During the NEMRA Annual Conference last month in Washington, D.C., attendees were brought up-to-date on a number of initiatives taken by manufacturers and their independent manufacturers’ reps to improve their mutual performance. While what was accomplished pertains specifically to the electrical industry, it’s not a stretch to imagine that similar efforts could have a positive effect in other industries.

Learning From Industries Besides Our Own

When NEMRA’s Manufacturers Group (NMG) took beginning steps to identify and eliminate wasteful practices in the channel, one of its stated goals was to produce a white paper that did much more than just sit on a shelf — unread and unused.

And considering steps already taken by reps and manufacturers, that goal has been met. A number of companies have reported that the NMG study, Eliminating Wasteful Activities in the Representative and Manufacturer Sales & Marketing Channel, spurred them into action, resulting in proactive changes to their operations.

Both manufacturers and reps have reported that they’ve taken steps to eliminate waste. The following entries provide a quick peek into their experiences.

Peer Coaching

At last year’s NMG Forum Kurt Nelson, CPMR, and Tara Lockie, President and Director of Corporate Development, respectively, for Nelson & Associates in Santa Fe Springs, California, reported on their company’s formal and informal coaching strategy.

Basically, the rep firm’s employees spend 30 minutes preparing for formal coaching sessions, which are scheduled private appointments. Topics discussed may include careers, sales performance, training and task completion dates. According to the two, the process helped improve company morale, teamwork and communication.

As he looks back over the past year’s accomplishments, Nelson notes, “Over the last year we have been coaching and we have seen different teams struggle with the consistency of the coaching meetings. After all, it is easy to justify canceling a coaching meeting to land an order.”

He continues: “We learned that it got easier and easier to postpone meetings. As a result, we came up with metrics to track and review the consistency of the coaching program in our leadership team meeting. About four months ago, we modified our coaching standards on each team. When we designed the coaching standards, we wanted to make sure we covered everything. Our new design only addresses key areas of accountability — especially those which generate sales and let us meet manufacturers’ objectives. We have added new people to the team and it is interesting to see the difference in beliefs of the program between veterans and new associates. The program only gets proven with time, so I would encourage people to hang in there. Have six-month reviews of the effectiveness of the coaching standards and solicit the input of as many associates as possible.”

Admitting that what he had learned about the Nelson experience served as an incentive, Tom Fredericks, national sales manager for American Polywater Corp. in Stillwater, Minnesota, explains, “I took what I had learned and spun it into our operation.” One major area of improvement he cited was the increased quality of information generated by various impromptu meetings, where something may have been decided, but there was no real accountability.

“For instance,” he says, “consider when you have a number of people informally approaching you needing reports or decisions on various matters. Because there was no accountability, there was plenty of room to slide. By implementing formal monthly coaching meetings, we’ve done away with these informal sessions, but more importantly, we agree on what’s going to be done and we ensure that one person is accountable for getting something done.”

“The net result,” he maintains, “is that since this process began about a year ago, our sales are up and were much more productive.”

CRM Programs

Depending upon how one defines CRM, it can mean either Customer Relationship Management or Contact Resource Management. No matter what its definition, two reps have put it to use to their benefit.

Brian Chase, CPMR, Lester Sales Company, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana, explains, “Last summer we hired an intern whose job it was to clean up our database. He took us from a total of 2,800 customer names down to 1,100. Our next step was to decide on the CRM program that was the right fit for us. As a rep, one of my greatest challenges is to communicate with my manufacturers and outside sales staff who represent my first line in battle. Our goal is to communicate effectively with them. CRM will let me do that.”

Ralph Bliquez, Ewing-Foley, Inc., Tigard, Oregon, opts for the latter CRM definition when he explains, “The goal of your CRM efforts shouldn’t be to just keep tabs on customers — it should include all of your network partners. Keep in mind that the people we deal with today (i.e., customers, manufacturers and agency personnel), are constantly changing positions. That’s why whatever CRM system you decide upon, must be dynamic. If you’re going to manually keep track of all the changes, ultimately you’re going to leave something behind. The system we use is one that can automatically be updated from any location and it allows us to access accurate information at all times.”

Channel Specialists

The creation of a Channel Specialist position has spelled success for some companies, including the following two.

Ken Hooper, Senior Vice President of Sales at Ferraz Shawmut, Inc. in Newburyport, Massachusetts, reports that his company’s Channel Specialist position “was created to drive out every dollar of non-value activity of the processes between the manufacturer and the rep.”

