© Jakub Krechowicz | Dreamstime.com

In recent issues of Agency Sales magazine reps shared how they define the ideal principal and principals shared how they define the ideal rep. What was the common theme from both? The bars that reps set for an ideal principal and that principals set for an ideal rep are higher than ever. It’s a great time to be a high-performance, ideal principal or a rep, but measuring up to those increasingly high standards is more challenging than ever before. And as those new challenges surface, many reps and principals turn to MANA resources to improve their skills and business practices.

The number-one resources MANA rep and principal members cite in their quest for self-improvement are MANA’s Agency Sales, the only monthly business magazine that focuses on crucial topics facing reps and principals, and its companion, MANA’s monthly iToolbox electronic newsletter.

MANA members also take advantage of free regional seminars like those MANA scheduled this year in Fort Worth, Texas; Atlantic City, New Jersey and Las Vegas, Nevada.

And for those cases where individual help on a particular topic is needed, MANA members also take advantage of business telephone counseling with MANA’s staff or legal telephone counseling with attorneys who offer MANA members up to an hour of time no-charge as a benefit of MANA membership.

But MANA reps and principals don’t just set the bar higher for each other; they also set the bar higher for MANA. So MANA is stepping up to meet member expectations with exciting new programs for reps and manufacturers that will be announced before the end of this year.

One change that is visible in this month’s issue of Agency Sales magazine is a new Board of Directors structure that will make the board more nimble and effective, based on recommendations from the American Society of Association Executives book Race for Relevance.

“The change to a five-member, competency-based board comes first. Tackling the remaining changes will be far less formidable and the prospects of success go up by a factor of 100 with a small, carefully selected board….Your best argument for the five-member board is that it exists today, de facto. Almost all associations, regardless of board size, really operate at the direction of an executive committee or group of officers,” explain the authors.

In this issue of Agency Sales magazine the listing of Board members drops from 10 members to eight. David Ice and Ed Reese will be missed on the board for their wise counsel, but with their two terms of office completed, MANA takes this opportunity to move toward the board described in Race for Relevance. For more about the structural changes that will make us a better association, read the Race for Relevance synopsis at www.manaonline.org/?cat=153. And thank you for holding MANA to high standards; we look forward to meeting that challenge.