The Rep Connection

Originally recorded May 2020

In less than 10 minutes, hear what it means to become a professional manufacturers' representative.

An introduction to MANA's steps to rep professionalism

Insights For Hiring Salespeople for Your Manufacturers' Representative Firm

Entrepreneurial Harvard Business School students often use outsourcing as a tool when they launch new ventures. To explain how the selling function can be outsourced, Harvard Business School invited Manufacturers' Agents National Association (MANA) CEO and President Charles Cohon to speak to its MBA students on how to find, recruit, contract with, and work successfully with independent manufacturers' representatives. Special thanks to: Jodi Gernon, Director, Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, for putting her team on the task of making this event a success, Catherine Cronin, Staff Assistant, Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School, for her tenacious attention to detail throughout the process, Bob Reiss, Harvard MBA and retired super-rep, for relentlessly encouraging his alma mater to introduce its students to the concept of manufacturers' representatives and for sharing his expertise during the Q&A section of this presentation, and; Dr. Ben Shapiro, Harvard Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing, Emeritus, for joining us and for sharing with our group the advantages of a sales force that is a variable cost instead of a fixed cost.

Peter Zafiro, General Manager, LinMot USA, Inc. is an experienced hand working with manufacturers' representatives and in this episode of Outsourcing Selling he shares how he views working with reps. "I've gone to market with a variety of business models over the years. I've worked with factory direct-only salespeople, hybrids of direct and independent reps and with independent reps only," says Zafiro. "What I've found is that I get the most bang for my buck with reps. Here's why: I've found that reps are simply the most professional salespeople in their territories. They're absolutely dedicated to the sales function in their territory." Reps offer faster time-to-market, he adds: "Whenever I've had to hire a direct person for a territory, it takes a while to get them up to speed, sometimes several years. Then when you've done that you can have a problem with maintaining consistency in your sales force. You'll have the normal turnover every year not to mention the occasions when someone's wife decides it's time to move back home. Once that happens, you have to go through the same process all over again. You can spend upwards of three or more putting your sales team together. When you're all done, you're not going to be as productive as you could be with reps." For more of Zafiro's insights from his experiences, enjoy this episode of Outsourcing Selling.

Years ago, your principal signed a rep agreement with you that protected your commission earnings, so you invested time and hard work to grow that line. Now your principal wants you to sign a new rep agreement. What should you do? In this podcast attorney Randy Gillary shares his recommendations on how to evaluate a principal's proposal to re-write your rep agreement. Principals don't re-write rep agreements because they feel the rep's interests were not sufficiently protected, says Gillary, they do it because they want to reduce the commissions they pay or to terminate the rep without paying post-termination commissions the rep had earned under the terms of the original contract. It's a not-uncommon complaint from reps who call Gillary's firm for legal representation, and Gillary's program to address this situation is fascinating listening for any rep. Interestingly, notes Gillary, of all the principals he's had to pursue on this type of matter, none have ever been a MANA manufacturer member.

In this podcast Charlie Ingram, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Eriez Manufacturing, gives representatives a chance to see themselves as a manufacturer sees them. For representatives' benefit, Charlie shares his perspectives on sales reports, rep councils, international sales meetings, manufacturers' recruiting practices to locate and onboard new reps, 50+ year representative relationships, and ways representatives can protect their lines with proactive communication. It's a rare opportunity to view representatives through the lens of a manufacturer and a must-listen program for representatives who want to keep their current lines happy and add new lines.

Sometimes a new owner makes things better for reps. More often, a new owner eventually challenges legacy reps to prove their value, or even fires all its reps to save on commissions. Whether the outcome is positive or not positive, the news that your largest principal is always jarring, and the first thing that comes to reps' minds when that news breaks is "What do I do now?" In this podcast, attorney Thomas J. Kammerait of the law firm von Briesen & Roper, s.c. discusses the rights reps retain and the perils reps face when one of their principals undergoes a change of control.

In this podcast the first woman member of MANA's Board of Directors, Michelle Jobst of Jobst Incorporated, Eden Prairie, MN, discusses her recent Agency Sales magazine editorial The Untapped Talent Pool and her own experiences as a woman working in the manufacturers' representative industry since 1994. Opportunities for women, and opportunities to capitalize on the untapped skills of talented woman entrepreneurs are growing, says Jobst, and companies that flourish will not want to miss their chance to include woman-owned representative firms in their sales network.

The year was 1947. Harry S Truman was president, the World Series was televised for the first time (the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven games), Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and on October 17, 1947, the Manufacturers' Agents National Association joined the community of not-for-profit trade associations.   Fast forward to July 1949, and MANA members discovered the first, 24-page issue of The Agent and Representative magazine (eventually renamed Agency Sales) in their mailboxes.   Digging through the first few issues of The Agent and Representative reveals how much MANA has changed, and also how much it has remained the same.   In those first few issues we find sentences like: "I know it's customary for men to call themselves and believe themselves to be 'practical men' to pooh-pooh anything savoring of academic classification in salesmanship." No thought of women as salespeople or as customers in those earliest editions. But in today's MANA, woman-owned firms are common and the first woman to join MANA's Board of Directors does so in May 2017.   Another glaring change since 1949 is that, although manufacturers were invited to advertise in our magazine, the articles in that 1949 issue focus solely on the needs of manufacturers' representatives. Today Agency Sales strives to be relevant to both manufacturers and manufacturers' representatives and includes articles for both audiences. And, also for the first time, a manufacturer will join MANA's Board of Directors in May 2017.   Those are things that have changed, and changed for the better. Yet, some articles from those early issues could be reprinted today and most readers would have no hint that they were written in 1949. In the very first issue of The Agent and Representative is the story of Bill Herendon, a manufacturers' representative whose customers pressured his principals to fire Bill and cut the price by the amount of Bill's commissions. And how Bill, lacking a written agreement, had no recourse when the principal's new sales manager agreed to that customer's request.

Manufacturers' representatives are thriving in North America, but that's not the only place where sales force outsourcing has robust support. European manufacturers' representatives, known there as commercial agents, are flourishing on the other side of the Atlantic. In this podcast we speak with Olivier Mazoyer, president of commercial agent company AJM Forces de Ventes Associées about his company and how commercial agents work in Europe. Olivier also is president of Alliance Professionelle des Agents Commerciaux de France (APAC), the French counterpart of MANA and of Internationally United Commercial Agents and Brokers (IUCAB), an umbrella association of most European countries' representative associations and MANA.

Business networking groups bring together business owners from a wide range of businesses. A veterinarian, a real estate agent, and a restauranteur could be part of the same networking group, with their only common interest being the desire to bring their business problems to a fresh set of eyes. But what if you could assemble a group who had deep, detailed knowledge of your business and industry instead of choosing your group from random industries? And at about half the cost of joining a business networking group. For manufacturers that sell through manufacturers' representatives, that industry-specific group is easy to assemble. Just bring together a half dozen of your best representatives to serve on your representative council. In this podcast, MANA CEO and President Charles Cohon discusses the reasons representatives councils are so productive and touches on resources manufacturers can tap to launch their own rep councils.