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We’ve all seen pharmaceutical ads where the side effects are worse than the disease that the new miracle pill can cure. “We’ll cure your athlete’s foot,” says the pill manufacturer, “but you may experience double vision and extreme gastrointestinal distress.”

But sometimes side effects are beneficial. The same aspirin tablet that cures your headache may also have a role in heart health.

Manufacturers who sell through manufacturers’ representatives enjoy a beneficial side effect just like the aspirin user: a reservoir of highly skilled sales professionals who are intimately familiar with your products, your business practices and the markets you serve.

How do you take advantage of that expertise? With a Representative Council.

When you form a Representative Council you bring together four to six of your representatives, usually at your facility, to discuss the things you do well and the things you do “not well.”

What do you get? Insights that a top 10 consulting firm would be hard-pressed to replicate for tens of thousands of dollars, because a top 10 consulting firm would have to spend weeks “on the clock” learning your business and your customers, information your representatives collect every day as part of their routine sales calls.

What does it cost? In most cases just a half dozen plane tickets and the hotel and meal expenses of your representatives while they are at your facility helping you.

Interested in learning more? MANA members enjoy free access to MANA’s “Nine Steps to Being a Quality Principal” program. Step Five includes everything you’ll need to start a Rep Council, including these items:

• Open Doors by Building an Effective Rep Council ∙ Special Report
• How to Establish and Benefit From Rep Councils ∙ Teleforum
• Agent Council Operating Charter ∙ Guideline

Or call MANA with your questions — we’re here to help!

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I have the pleasure of speaking with many of MANA’s manufacturer members each year. And from time to time I also speak with manufacturers who choose not to belong to MANA or any other not-for-profit association that supports the representative system of selling.

Frankly, the differences between those two groups are dramatic. Manufacturers who belong to MANA and other not-for-profit trade associations that support the representative system of selling are much more likely to be deadly serious about:

• Taking their products to markets through manufacturers’ representatives.
• Thoughtful reflection of the impact house accounts have on their relationships with manufacturers’ representatives.
• Improving their understanding of the outsourced system of selling through MANA resources like Agency Sales magazine and “Nine Steps to Being a Quality Principal” professional development program.
• Implementing (or working toward implementing) rep councils to serve as their company’s advisory board.
• Collaborating with representatives to create mutually-agreed-upon marketing plans.
• Offering written representative agreements that allow the representative a fair return on time invested in that line.
• Planning territory visits for maximum efficiency and productivity.
• Putting themselves into the representatives’ shoes to create long-term, mutually profitable relationships.

Do all these insights and commitments manifest themselves the first day a manufacturer joins MANA? Of course not. Savvy MANA representative members know that manufacturers who have been MANA members for months have begun to make a commitment to representatives and manufacturers who have been MANA members for years. They have not only made that commitment, they have had time to study MANA’s professional development resources and integrate representative best practices into their businesses.

So our message to MANA manufacturer members is to be sure to tell prospective representatives that you are a MANA member and also to share with them your progress on making your company representative friendly.

Our message to MANA representative members is that when a MANA manufacturer member contacts you, remember that they have made a commitment to support your trade association and the representative system of selling. And always reciprocate that commitment by extending the courtesy of a response to every MANA member who contacts you regardless of whether or not you are interested in their line.

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Sometimes trends just sneak up on you.

I’ve noticed a change in supply and demand for manufacturers’ representatives: Manufacturers’ demand for manufacturers’ representatives is up, and the supply of manufacturers’ representatives is down.

How did I reach that conclusion?

• When I speak to MANA’s new manufacturer members the number-one reason they’ve joined is to access MANA’s database of elite representatives. Or, as economists would say, demand is up.
• I also speak to manufacturers’ representatives whose MANA membership has lapsed. Overwhelmingly they are Baby Boomers who have retired. Or, as economists would say, supply is down.
• To get the right rep on board, manufacturers are increasingly willing to invest in territory development fees to offset representatives’ cost of pioneering new territories. Or, as economists note, when demand is up and supply is down, the available supply is more highly valued.
• And, finally, new manufacturer memberships (demand) are far outpacing new representative memberships (supply).

What happens when demand for representatives outpaces supply? Manufacturers compete for representatives by turning over house accounts, offering extended termination terms, adding Life Of Part/Life Of Program (LOP/LOP) clauses to their contracts, and helping representatives with territory development costs.