One way that was done was to “have our specialist spend time with our reps. She meets with them and sits in the chair of the people who interact with us. She then reports to us what the issues are.

Three issues we’ve fixed so far are:

• POS Reporting. We’ve worked on this and fixed it so that our reporting is more accurate.
• Commission Statements. POS reporting improvements drive the accuracy of the commissions’ statements which we’ve fixed to virtually 100% accuracy.
• Sales Reporting. We didn’t have a good process in place to bring POS and direct sales reporting together — now we do.

“As a result of our efforts with our Channel Process Specialist, we’ve saved four days’ time per month with all the people who are involved in dealing with reps. That includes customer service, accounting — anyone who has a hand in trying to fix an issue.”

A similar position was created by Kelly Boyd, CPMR of ElectroRep, Inc. in Costa Mesa, California. According to Boyd, “Our approach to the position is one where we’ve taken customer responsibility away from the individual and asked him to look at our inefficiencies and fix them. He’s become an information coordinator who travels.

“Some of the areas that this person has influenced include:

• Roll out of new product support — We now enjoy our smoothest transitions of all time.
• Filtering email communication from our manufacturers — We determine what needs to be read and respond immediately. Our email overload has gone away.
• Sales training — When someone joins our sales team from outside the industry, our channel process specialist sits with them for a week or so and explains everything from the definition of an OEM to how to call on a panel shop. This has been a great help in time management and productivity.”

Multiple Computer Monitors

One rep and one manufacturer weigh in on the logistical advantages realized through the installation of more than one computer monitor at work stations.

Tom Fredericks (American Polywater Corp.) points to department workstations, including inside sales, accounting and shipping, where it’s been especially beneficial to have multiple computer terminals. “We made this change,” he explains, “because, in most companies, you’ll have individuals working simultaneously on more than one computer program. Working with the standard single monitor necessitates opening and closing, minimizing and maximizing programs several times during a transaction. What we’ve done is a huge time-saver. On the one hand, you can be looking at an Excel spreadsheet; on the other hand, you can be entering pertinent data related to shipping, without having to leave one program to access another.”

According to Brian Chase, “When we remodeled our offices, I made it a point to order two monitors for [each of] our work stations. It’s common for us to be working on a job takeoff at the same time we’re developing quotes for a job. In the past, it’s been cumbersome to move from one computer program to another. Having the ability to operate on two screens simultaneously facilitates what we’re doing and saves us time.”

EDI and Electronic Commission Payments

John Hoffman, Vice President of Marketing Development for The Wiremold Company in West Hartford, Connecticut, emphasizes, “Eliminating waste is in our DNA, and we’re always on the look-out for steps to make our operations more efficient.” According to Hoffman, two steps the manufacturer has taken are:

• The implementation of EDI — “The benefits of EDI are easily experienced when you realize how much time and effort you save, not to mention the elimination of errors in the ordering process.”
• Automatic deposit of reps’ commissions — “There are nothing but positives to this move,” explains Hoffman. “Wiremold does this with all of our reps, and the benefits are the elimination of time and effort related to generating the typical paper check. Add to that the fact the rep gets his commission payment much faster, plus he has to make fewer trips to the bank to make deposits. With those benefits, it’s hardly a surprise there was no resistance on the part of reps to make the change.”

Communication With Reps

Quarterly marketing phone calls with reps have gone a long way toward filling a communications gap for Hoffman and Wiremold. “Typically our reps are representing multiple product lines from our company,” he explains. “As a result, when each line puts out a new product, the rep becomes the recipient of messages from four different sources. We’ve found that with the multiple communications there can be a good deal of wasted effort, not to mention the possibility for confusion. To counter that, on a quarterly basis we’ve implemented a “marketing wave packet” phone call that walks the rep through our marketing plans. We contact reps ahead of time to let them know when we’re going to be talking to them. Then we go through all the new product materials and bring them up to speed on all of our marketing efforts. This is a one-shot effort that eliminates a lot of other phone and email messages and makes our joint efforts that much more effective.”

As he considers these and many other changes reps and manufacturers have made in order to achieve efficiencies in their operations, Hank Bergson, President and CEO of NEMRA, maintains, “These individuals serve as examples of what we were looking to achieve with the NMG study. They understand how easy it is to effect change. They’ve taken a number of easy actions that provide them with an immediate and measurable payback. By doing these things, reps and manufacturers free-up the reps to do that which they do best — sell.”