This month’s article marks the first in a serialization of the author’s life and career as an independent manufacturers’ representative.
Reprinted with permission from The Reputable Rep, Success in Sales and Life, by Sig Schmalhofer.
The Secret Career
© 3dddcharacter | stock.adobe.com
The biggest challenge in the manufacturers’ rep business is explaining to people outside of our world what we actually do. Why do we pack the trunks of nice cars with reams of brochures and odd-looking displays and samples that would never make it through airline screening?
When loading a truck with a barbeque, coolers, tables, and all the trimmings, my neighbors believe my company is in the catering business. I invite them to the wholesaler grand opening we’re sponsoring and even provide an address. Amazingly, they never attend!
If my mom asks what I have planned for the week, she scratches her head when I tell her I’ll be in Las Vegas on Monday to meet with a builder about a new project and in San Diego on Tuesday for a distributor open house. She looks at me, puzzled. “I thought I raised you to use common sense!” I just smile. After all, this is a labor of love!
When I proceed to tell her that on Wednesday I’m picking up a regional manager from LAX and heading to a dinner meeting with a contractor in Santa Maria, she’s mystified. She has no idea that the regional is a great guy that I love hanging with and that the customer is one of my best friends! I smile.
After explaining that on Thursday I’ll be taking the factory man to Lancaster for a job walk with a plumber having problems with our product, it’s a given; she concludes I’ve lost my mind. I reply, “It will be fine. I keep a pair of Levis, tennis shoes, and a hard hat in my car!”
After my final comment about hosting a Friday 6 a.m. coffee and donut training meeting with a large repair plumber in Culver City, followed by a trip back to LAX, my mom exhaustedly apologizes for asking about my plans and calls me a “no hoper.” Noting a concern, I reassure her, “Don’t worry about me. I’m well aware of the damage that donuts can do to my body, so I offer the donuts, but I don’t eat any of them.” I can’t blame her for asking what on earth I’m talking about. I simply reply that I don’t even indulge in the donut that has a special place in my heart: the apple fritter!
My golf buddies get indignant when I explain to them that I can’t play on Sunday because our agency is hosting 100 customers at a Chargers tailgate. They shake their head and tell me I live in a world of my own.
I reply, “Well it’s not completely a world of my own. Amazingly, other people have stumbled upon this secret career that isn’t a job, but rather an adventure!”
My law enforcement and teacher friends wonder why, without a guaranteed pension at the end of the rainbow, I spend days futilely attempting to satisfy the opposing needs of customers and factories. They wonder why I have chosen to act as a translator who mediates disputes between factories and customers, each speaking a different language. When explaining that planning a future with a 30-day contract is not as bad as it might sound, family members wonder how a human being conceived from the same gene pool could have possibly chosen this secret business that defies any concept of logic. Again, I smile!
| “Reps work on straight commission and survive day to day with no guarantees. Nonetheless, because of their confidence, they stay the course. That’s real risk taking!” — Joe Cicora, National Sales Manager, Red White Valve |
Have you ever driven past a construction site and wondered what brands of products are being used, what contractor is installing them, and where they were purchased?
If you aren’t a tradesman, rep or distributor living in the secret world of industrial wholesale distribution, you merely treat construction zones as a nuisance. Not so for those of us existing in our secret world where people that work with the tools, like plumbing contractors, are worshipped.
As for products that are sold inside big retail stores, the marketing of those products is clearly different. Our discussion of the secret career of being a manufacturers’ rep involves sales, marketing and distribution of products sold in the wholesale channel. This is where the plumbers, electricians, and heating and air contractors of the world buy their materials. This business segment is secret because if you’re not a contractor, a distributor, or a participant in my secret world, you probably have no idea who sells these products, nor do you care. You are in the vast majority of people who have no idea what a manufacturers’ rep is and what they actually do. Simply stated, the business of the manufacturers’ rep is to contract with manufacturers in a common industry to act as their exclusive sales and marketing arm in a defined territory.
The business is sometimes referred to as a sales agency or a rep firm. These companies typically employ anywhere from one to 50 adventure seekers who have miraculously stumbled into this secret business. Smaller rep companies might have a handful of lines they represent. Larger firms could have two dozen or more. When going to market, a factory seeking to sell their brand of products in the wholesale arena has two choices:
- Hire and train their own sales force to call on distributors and create demand for these distributors by working the secondary market. The manufacturers bear the cost of salaries, cars, expenses, and benefits. This is an expensive proposition that requires significant up-front costs. Ramping-up new people in a new industry is slow and costly with no guarantees that there will be a return on the investment.