That sounds like it’s a good time to be a representative, but it’s important for representatives that the pendulum does not swing too far in that direction.

A manufacturer who struggles to find a representative for a particular territory has two obvious choices: Offer extra incentives to the best representatives or consider hiring a direct salesperson.

So even if having representatives in short supply might look like a boon for representatives, it’s important to remember that fewer representatives available will mean that more sales forces will be direct. To keep our industry healthy, it’s important to help new representatives join our industry.

In this issue, we look at one MANA manufacturer member’s creative solution for getting more young people into the representative industry. Now in its fourth year, Twin City Fan and Blower’s ingenious solution is to hire eight recent college graduates and train them in their business, and then make those trainees available as new hires to its network of 150 worldwide representative agencies. Congratulations, Twin Cities Fan and Blower, on your creativity, and thank you for your outstanding support for MANA and the representative system of selling.

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In May I discussed a great way to give back to the representative profession. When a manufacturer whose products don’t fit your line card contacts you, take a few minutes to let them know your company is not a fit and encourage them to continue their search for a representative who would be great for their products. If you don’t, some other representative loses when they hire a direct salesperson.

This message struck a chord with representatives — here is some of their feedback from social media:

This is an excellent point, and I have to admit that I am about 50/50 regarding responses, but will turn that into 100 percent responses as of today!

— Tim Carey, President, Kirk Sales, Inc.

Charley — you could not be more right on with your comments. We owe at least that to our profession and to the Companies who pay to use this service.

— Mark Conley, President/CEO, O’Donnell Associates North, Inc.

I should practice what I preach. I always return my phone calls or e-mails, so I should do the same when a prospective principal is reaching out. I don’t like it when I leave a message and don’t get a reply. Thank you, Charles, for explaining how the prospective manufacturer was not getting a reply. I could understand how frustrated she or he was, and this is not a good reflection on the sales representatives’ profession. I will respond to all manufacturers that reach out in the future.

— Lisa Wilson, Owner, L.S. Wilson & Associates, Inc.

I always respond and will refer another rep who may be interested.

— John Aiello, Owner, PSE Associates, LLC

Guilty as charged. There seems to be a definite increase in searching for outsourced sales. I have just responded to a company, late, but responded.

— Thomas Leslie, Thomas M Leslie & Associates, LLC

In the field of material handling there have not been many inquiries. I have not responded to all of them since they don’t fit my business profile. I will, in the future, contact even those who do not fit my line card and express my support for what they are doing. We are PROFESSIONALS and this is one way to show that.

— George Murphy, President at G. Murphy Sales, LLC

To cultivate and preserve a healthy pool of principals for all of us, each encounter principals have with a manufacturers’ representative must reinforce our professionalism. Call them back or e-mail them back and you elevate the professionalism of our entire industry.

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Two of the biggest technology challenges facing MANA members are:

• Where do I draw the line, stop studying technology, and get back to selling?
• When are tools that are “free and good enough” a better choice than tools that are “costly and excellent?”

One rep reported that he found himself obsessing so much about the latest, greatest, and hottest gizmo, app, and software that he had crossed the line from productively researching new tools to increase his selling time to spending so much time reading about technology that he was neglecting his sales calls. Spending prime selling time poring over technology instead of making sales calls took its toll on his sales, but he fortunately recognized the problem in time to take corrective action before any permanent damage was done. He now confines his studies of technology for technology’s sake to evenings and weekends.

One of the purposes of this issue of Agency Sales magazine is to provide MANA members with a curated list of technology best practices so they can avoid cannibalizing sales time to keep up with technology and leave the full-time study of technology to professionals like frequent Agency Sales magazine contributor Steve Turner of TurnerTime Management (www.getturnertime.com).

The other technology line MANA members are frequently called upon to draw is the line between technology that is “free and good enough” and technology that is “costly and excellent.” Let me share a recent example:

A MANA member called to ask MANA’s help in securing a better deal on online Business-to-Business databases. He wanted to search for sales leads in the online database of the industry leader in business data, but the $2,000 annual subscription cost was out of his price range. He hoped that MANA could negotiate a bulk purchase for MANA members. We spoke to the vendor and discovered that a bulk program could cut 80 percent of the cost. When we reported our findings to MANA Chairman Tom Hayward, he asked, “Have you looked at ReferenceUSA.com?”

