This is the second in a number of articles serializing The Sales Force — Working With Reps by Charles Cohon, MANA’s president and CEO. The entire book may be found in the member area of MANA’s website.

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Jim had hoped that Buchanan’s enthusiasm for his call-forwarding idea would catapult him into contention for Edgeworth’s old job, but if that was Buchanan’s intent, he was keeping his cards pretty close to his vest. The only hint Jim got that Buchanan was thinking of him as a manager was when Buchanan tapped him to stand in for Edgeworth at a meeting of Bigglie’s distributor council.

Bigglie’s product was a flange popular with machinery manufacturers. Bigglie’s salespeople called directly on the decision-makers at very large machinery companies, but it was not cost-effective for those salespeople to visit medium-sized or small firms. Bigglie solved that problem by selling bulk quantities of flanges to distributors who would then take title to the product and keep it in stock. Those resellers offered a wide enough range of products to allow them to add a mark-up to their cost and profitably serve machine builders that Bigglie could not. A large distributor’s sales volume could rival that of any of Bigglie’s largest direct Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) accounts, so Bigglie highly valued those distributor relationships. In some cases, Bigglie’s salespeople were called upon to assist the distributors’ salespeople at medium-sized accounts.

The council was held out to all Bigglie distributors as evidence of Bigglie’s concern with meeting its distributors’ needs. Bigglie paid all the travel, lodging and meal costs associated with annually bringing a representative from each of its top 10 distributors to Bigglie’s facility. The group discussed Bigglie’s performance over the past year and gave Bigglie’s management recommendations for improvements to Bigglie’s products and programs. Buchanan’s comments made it clear, however, that he saw the council primarily as window-dressing and an opportunity to wine, dine and entertain Bigglie’s top distributors.

“Jim, one of Edgeworth’s jobs was to be Bigglie’s official ‘host’ for our visiting distributors next week,” Buchanan explained. “All of our senior management are already scheduled out of town, so I am going to have you step in and keep our distributors entertained and pass their gripes up the chain of command.

“I guess I should give you a little background on how the council got started. A couple of years ago I almost got into a shouting match with Enrique Gonzales, who owns the largest distributorship of Bigglie products in the country. I’ve known Enrique for years, so I was pretty surprised when he called me to complain about our distributor program. Mistake number one was telling him that if he knew how we could do a better job to jump on a plane and tell us face-to-face.

“Enrique told me he’d do me one better. He already had met most of our larger distributors’ management at trade shows and had served on distributor councils for other manufacturers, so he said he would take the responsibility for setting up a distributor council for Bigglie. Mistake number two was not turning him down fast enough, so instead of one distributor complaining over the phone, I ended up with 10 distributors sitting in our conference room complaining all at once. And yes, I am sticking you with this because I don’t want to sit and listen to them. Actually, it probably won’t be too bad. Enrique has agreed to have the council meet privately and present a consolidated set of recommendations to a company representative. This year, that representative is you.

“Because they’re traveling here from all over the country, they straggle in over the course of Wednesday afternoon. All you have to do Wednesday is pick them up at the airport, get them to their hotel and take them out to dinner. On Wednesday they won’t have had the chance to meet yet, so it’s pretty much a social dinner. Last year our sales manager kept them out pretty late and I think the group was too hung over to complain very loudly about anything. The more of a bar tab you can run up with the group Wednesday, the less aggravation they will be able to give us Thursday, so be a generous host.

“On Thursday, Enrique, or someone from his company, takes full responsibility for the meeting. The group sets its own agenda and meets privately in our conference room, so you aren’t involved until 4 p.m. when they are ready to present their recommendations. Your job is to listen politely, nod your head at the right times and give me the Reader’s Digest version when I get back.”

Jim took it all in with dismay. He had been looking forward to standing in as Edgeworth’s replacement, but not if all he would be doing would be running interference so Buchanan wouldn’t have to listen to complaints that he didn’t want to hear. Maybe it was not a coincidence, he thought, that all of the senior managers were out of town the week of the distributor council.

To be continued next month.

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