Response to MANA’s REP MBA (Three-Minute Business School)

I have been enjoying the e-mail newsletters you send twice a month, and they have prompted me to share one of our experiences that other MANA members might find useful.

When we invested in order and commission tracking software we thought it would just be a time saver. Unexpectedly, we discovered it was more than a time save, we also discovered that the commissions we collected went up by $25,000 to $30,000 with that software in place.

Why did it go up so much? Once we installed the software, we were much more diligent about getting to see “original” purchase orders and invoice copies to load into our new software. Our principals were enthusiastic about this software’s ability to let us track customer orders and serve our customers better, so they happily gave us the data we needed to keep that system updated. And as a result, we discovered that often purchase orders issued by customers and invoices received from principals did not match.

I want to emphasize that our principals were not trying to hide anything from us. But once we added this new level of review we started catching and correcting accidental errors that otherwise would have reduced our firm’s overall commissions by $25,000 to $30,000.

Not only has this been beneficial to our rep firm, but it has also been beneficial to our principals, as sometimes we have notified a principal that they had accidentally failed to invoice a customer for material that had already shipped.

Now all of our principals give us timely data without us even having to ask for it. It’s the new norm for our firm and we have started writing this kind of data sharing into our rep agreements.

Another extra unexpected benefit is that seeing all purchase orders gives us one more way to get a quick heads up when a new buyer starts writing orders, because we see the new signature line on the purchase order. The faster we learn about a new buyer, the faster we can introduce ourselves and our principals to an important new decision maker. When dealing with very large corporations that divide up purchasing responsibilities by commodities, this really helps in penetrating a department.

All of this from being an early adopter of new, expensive software at a time when it was new to the rep industry. Yes, it was expensive, but it really paid for itself quickly.

Best regards and thank you for all you do!

Paul Kruschke, President
Industry To Industry, Inc.
New Berlin, WI

Editor’s Note: For those who have not seen the e-mail newsletter that prompted Paul’s letter, it follows below:

Alane Strouse* wants to raise the professionalism of her manufacturers’ representative business. She rightfully believes the more professionally she runs the business, the more successful she becomes. One area she wants to focus on is technology.

In the members-only area of the MANA website, she found MANA’s 12 Steps to Rep Professionalism program and honed in on Step 8: Leverage Technology to Maximize Productivity which includes a list of companies who provide manufacturers’- representative-specific software.

The software helps manufacturers’ representatives with commission reconciliation, invoice and commission tracking, order and quote tracking, and point of sale information. She visited the websites of each vendor then selected three she thought fit her needs. After further due diligence, she selected a vendor and installed the software. The results? She now spends much more time with customers because she spends much less time on clerical duties.

She also recognized that professional manufacturers’ representatives have professionally produced websites. A manufacturers’ representative’s website serves multiple purposes. The one she wanted to fulfill was to attract higher-quality principals. She correctly figured that when high-quality principals interview manufacturers’ representatives, the ones with great websites come across as more professional.

“Especially to deploy technology, you have to spend money to make money,” said Alane, “but we’re more efficient and we’ve captured important new lines because we use technology wisely.”

* Our newsletters sometimes combine the experiences of two or more MANA members, and members’ names are always changed to protect their privacy.