ReferenceUSA.com is a service to which many local libraries subscribe. If your local library is a subscriber, a valid library card is the only thing you need to freely search a massive online business database. So the price went from $2,000 to $400 to free.

We hope that this issue of Agency Sales magazine will help you increase your productivity, and encourage you to share your technology best practices with other MANA members by writing to me at [email protected].

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It’s not an unlikely scenario.

There is a manufacturer out there whose products would be a great fit for your line card and is actively recruiting for a representative in your territory. He or she hasn’t found you yet, but you’re listed in MANA’s RepFinder, so it’s only a matter of time.

This principal chose a batch of candidates from the Repfinder, sent each brochures by postal mail, then followed up with an e-mail and a phone call. And received no responses.

After repeated attempts to contact other representatives and getting no responses whatsoever, the manufacturer abandons this search and you never connect.

Representatives often tell me how good this profession has been to them and ask me how they can “give back” to the profession that has served them so well.

Here’s a great way. When a manufacturer whose products would not fit your line card contacts you, take a few minutes to send a friendly reply to their e-mail or voice mail. Thank them for using the representative system of selling and encourage them to continue their search for a representative who would be a great fit for their products.

Give back to your profession by taking 15 minutes a month to help every manufacturer who reaches out to you to maintain their enthusiasm for the representative system of selling and continue their recruiting process, so we can keep them in the pool of companies that use manufacturers’ representatives. And eventually some other representative will give encouragement to the line you’d really like to have and that manufacturer won’t give up before finding you.

This editorial was prompted by an e-mail from Dragan Stevanovic, sales manager at Capital Industries.

“Our reason for joining MANA was to find manufacturers’ representatives to partner with our company to help us grow our business as well as their business. I was a member of MANA back in the ’90s when I had a rep agency. At that time, when a company reached out to you, you responded quickly to vet the offer and see if there is value in building such a relationship.

“From your member listing, we identified a number of companies in Indiana and the surrounding states, (18 matched our business). We sent them letters and e-mail overtures expressing our interest in pursuing such a business relationship. I cannot express enough my outright disappointment in the fact that not a single company of all those we reached out to bothered to respond in any way. I even reached out to a few companies and left messages for call backs. Still nothing!

“I’m sure that many members of MANA who are the manufacturer’s representatives are professional in how they work with all business opportunities. In any business environment, one always stakes out a professional way of doing business. I’m still amazed that those we reached out to were anything but professional.”

“Don’t be invisible to your manufacturer. I’m here to tell you that you’ll never receive the credit you’re due unless you take that credit. There’s no way your manufacturers can know about all that you do in the field unless you tell them about it.”

Charles Ingram

Charles Ingram, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Eriez Manufacturing, in the September 2012 issue of Agency Sales.

“There’s no way your manufacturers can know about all that you do in the field unless you tell them about it.”

Charlie Ingram nailed it. That’s why this issue of Agency Sales looks at backselling to your principals.

Many representatives share horror stories about getting terminated “for doing too good a job.” The vast majority of principals, they say, are honorable and welcome writing bigger commission checks because it means the principal is enjoying more sales. However, a small, short-sighted minority of principals instinctively react to a big order by terminating the representative to avoid paying earned commissions.

The first group is “the good guys.” The second group is the “not-good guys.” But there is a third group, the “I don’t get it because no one ever took the time to explain it to me guys.” And it’s this third group that would do right by their representatives if they better understood their representatives’ role, and would benefit most from backselling.

When should a representative start backselling? Long before that big order hits the factory. Why? Because the marketing “Rule of Seven” applies to more than just products, it also applies to concepts.

“Rule of Seven?” That’s the marketing rule that says a prospect won’t be persuaded until they see your message at least seven times. Backselling persuades the principal that a big order should trigger appreciation not termination, and the “Rule of Seven” tells us that trying to sell your value to your principal in a single message after the big order has arrived is doomed to failure.