Nonetheless, many successful manufacturers use this strategy. Or…
- Hire a manufacturers’ rep operating in their industry within a target area. If a factory manufactures water heaters, they’ll hire a plumbing rep. If a factory manufactures refrigerators, they’ll hire an appliance rep.
Agencies are paid a percentage of sales.
This marketing strategy is attractive to manufacturers because they are not fronting the cost of an expensive sales force that has little local knowledge, industry savvy, or personal relationships in the market. Manufacturers’ reps are entrenched in markets selling other products in the same industry to familiar buyers. They leverage their expertise in an industry.
They use personal relationships with buying influencers to launch or revitalize sales of product lines into a market.
Reps eagerly enter into these factory relationships with short-term contracts and few guarantees. They are eternal optimists that believe their smarts, contacts, and diligence will create sales commissions.
Here’s a note from my friend Steve Shipley, a former reputable rep.
| “I covered all of Southern California and Las Vegas, rumbling down the road in my Ford van; loaded with drain equipment for demonstrations and counter days. One morning, I was working Las Vegas; generating lots of interest at Familian’s counter. Evidently the branch manager was impressed. After watching the excitement from his office he told me that he was also responsible for Utah. He offered to put my product into his Utah branches if I would cover them. I didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course I will! Thank you very much!’ That eternal optimism created additional sales but also added 1,200 additional miles of driving to the enormous market I already covered. The result? After many road trips of torturing my body, I left the rep business and took a job with a wholesaler!” — Steve Shipley, Hirsch Pipe and Supply |
Reps are always in search of manufacturers introducing a new product which will change their secret world. They are like stock investors searching for a penny stock with the potential to be a blue chipper.
So, you may ask, what kind of people seek the secret world of manufacturers’ reps? This, of all the questions I have been asked, is the easiest to answer: “Knuckleheads like me!”
I supported my way through college working in a plumbing shop. Because unloading trucks, digging ditches, and getting my hands grimy from threading pipe did not seem to be my calling, I vowed to never look back once I became an educator. After all, teaching is a wonderful career that nurtures the minds and attitudes of our next generations.
But after teaching for three years I did what I said I never would do. I left the world of teachers’ unions, job security, and pension guarantees to enter the business world, accepting an offer from Moen, a wonderful company that is a leader in the faucet business. While working at Moen, I was not a manufacturers’ rep; I was a factory salesman with a good salary, nice bonus program, a company car, plus expenses and a great package of benefits that included a retirement pension.
I loved working for Moen. I was certain that nothing would top my career there. After all, I was increasing business astronomically, winning sales awards, and earning huge bonuses!
But, as I worked my territory, I discovered the secret world of manufacturers’ reps. A world that guarantees none of the things that Moen generously supplied, but fulfilled the American Dream of becoming an entrepreneur whose success was dictated by hard work, creativity, and an unabashed determination to be responsible for one’s own destiny. I learned that the secret world of manufacturers’ reps was exhilarating and offered the potential to be very rewarding!
Smart sales agencies around me had unlimited earning opportunities and the independence to get things done their way.
So, I made another risky move. Even though I was supporting a young family, I accepted an offer to be a salesman for Sales Support, an upstart manufacturers’ rep business that had just been appointed the rep firm for Delta Faucet Company, Moen’s major competitor. This experience made me hunger for my own agency. But in my life of detours, I chose an alternate route that put me into the wholesale plumbing business; an episode that in the recession of the late ’80s and early ’90s brought me to my knees and tested every fiber of resolve I could muster up! Broke, and in desperate need of a career rebound, in 1993 I considered starting my own manufacturers’ rep businesses.
I’m not sure why, but through thick and thin my wife, Beverly, has stuck with me; through the most wonderful of good times and the most depressing bad times imaginable.
But, a manufacturers’ rep is not a rep unless he has a line to sell. That’s the story within the story. Never underestimate the power of good fortune. And yes, I got lucky. I found one of those penny stocks that through tireless work became a super blue chipper. The factory that I took on, more by desperation than design, was Bradford White, a start-up water heater manufacturer that industry pundits said would fail. Because I had friends who would be calling the shots, I was not deterred. Carmen Catania, Bradford White’s newly appointed western regional manager is still my mentor and lifelong friend. Bob Carnevale, the inspirational leader who was then the president of the fledgling company, is now Chairman of the Board and my hero! I moved forward with Signature Sales riding Bradford White, a horse many picked to finish last. I optimistically picked the newcomer to win the race. I moved forward and entered the secret world of manufacturers’ reps.
