When a manufacturer makes the decision to work with a network of independent manufacturers’ reps to market and sell their product/services, sad to say there’s no switch that automatically can be flipped that allows all the pieces of the partnership to fall into place. As a matter of fact, from the outset one of the most important things for the manufacturer to get done is to have its sales managers and other sales personnel have a clear understanding of what it takes to work with reps.

That’s the opinion of attendees of MANA’s most recent manufacturers’ seminar and some other participants in the rep-manufacturer relationship. For example, consider what Joey Lane has to say about the need for manufacturers’ personnel to be brought fully up to speed on how and why reps do their jobs.

Lane heads J.R. Lane & Associates, Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina. According to the veteran rep of 22 years, “It’s probably more important today than ever before that manufacturing personnel learn what makes reps tick. There’s constant turnover among manufacturing personnel. When that turnover occurs, you often have people arriving from other industries and they aren’t necessarily knowledgeable about what we’re selling or even how we sell.”

An important part of the training that Lane feels a manufacturer ought to have to work well with his rep network can be gleaned from customer contact. “The most valuable service I can provide in this area,” he explains, “is to take a new sales manager out in the field and have him hear what the customer thinks is important. There’s so much to be learned from a simple visit when the sales manager hears directly from the customer exactly what adds value. Getting them to understand what the customer wants and needs is critical to things going well.”

If Lane’s approach sounds simple, it is. “Thankfully, I’ve got a very good relationship with all of my customers. As a result, they are trusting and respectful when I bring a sales manager into a meeting. They trust that I would only bring someone to meet them who can actually add value.”

In general, Lane maintains that his approach to training/educating new manufacturer personnel has been effective. “Sure there have been occasions when someone doesn’t know the product or the customer needs and all they’ve been concerned with is making a sale. Thankfully, it’s not always that way.”

Lane adds that MANA has been especially helpful when it comes to educating manufacturers. “I recommend to each of my principals that they join MANA and regularly read Agency Sales magazine. As a matter of fact, what’s been especially helpful to me is that I photocopy pertinent articles in Agency Sales and circulate them to my principals.”

The International Principal

If the need to educate and train domestic manufacturers in the ways of reps is important, it’s doubly important when dealing with international manufacturers. That’s the view of Mark Cron, a translator and business and marketing consultant for Pinpoint Marketing Japan, who works with Japanese companies coming to the United States and for U.S. companies that want to expand their marketing efforts overseas. Cron, who details how he works with reps and international principals elsewhere in this issue of Agency Sales, maintains that “The training and educating of international manufacturer personnel is critical, especially since many of them aren’t familiar with dealing with rep networks as we are in this country. In the case of Japan, for instance, they’re used to dealing with distributors. When we try to explain the U.S. business model to them, it’s hardly an easy job. As we’re communicating with them, often their reaction is ‘This is great. We’re going to meet some reps, they’ll place an order with us, do some stocking for us, and we’ll increase sales.’ They don’t understand that reps don’t always take possession of products. That’s why in my case, the consultant’s role is critical. Once we’re done with our training and explaining how things are done, they have a much more refined view of how reps work here in the United States.”

Educator as Coach

Another consultant weighs in on the importance of training and education, but he puts the onus on the shoulders of the rep to be the primary educator or coach for manufacturer sales personnel.

When it comes to training/educating principals’ regional or sales managers and other sales personnel on how best to maximize the principal-rep relationship, there’s no underestimating the important role the rep can play. One of the most critical roles the rep fills is that of professional business coach. That’s the opinion of Bill Heyden, Heyden Training, Naperville, Illinois.

According to Heyden, when considering the coaching function, “The buzzword of the day is ‘Sustainability.’ For someone like me who specializes in increasing the performance of workplace professionals, sustainability takes on a special meaning.”

Heyden, a salesperson, sales manager, trainer, and global sales training manager for two Fortune 500 organizations, maintains “I’m continually enlightened by what organizations do in the hopes of maximizing the performance of their people without putting in measures to make sure those investments are the ‘right’ ones and sustainable over time.”

Heyden notes that statistics show that more than 75 percent of today’s professional workforce report they would like to have a coach. Yet less than five percent of them have one. “What we are referring to here are not so much personal life coaches, but professional business coaches. A good business coach is someone you can trust that has the acumen to be able to diagnose specific and systemic issues in your day-to-day job, but who has the strength to wait for you to deliver on the solution instead of jumping in and doing it for you? Being a good listener is half the equation, and being smart about business is the other half. But a coach helps best when they understand what makes a business professional successful and demonstrates they care about people and really want to get to know that person personally.

“Great coaches are patient — their job is to help you get clear on what needs to happen next, but they wait for you to take action. And, of course they hold your feet to the fire on your goals. A great coach lives by one rule — that you already have the fundamental ingredient to transform your business — which is the ability to change your relationship to it.”

This all sounds a bit like a role an independent manufacturers’ rep could very well play when it comes to coaching principals’ sales personnel — and many of them do just that. “Let’s face it,” says Heyden, “coaching belongs everywhere and that includes in the rep-manufacturer relationship.” As he considers the coaching role that the rep could and should fill, Heyden defines the two forms of coaching that can work best in the principal-rep relationship: directive and non directive.