Dr. Revenue® and author of Profit Rx John Haskell is the guru of backselling. In this issue of Agency Sales he cites a professional representative firm profile, a well-structured and thoroughly explained line card, and a 90-day action plan as cornerstones of backselling, because they communicate the representative’s value-adding activities on a regularly scheduled basis well in advance of that big order. Launch your backselling campaign today and your principal will already have seen more than seven messages that effectively communicate your value long before that big order arrives.

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MANA recently moved its files from our own central server into the cloud. So now we can avoid all kinds of costs that were associated with owning our own server:

• Server hardware maintenance.
• Server software maintenance.
• Electricity to run the server.
• Physical security for the server.
• Firewall security for the server.
• Air conditioning systems to keep the server cool.
• Redundant data backups.

Now we only pay for storage as we consume it. So if we need only a little storage, the costs are very low. If we start to consume more storage we’ll pay more, but the only reason we’ll need more storage is if we have more members (and more member income). So our costs only go up when our income goes up, and if our income is going up then we can pay for those added costs out of our added income.

And when we need even more storage, will there be an ample storage for us to tap into? Absolutely! There is a whole network with all kinds of capacity ready whenever we need it, available on a flexible, pay-as-you go basis.

“Our costs only go up when our income goes up, and if our income is going up then we can pay for those added costs out of our added profits.” Is this starting to sound like any other industry you know? Let me give you a hint.

A manufacturer recently moved from a captive direct sales force to manufacturers’ representatives. So now the manufacturer doesn’t pay for:

• Fixed salespersons’ salaries.
• Health insurance premiums.
• Worker’s Compensation insurance.
• Automobile mileage reimbursement.
• Computer equipment.
• Travel and entertainment expenses.
• Human Resources costs.

Right now, that manufacturer finds that he can fill his manufacturing capacity with a representative network that includes Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. But if his manufacturing capacity increases, he knows that he can always add to his network with representatives from neighboring states like Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Minnesota. And he can continue to recruit representatives from the rest of North America, or around the globe.

Manufacturers’ representatives began offering outsourced salesforce services through flexible, pay-as-you go networks at a time when “the cloud” meant only stratus, cirrus, or cumulus. Between the cost savings and the expertise and experience representatives bring to their relationships with their manufacturer partners, it’s easy to see why forward-thinking manufacturers worldwide continue to choose the flexible, pay-as-you go outsourced system of selling over inflexible, pay-regardless-of-results captive direct sales forces.

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Congratulations! Your representative company has achieved sustainable, profitable growth, and now you’re ready to add a salesperson to feed and service the sales funnel.

This issue of Agency Sales magazine looks at best practices for representative companies that are ready to add salespeople. And while this issue reviews that topic in detail, I’d like to address two commonly asked questions representatives have about adding salespeople.

When should I start recruiting?

Immediately. Even if you don’t have a sales opening at your company right now. You’ve heard the expression ABC, Always Be Closing. Add this one: ABR, Always Be Recruiting.

Why? Because much of the sales talent you will want to hire someday won’t be searching for a new job at the time you want to hire them. They won’t be reading help-wanted ads, so you will have to actively recruit them.

To build your list of candidates that you someday will actively recruit, start by networking at industry events and chatting up the salespeople you meet in your customers’ lobbies. And then connect with those candidates on LinkedIn for these three reasons:

• Some candidates may change jobs before you are ready to reach out to them. A LinkedIn connection gives you a much better chance of finding them than the business card you collected from them last year.
• Through your LinkedIn updates and theirs you will build some rapport so they will be more likely to take your call when you need them.
• Their LinkedIn profile is a résumé that is always available, so you can view it before you even start active recruiting.

What is the most important question I forgot to ask?

It’s a question that you need to ask yourself, not the prospective salesperson: “Could this person run my company someday?” Representative firm owners almost always get so wrapped up in selling their products that they forget to prepare for the largest and most lucrative sale of their careers: Selling their own companies.

Hiring a salesperson who is good enough to sell your products but who would never be a candidate to take over your business is a missed opportunity. It can easily take a decade to groom a successor, agree on terms, transition management of your representative company to that person, and collect your final payment.

How high are the stakes? The next hire you make could be the difference between a comfortable retirement and no retirement at all. With stakes that high, a little extra attention to methodical planning and execution does not seem to be an undue burden.

To learn more enjoy this issue of Agency Sales magazine and visit the member area of MANAonline.org.

