Every distribution rep carries a mental map of which accounts get which prices. Account A gets the standard list. Account B gets 8% off produce because they have been with you for six years. Account C negotiated a custom rate on dairy. Account D is on volume pricing that kicks in at 10+ cases. When that rep is out sick, on vacation, or quits — that map goes with them. And even when they are there, they make mistakes.
The Problem With Manual Price Quoting
Manual pricing creates three compounding problems that most distributors learn to tolerate rather than solve.
Mistakes are inevitable. A rep quotes the wrong price, either too low (you eat the margin) or too high (you lose the order, or worse, the client finds the error and loses trust). With 40+ accounts each with different pricing arrangements, a 2% error rate sounds low until you add up the dollars.
It slows down ordering. When a client has to ask about their price before placing an order, that is friction. Friction reduces order frequency. It also means reps spend time answering pricing questions instead of selling.
It does not scale. Your pricing arrangements are in notebooks, sticky notes, spreadsheet columns, and reps' heads. Adding a new account means a conversation about pricing, a manual update somewhere, and hope that everyone downstream applies it correctly.
What Pricing Tiers Look Like in Practice
The simplest pricing structure uses named tiers with defined discount levels applied across your catalog. For a 40-account portfolio, a three-tier structure handles most of the variation:
- Gold: Highest-volume accounts, longest tenured relationships, or strategic accounts. 12-15% off list pricing, or custom rates on specific categories.
- Silver: Mid-size, established accounts. 6-8% off list, or category-specific discounts.
- Bronze / Standard: New accounts, smaller volume accounts. List pricing or minimal discount.
Each account is assigned to a tier. When they log into the portal, prices are already applied. They never see list pricing — they see their pricing. When they add to cart, the correct price is in the cart. When they check out, the invoice reflects their rates. No quoting, no manual overrides, no errors.
Tiers vs. Per-SKU Negotiated Pricing
Tier pricing works well for most accounts, but some of your best accounts have negotiated specific rates on specific SKUs — rates that do not follow a clean percentage discount. A long-tenured restaurant account might have a negotiated price on olive oil that is different from their tier discount because you made a deal two years ago.
A good pricing system handles both simultaneously. An account sits in the Silver tier (6% off standard catalog), but has a custom price override on three specific SKUs. The portal applies the tier discount across the catalog, and for those three SKUs, it applies the custom rate instead.
This is the difference between pricing tiers and per-SKU pricing, and a real system needs to support both without requiring you to maintain a sprawling spreadsheet.
How to Structure Tiers for a 40-Account Portfolio
Start by exporting your current account list and adding a column for current effective discount (across all their purchases on average). Sort by that column. You will usually find natural clusters:
- Your top 8-10 accounts are probably getting 10%+ off
- A middle group of 15-20 accounts is somewhere in the 4-8% range
- Newer or smaller accounts are close to list
Those clusters become your tiers. Name them, set the discount rates, assign accounts, and set up overrides for the handful of truly custom arrangements.
When a new account comes on, you assign them to a tier on signup. They never have to ask a rep what their pricing is — they see it in the portal from their first login.
How Portals Enforce Pricing Automatically
The operational payoff of system-enforced pricing is that it removes an entire category of human error and rep dependency from your business. Once pricing is configured:
- Reps cannot accidentally quote the wrong price
- Clients cannot accidentally be charged the wrong price
- New team members do not need a pricing education — the system handles it
- Pricing changes (a new contract tier, a cost increase) propagate across all orders automatically
The rep's job shifts from "knowing and quoting prices" to "managing the relationship." That is what they should be doing anyway.