Last May, I attended a sales meeting for one of our principals. The company had been founded in 1968 and enjoyed a long, successful history of using and supporting manufacturers’ reps. During the course of the meeting I noticed that the sales team had really begun to “gray.” As I thought about it, I realized many of the owners and reps in the room were my father’s contemporaries. They had begun representing this company in the mid to late ’70s. For most this relationship resulted in a long and profitable career; but unlike my father, many had not charted their