The Newest Way for Manufacturers to Find Representatives

Manufacturers love the responses they get when they advertise for representatives in Agency Sales magazine, and many take advantage of Agency Sales’ premium ads that push e-mails directly to targeted MANA representative members. So we’ve decided to build on the success we’ve had with Agency Sales “Representative Wanted” advertising and add a whole new “online only” component to our “Representative Wanted” advertising offering.

Why add a new “online only” component? As you know, Agency Sales ads are professionally designed to fit a magazine format, and can optionally be broadcast by e-mail to MANA representative members. Of course, when a manufacturer places a print ad:

• The size of the print ad limits the number of words a manufacturer can use to describe his or her products.
• Once the ad is placed, the message cannot be changed unless the manufacturer places another ad.

How does that change with an “online only” platform?

Because the ad does not come out in print:

• We can give manufacturers virtually unlimited space to describe their products! Of the first 29 manufacturers to place ads on this new platform, only one was able to come up with enough text to completely fill the available space.
• The manufacturer has complete control to change the ad for the entire term of the ad. That’s a real bargain for manufacturers who want to hire a Michigan representative first, then an Ohio representative, and then an Illinois representative. This new platform lets manufacturers buy an ad for one, three, six, or twelve months, and lets them change the ad from “Ohio Representative Wanted” to “Michigan Representative Wanted” by logging in to their MANA account and revising the text.

We’re excited about the response we’ve already gotten from manufacturers: 29 placed ads in the first two weeks the platform went online. So we’ll be adding new features early in 2014, like options for manufacturers to choose:

• Premium placement for their ad.
• A link from the iToolbox to their ad.
• Featured status with the manufacturers’ logo added and headline bolded.
• Push e-mail notifications to carefully targeted MANA members.

We are proud and excited to bring this new service to our manufacturer and representative members — one more new benefit of your MANA membership.

To view the ads, visit: http://www.manaonline.org/classifieds

To place an ad, visit (note, this is https not http): https://customer.manaonline.org/account/onlinead

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One of the most common reasons that reps and principals end up going their separate ways is a breakdown in communication. So it’s no surprise that one of the most-requested topics when I speak to groups of reps (most recently to the Southern California Chapter of the Electronics Representatives Association) is how to effectively communicate with principals.

The single-most important piece of advice MANA has is to avoid being overly reliant on e-mail. When a topic is complicated, or when the exchange seems to be getting heated, or when the e-mail chain gets to be 10 pages long, there is no substitute for picking up the phone and having an old-fashioned conversation. You may have to play phone tag to get the conversation launched, but once you get the conversation going you can resolve issues that never would have been resolved by e-mail.

Another best practice in communicating with principals is to share information about problems early while the problems are still small, rather than waiting for a problem to become so monumental that it defies resolution. Bringing up a problem early has another benefit, notes one rep — it gives you the opportunity to share the problem’s back story with your principal before someone with an agenda contacts your principal with a version that has been spun in a way that is not to your advantage.

Communicating regularly — not just when there’s a crisis — does more than just build rapport with the principal. It also makes your calls more welcomed. Put yourself in the shoes of a principal who only gets calls from Jane when there is a crisis. Jane’s name popping up on the principal’s caller ID will always be met with a grimace, because the principal knows when he sees Jane’s name that it is always a difficult conversation.

MANA also counsels that the best communication is often unscheduled communication, during down time at a tradeshow booth, or driving between sales calls together, so resist the urge to abandon a slow tradeshow or take separate cars when a principal visits your territory.

The principal’s perception of what is going on in the territory will be primarily shaped by the information the rep communicates (or fails to communicate), so it is important for the rep to recognize that for the principal, perception is reality and the rep’s communication skills (or lack of them) will make all the difference between a positive perception and a perception that is not positive.

If you have not been able to attend a MANA seminar on this topic, you can view my presentation to the Southern California Chapter of Electronics Representatives Association on YouTube at http://bit.ly/17xLLCZ, or follow the YouTube link at the bottom of the home page at www.MANAonline.org.

It’s a common complaint among reps: “Nobody understands what I do.”

And the complaint is driven by more than simple justifiable pride in the reps’ role in their countries’ economies. For the rep system of selling to thrive, the business world needs to universally understand the rep function.

