What are small rep firms? One-person, five-person, 25-person…. The government classifies a small business as one that employs 50 or less. Regardless of the size of your rep firm, we all share the same challenges day to day. Hiring and firing of employees and the HR activities associated with it, payroll, taxes, insurance, auto expenses, retirement, etc., these are all issues that are dealt with whether you employ one person or 500.

I feel that the largest challenge to the small rep firm is that of revenue. Without sufficient revenue to cover the overhead of any number of people, the … Read the rest

Commissions as we know them in the sales business are the payment we receive from a principal for conducting business with their products to our customers.

Many manufacturers have a hard time understanding a sales commission arrangement because the people that manage the company are paid on a salary that is a guaranteed amount of money paid to them on a regular basis. Commissions are variable. If we don’t sell anything, we get paid nothing. If we sell a lot, we get paid a lot.

In our current economic times, many manufacturers have to scale back their operations to … Read the rest