“The former — or directive — type of coaching is telling someone how something should be done,” he explains. “Directive coaching is valuable when there might be just one correct approach or one right solution to a problem. It’s a little bit like the rep telling the principal’s sales manager that ‘I know something you don’t, and I need to tell you — that is, if you’re going to be successful working with reps. You need to know it, and you need to know it fast.’”

Conversely, he continues, “A non-directive approach comes into play when the rep explains, ‘I’m going to help you explore a situation that you might think is beneficial and I’m going to coach you through the process. You can come up with whatever approach you believe is best.’ This approach is just short of actually telling a sales manager what to do. What the rep and the sales manager might do in the same situation might very well be different but by allowing the sales manager to follow his own instincts, he’ll totally buy into it.”

For example, he continues, “Let’s say you know the name of the decision maker at a particular account opportunity. My guess is your manufacturer contact would very much like to know who that is and would want you to tell them. On the other hand, if you both do not know, you may want to use questions to help your contact explore strategies to identify a coach to find out who that person may be.”

The key to employing one or the other type of coaching, Heyden explains, is determined by applying a litmus test that takes into account both the value of the relationship between rep and principal, and the value of the business at hand. According to the consultant, “When the relationship between principal and rep and the growth of that relationship is greater than the specific business issue at hand, it’s probably best to employ a non-directive method of coaching/training. On the other hand, when the importance of the business issue is greater than the development of a relationship, then I’d recommend a ‘directive’ approach.”

Further explaining the latter situation, he says, “If you and the principal are involved in a one-time project where the financial rewards are considerable, it’s probably best to simply tell the principal what you think ought to be done.”

He cautions, however, that use of the directive approach does have its limits and, “Be careful, because you can only write so many checks out of a checkbook with the directive approach.”

MANA Seminar

Interestingly, manufacturer sales personnel who have recently undergone education/training on the intricacies of working with reps (though their attendance at the most recent MANA Manufacturers Seminar in Chicago) were among the loudest when it came to advocating for learning all they can about the rep business model.

“The information we received during the course of the seminar hit a number of buttons with me,” maintains Michael Roemen, 9Wood, Inc., Springfield, Oregon. According to Roemen, “The presentation did a lot to explain the value of the rep business model and the resources that MANA pointed us to are bound to cause me to change the way I work with reps.”

Steve Cardin, Pentair Thermal Management, Houston, Texas, agreed that the seminar has changed the way he views working with reps. “While it’s only been a couple of weeks since the seminar, I’ve changed one thing already. When I’ve worked in a relatively small territory, as things developed I invariably felt that I was doing the reps’ job. That was because I wasn’t managing reps and I wasn’t communicating and agreeing upon expectations for the territory. Now that our territories have expanded, I don’t have time to do all that I was doing previously. From the seminar I’ve learned the value of taking the time to sit down with our reps, communicating with them and seeing to it that we’re all on the same page from day one.”

Cardin maintains that he’s come away from the seminar with a new respect for the importance of training manufacturer personnel. “I’m at the point where I don’t want call reports and I’m not going to micro manage our reps. I depend upon them to create demand. If each of us does what we say we’re going to do from day one, we’ll become each other’s emotional favorites.”

While explaining that his company doesn’t currently use reps — but is considering it — Steve Stock, Sealeze, a Unit of Jason Incorporated, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, says one of the key points he took away from the seminar was an appreciation for the fact that the role of the rep has changed — and continues to change.

According to Stock, “The role of the rep used to be sales — period. How much are you increasing sales? was the key question. That’s changed to the point where today we want much more and we want much more while at the same time respecting the time the rep has to invest to doing his job.”

He continues that what it all comes down to is communication and identifying expectations. “What has to be done here is to actually create a partnership between principal and rep. If the principal’s team fully expects the rep to learn, train, etc., and naturally to sell, but the rep firm hasn’t totally bought into those expectations, there’s little chance of success. What I learned from the seminar was that if the expectations of both sides are clearly identified and agreed upon, the partnership can move forward.”

A loud endorsement for all that has previously been said was offered by George Junor, Howden North America, Inc., Columbia, South Carolina.

According to Junor, it more than makes sense for a manufacturer’s sales personnel to be specially trained in working with independent manufacturers’ reps for a number of reasons including “gaining a sales rep’s mindshare and time in the field to ensure that the manufacturer receives the maximum benefit for even having a rep network.”

When asked who should bear the burden for seeing that manufacturing personnel are properly trained to work with reps, Junor appears to point a finger at himself and other manufacturers when he explains, “I made a recommendation to our senior management that we should become members of MANA so we can participate in and use the services and education provided by the association.”

Junor concludes by noting that among the valuable things he learned about working with reps during the most recent MANA Manufacturer Seminar was the concept of becoming the reps’ “emotional favorite.” According to the manufacturer, “It’s the goal of every manufacturer that works with reps to become their ‘emotional favorite.’ Reps devote far more time and create more sales for those principals than those who are not emotional favorites. Emotional favorite principals create mutual action plans with their reps. They meet and review the territory’s current reality and the opportunities. Together they create action plans that take them to the desired outcome.”