Who are some of the people who need to understand what a manufacturers’ rep is, but don’t?

• Manufacturers that are considering using reps, but are reluctant to launch.
• Manufacturers that use reps, but don’t do it well.
• Prospective future colleagues who are thinking about getting into the rep business, but don’t really understand the rep’s role.
• Spouses, children, and family of reps who might someday be part of the rep’s business, or might at least appreciate understanding what their loved one does for a living.
• Professors at universities and colleges that turn out the reps of tomorrow, and the students they teach.

It’s a challenge to explain the rep function quickly, insightfully, and completely. Or it used to be a challenge. Until now.

MANA is proud to announce a new two-minute-and-nine-second video just posted at www.MANAonline.org that explains the rep function better than any tool we’ve ever offered. It’s such a great tool that we wish we could take full credit for it ourselves, but the lion’s share of the credit belongs to MANA’s Austrian counterpart, The Federal Association of Austrian Commercial Agents, and video production company SimpleShow.

The Federal Association of Austrian Commercial Agents collaborated with SimpleShow to craft an entertaining, informative video for European audiences that would make the rep system of selling easy to understand. And when they screened the video to an enthusiastic crowd at the Internationally United Commercial Agents and Brokers (IUCAB) conference in Austria in May, they graciously invited any other IUCAB member rep association to adapt the video to their own countries’ practices. We were excited to have the opportunity to take their video and “MANA-ize” it, so we reached out to SimpleShow and collaborated on a version for the North American market.

Share this video with your principals, colleagues, family and friends, and they will quickly understand the rep system of selling. It’s crisp, entertaining, and informative, and we thank The Federal Association of Austrian Commercial Agents so much for the opportunity to build on their hard work.

P.S. MANA members of long standing may be able to guess why the protagonist of our video is named George. The late George Hayward was the MANA Director who spearheaded MANA’s relationship with IUCAB. With permission from George’s son, current MANA Chairman of the Board Tom Hayward, we named our video’s protagonist to honor George’s memory.

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The phrasing changes from month to month, but a consistent message you’ll find in every issue of Agency Sales magazine is: “Manufacturers hire reps because reps have deep, intimate knowledge of the customers in their territories.”

That’s true, but reps don’t just have deep, intimate knowledge of the customers they serve, they also have deep, intimate knowledge of the markets they serve.

So it’s only natural for a manufacturer who wants to break into a new market and reach a whole new set of customers to seek out a rep who is a subject-matter expert in that market.

Sometimes a manufacturer will find that the rep company currently serving that manufacturer’s customers in a territory is (or can become) exactly the subject-matter expert needed to break into that new market. But in other cases the rep may decide that breaking into that new market would be a distraction from his or her core competencies and encourage the manufacturer to find another rep to be its market expert in that territory.

In this issue of Agency Sales magazine we look at how manufacturers use reps to successfully break into new markets, which sometimes involves a mutually-agreed-upon arrangement where two reps overlap geographically but each has their own exclusive market segment.

Can two reps coexist in the same geographic territory, separated only by their assigned market segments? With meticulous attention to communication and planning, the answer is yes, says MANA past Chairman of the Board Mack Sorrells of Metal Working Solutions in Van, Texas. Mack joined Eriez Manufacturing Company’s rep network to sell separation technology products almost a decade ago. Mack reports tremendous success with Eriez and no significant conflicts with other Eriez reps who work the same territory, but serve different markets.

The only cautionary note for manufacturers who might want to use reps to break into a new market is to think about how the rep will fund his or her efforts to launch this new initiative. Even if your products are well established in other markets, a rep who is breaking into a new market for your company is pioneering your line in that new market, and it may be in your best interest to offer that rep market development funds to help offset the cost of that pioneering effort.

Manufacturers breaking into new markets always face significant challenges and obstacles, and the best way to navigate those challenges and obstacles is by partnering with a rep who is a skilled territory and market subject-matter expert, because it is that subject-matter expertise that will make the difference between disaster and success.

That’s the question a rep asked when I spoke to the Manufacturers’ Agents of Cincinnati (www.maccincinnati.org) in 2011. And it was a fair question to ask. MANA’s RepFinder database gets MANA rep members lots of attention from North American principals, but not nearly as much attention from European principals.

It took two years of research and investigation, but now we have the solution!