However, the decision was not an easy one. I had many friends at Moen. My guardian angel, Roger Garrison, had rolled out the carpet for me to return.
I was overwhelmed, but I had a gut feeling that returning to Moen would be a step backwards. I wondered if I should seek a management position for the new Bradford White. Noting my reluctance to plunge into the rep business with the upstart company, Bob Carnevale lectured me, “You are going to be my rep! You are going to be a really good one. And mark my words: you will earn lots of money with this line!”
So it began! My agency started with a desk in my garage and then inched its way into the dining room. But time behind that desk was reserved for late nights, Saturdays, and Sundays. To be successful, I traveled the highways of Southern California and Southern Nevada in my tired Caravan — all day — every day — with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on my mobile phone. To become viable and ultimately successful, I knew I needed to execute a well-thought-out business plan which called for me to convince target distributors and contractors that Signature Sales and Bradford White had formed a team they needed to be on. In later years, I asked an industry legend who owned a very successful distribution business why he decided to become a Bradford White customer. His response, “Sig, from the time I first met you, I determined that it would be smarter for me to sell with you than against you!”
In my career in this secret business, I have received no greater compliment.
Fast forward: Today, Bradford White is an industry leader. The company I founded, Signature Sales, now employs 42 people, and we are honored to represent some of the most successful factories in the plumbing industry.
In 2014, our agency was honored as the first ever Rep of the Year by respected industry publication Reeve’s Journal. Twenty-three years after Signature was founded, Bradford White still represents the foundation of Signature’s thriving business. A new team of owners are leading the Signature Sales charge: my son Nick Schmalhofer and daughter Katie Hubach plus my “quasi-adopted” sons, Jeremy Crane and Arron Sanders.
My middle child, Lisa, is making a career out of my first career, teaching.
I’m delighted to say her teaching makes the world a better place to live in every single day. My wife of 44 years still thrives as Signature’s controller. My friend Ron Bradford, the partner I took on in 1994, is still calling on specifying engineers and making a difference.
And me? Because it’s such a joy, I’m still active in the agency, but also loving my second career as a writer. I find great joy in sharing my experiences in a life filled with overcoming challenges and succeeding in a business that has been very rewarding.
In 1996, three years after starting Signature Sales, I was diagnosed with Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy.
Over the years, friends and colleagues have noticed I struggle a bit getting from point A to point B. Years ago, observing my unique stride, a contractor friend nicknamed me Ratchet-Ass, a name that has, in some circles — stuck! Until recently, I’ve been reluctant to make my ailment public because I was determined to succeed in spite of my handicap and without spilling the beans about my secret physical challenge.
Yes, my family knew and my closest friends knew, but for the most part, no one knew.
Why did I not broadcast this news? I just couldn’t bear the thought of people feeling sorry for me. As Larry Schafer says in my book, Jelly Beans 2, Trails, “Pity for me, is pitiful.” Since I now walk with a cane, find stairs impossible to climb, and struggle to lift my golf bag, many people are well aware of Sig’s muscular dystrophy story.
If you weren’t aware, I’m happy that I did a good job of keeping my secret. But now, here it is: written proof that I am among Jerry’s Kids.
This is my third book. The first two are fictional by definition but based on my real life experiences. Jelly Beans in Life and Jelly Beans in Life 2, will soon be followed by Jelly Beans in Life 3.
After introducing my book Jelly Beans in Life, my friend Bob Carnevale told me “What you really should do is write a book about how to be a good rep!”
| “What you really should do is write a book about how to be a good rep!” — Bob Carnevale, Chairman of the Board, Bradford White Corporation |
Bob, once more, I’m following your guidance. I hope you’re not disappointed!
I’ve been fortunate to have many wonderful mentors who have taught me the art of being a good rep. Wise customer friends have taught me many lessons; especially explaining what good reps do and what bad reps neglect.
And some stuff, believe it or not, I just figured out myself. In this, my first non-fiction book, I share the secrets for being successful in the secret business of being a manufacturers’ rep.
The sales principles discussed are relevant to anyone that makes a living as a salesperson on the road. The strategies contained in this unique sales tutorial are drawn from my career in the plumbing industry, but can be applied universally.
“It is a rare thing in this day and age to have employees that stay in one position for extended periods of time. The regional sales manager role has about 80 percent of the people (for most manufacturers) falling in two buckets.
“The manufacturers’ representative is the constant gardener of market relationships and provides the stability manufacturers need during times of employee transition. “Manufacturers talk endlessly about driving the secondary market. Given that time is money, especially for the rep, it is prudent for the manufacturer to sell their reps on a return on their time investment. Then, listen to the feedback.” |
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