Response to “Blank Check”

Intellimeter recently joined MANA. I’ve also worked with MANA in previous positions with other companies, always as a manufacturer. After reading your February “MANA Minute” message in Agency Sales magazine about reps who are terminated for selling too successfully, I could not resist writing to you with this short comment.

As a manufacturer I understand that there are arguments for selling through independent representation and arguments for selling through sales employees. But what I don’t understand is why a manufacturer would terminate an independent representative because that representative has been very successful and switch to sales employees.

I have terminated and modified agency agreements a number of times, but in every case, it was due to poor sales performance. We as manufacturers were not getting what we needed from that representative, and the representative was not selling enough of our product to earn profitable commissions. In such cases, in the long term it benefited both manufacturer and representative to end a relationship that was not working for either of us.

I appreciate how the representative must feel after 15 years of hard work and success ends abruptly with a 30-day termination clause. Without knowing the particulars, I would venture to say that if the representative’s performance was good, the manufacturer made a bad decision.

As a manufacturer, I believe that the best asset an independent representative can bring is their local customer relationships. No matter how much technology, automation, and tools we may have today, people buy from people they trust. If you really worked hard to serve your customers, then your customers are loyal to you, no matter whom you represent.

The manufacturer who terminates a representative for being too successful will find that customers’ loyalty to good representatives will work against them. The representative will find a competing line and take that business back.

The manufacturer who did not take into account the customers’ loyalty to local representation failed to recognize the representative’s value. The hazard those manufacturers ignored was the danger of forcing customers to choose between loyalty to a far-away manufacturer and loyalty to a local, trusted resource. Over time, customers usually return to trusted, local resources like representatives and the far-away manufacturers will lose the customers that the representatives brought to them.

Alberto Quiroz, CITP, P.Eng., President
Intellimeter Canada, Inc.
Pickering, Ontario, Canada