products and create their products in small batches or individually.

It is important to recognize the difference in the brands and their products when it comes to the deal you might receive as an industry professional. Just because you “only get a 10% discount” doesn’t mean the brand doesn’t value your relationship or wouldn’t give you a bigger discount if they could. These products often fall under the “handmade” category where the significant labor and craftsmanship involved limit the ability to discount their product any further.

I thought you said there would be deals

You’ve read this far, so hopefully by now you have an understanding of how pro deals work and an appreciation for your role in that relationship. So, what deals are available to MWGO members?

MWGO’s new list of pro deals available to members focuses on local Maine brands with a few larger brands and one aggregator. Because this list of pro deals is only available to MWGO members, and because posting it here would be a huge violation of the rules mentioned above, we won’t include any of the details (codes, etc) of the individual deals here. However, we will be sharing the list of brands and the details of each deal directly with our members via email and/or print and we will update our membership later in June and also provide updates when any deals change or are added to the list. Because we can control access to ExpertVoice by approving or denying requests, for now, MWGO members wishing to access ExpertVoice’s list of brands, should create an account on ExpertVoice.com and then apply for MWGO affiliation. MWGO will be notified of your application, check your information against our membership records, and approve/deny requests accordingly. Beyond that, MWGO members should be on the lookout in their email in the coming weeks for pro deal details.

What’s that? You’re not a member yet or your membership has lapsed?