© Dan Kosmayer | stock.adobe.com

A cornucopia, often referred to as a “horn of plenty,” is one of the most popular decorations at Thanksgiving. It’s a symbol of abundance, often depicted as overflowing with produce, flowers and nuts.

But sometimes abundance comes with its own set of issues. And it’s the issues raised by abundance and the ways that MANA representative members can capitalize on those issues that are the topics of this Thanksgiving-month article.

MANA manufacturer members report that some searches in MANA’s RepFinder database result in a manageable list of five, 10 or 15 agencies.

But some searches return much bigger lists. A lot bigger: sometimes 50 or even 75 candidates.

Abundance is usually a good thing. But when it comes to a cornucopia of candidates to represent a line, manufacturers have to find ways to trim a list of 50 to eight or 10.

How does a MANA manufacturer member capitalize on this information? By learning how manufacturers trim their lists and positioning themselves to get onto the short list.

This is how manufacturers tell MANA they get to a short list of candidates:

• Download the list of reps into Excel and sort by website. Firms without websites are cut from the list without ever even knowing they might have been in contention.
• Eliminate reps with an “I’ll rep anything” line card, cutting reps whose lines card don’t demonstrate concentration on a particular market or product category. Representatives with lines that include castings, stampings, molded parts, scented candles, and garden tools don’t make the short list.
• Reps whose e-mail addresses don’t match their websites may not make the long list. If a rep’s website is www.repcompany.com but his or her e-mail address is
• @aol.com, it may be enough to keep that representative off the short list.
• A MANA member profile that claims a representative firm with one or two employees covers 12, 20, or even all 50 states suggests lack of focus, and can eliminate that firm from consideration.
• A MANA member profile that claims 20, 30, or even all MANA product categories are sold by one firm also suggests a lack of focus and disqualifies that representative with some manufacturers.
• And a sloppy MANA member profile also can keep a representative firm off the short list. Capitalization and grammar errors may be held against a representative whose profile says “abc rep company sells machine parts to avionocs customers our phone number is 3125551212.”

The first step to getting on manufacturers’ short list of candidates is knowledge of how manufacturers create short lists. And the final, more important step, is acting on that knowledge.