The solution presented itself when we asked ourselves a related question: What tools do European principals use when they are recruiting European reps? The answer, overwhelmingly, is the “come into contact” rep-principal online matchmaking database run by the Internationally United Commercial Agents and Brokers (www.IUCAB.com). Europeans use the phrase “Commercial Agents” to refer to manufacturers’ reps. IUCAB is an association of 17 European country-specific rep associations, now 18 with the addition of MANA.

The “come into contact” platform is very impressive. European principals make 100,000 unique visits to the site each year, and drive 600,000 page views annually.

Once we learned that the “come into contact” platform is where European principals go to look for European reps, we asked ourselves: “Wouldn’t that be the logical place for European principals to start their searches for North American reps too?” Absolutely! So MANA has partnered with IUCAB to build a North American rep search into the “come into contact” platform, and www.commercialagents-northamerica.com is now available exclusively for MANA members.

Only MANA rep members are eligible to be listed in the North American “come into contact” platform, so add your company to the database for free today and enjoy these benefits:

• You will be notified by e-mail whenever a European principal that fits your line card advertises for reps on the “come into contact” platform.
• Once enough MANA members add their companies to the database, we will launch a searchable database that lets European principals find your rep company to offer you their lines.

Although listing is free to MANA members, it is not automatic. You need to know your MANA Organization ID number (easily available by logging onto www.manaonline.org) and then log onto www.commercialagents-northamerica.com to fill out your member profile. That will make it easy for European principals to find you and for you to receive a notice every time a likely principal advertises for a North American rep just like you.

We know you will enjoy this new benefit of your MANA membership. Please let us know how we can be of further service by sending an e-mail to [email protected] or calling toll-free at (877) 626-2776.

MANA recently met with European rep associations to discuss opportunities and problems that face reps on both sides of the Atlantic ocean, and also how to assist European manufacturers find MANA reps in the U.S. Reps associations from most European countries participated in this IUCAB conference. Pictured left to right are: Enric Enrech (Spain), Jan Bjornum (Sweden), Jaap van Till (IUCAB), Charles Cohon (USA), Ralf Scholz (Germany), David Johnson (UK), Walter Krammer (Austria), and Olivier Mazoyer (France).

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Why don’t they learn about reps in business school?” asked one rep. MANA is working on that! MANA’s outreach to raise the visibility of reps in business schools recently connected us with Professor Craig Wortmann of the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business MBA program, a school that consistently earns top‑10 rankings in every major business school listing. Wortmann is a superstar on Chicago Booth’s faculty, where Inc. magazine rated his Entrepreneurial Selling class among The 10 Best Entrepreneurship Courses of 2011.

Wortmann agreed to a MANA video interview that is now posted on MANA’s YouTube site, www.youtube.com/MANAspeaks.

In the video, Wortmann notes that reps “are entrepreneurial — meaning they go out and create opportunities for businesses,” and they bring a distinct advantage over direct sales forces. “Manufacturers’ reps by definition bring more solutions to the table so they are able to not just talk about one thing but line up complementary products or services around each of those things, have a broader conversation, and look for opportunities.” That’s very different, he notes, from a manufacturer who is trying to sell one particular product and is “trying to find a very specific instance to solve this customer’s pain with this particular thing.” Because reps bring a line-card-based set of solutions to the table, says Wortmann, “once they engage in that conversation, it tends to be a broader, richer, conversation.”

Wortmann also acknowledges the question facing principals who need to recruit the right rep: “How do you look for and determine the skill and discipline that a certain group of manufacturers’ reps or manufacturers’ agents brings to the table?” But skill and discipline are not enough, says Wortmann. A principal’s due diligence also needs to include questions like: “Are they domain experts? Do they come from the right associations? Do they belong to the trade associations where you are doing business…like the Manufacturers’ Agents National Association (MANA)?” Skills and discipline, and belonging to trade associations like MANA “go sort of hand in glove,” says Wortmann.

If you have strong ties to a business school, MANA can help you reach out to its faculty so they can learn more about reps. Call MANA at (877) 626-2776 or write to us at [email protected].

MANA is constantly looking for ways to improve the value proposition we offer to MANA members, and our new “Member in Good Standing” web page benefit hits a home run by tackling three common problems faced by our members.

My company is a MANA member, and:

1. We do not have a web page. Problem solved!
2. We’d like to be ranked higher in Google search results. MANA can help!
3. We’d like a web link that verifies we are MANA members in good standing. Done!

Problem #1 — “My company does not have a web page.”
Now all MANA members have a web page, courtesy of MANA. It’s based on the information in your MANA profile. For more details, read the “Frequently Asked Questions” section below.

Problem #2 — “I want my company to be ranked higher in Google search results.”
One of the ways your Google search ranking improves is when a link to your website appears on a well-respected, popular website like MANAonline.org. For more details see the FAQ section that follows.

Problem #3 — “I want MANA to verify to prospective partners that we are MANA members in good standing.
Your MANA web page carries the “MANA Member in Good Standing” symbol and verifies your status to pro-spective partners.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I use this web page?

Print the web address on your business cards and letterhead, and include it in your e-mail signature line to let your customers and partners know that you are a MANA member in good standing.

What is the web address for my new web page?

All the web addresses start with www.MANAonline.org/member. For example, John D. Roba Company, Inc. was automatically assigned the web address:
www.MANAonline.org/member/johndrobacoinc

To find out what letters follow www.MANAonline.org/member for your company:

• Log onto MANAonline.org
• Choose the “Manage my member account” link.
• Choose the “Manage MANA Web Page” link.
• Your www.MANAonline.org/member address is listed on this page.

Can I change my web address?

Absolutely.

• Log onto MANAonline.org
• Choose the “Manage my member account” link.
• Choose the “Manage MANA Web Page” link.
• Change the information after www.MANAonline.org/member from the name that was assigned to you to the name you want.
• Click the “Update” button.
  Please note, when two or more MANA members with similar company names all request the same web ad-dress, MANA honors the first request for that name and the others will need to make a different selection.

I made a change on my MANA profile, but the change did not immediately appear on my MANA web page.

Your MANA web page draws its information from your MANA profile, but it will typically take up to two hours for updates to your MANA profile to be reflected on your MANA web page.

Why doesn’t my e-mail address appear on my MANA web page?

Instead of including your e-mail address on your MANA web page, MANA has included a contact form. This contact form was designed to significantly reduce nuisance e-mails that you would receive if your e-mail address had been included on your MANA web page. Messages directed to you through the contact form on your MANA website will be forwarded to the e-mail address you provided in your MANA member profile.

I am “flying under the radar,” can I turn off my web page?

If you have already requested that your profile not be included in the MANA directory, MANA did not generate a web page for your company.

To turn off your MANA web page:

• Log onto MANAonline.org
• Choose the “Manage my member account” link.
• Choose the “Manage MANA Web Page” link.
• Uncheck the “Website is turned on” box.
• Click the “Update” button.
  Your web page will become inactive within about two hours.

How do I use my MANA web page to improve the Google ranking of my company’s website?

Be sure that you have already included the URL for your web page in your MANA profile. If you have not in-cluded the URL for your web page in your MANA profile or if you are not sure if you have done so, log on to www.MANAonline.org and check your profile.

Go to www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url and follow the instructions to submit your MANA web page to Google.

When Google accepts your submission, Google will recognize that the well-respected and popular site MANAonline.org has a link to your company’s website, and your search rank will reflect that fact.

How do I use the “Member in Good Standing” feature?

Include a link on your company’s website to your MANA web page. Visitors to your company’s website who click on the link will see that your company is a MANA member in good standing.

What happens if my MANA membership lapses?

If your MANA membership lapses, then your web page will no longer be active. MANA will reserve the name that was associated with your web page briefly, but if you do not reinstate your membership that name will become available to other MANA members.

For example, if the Smith rep company in South Carolina had been assigned the web address www.MANAonline.org/member/smith but then allowed its membership to lapse, another Smith rep company in Oregon could claim www.MANAonline.org/member/smith and the Smith company in South Carolina would not be able to get that web address back if it reinstated its membership later.

Can MANA provide a more elaborate website including my logo, line card, and other information about my company?

Not yet, but we will consider expanding this program if there is interest from our members. If you are inter-ested in a more elaborate fee-based website or have comments about this new MANA benefit, let us know by sending an e-mail to [email protected].

We are excited to offer this new benefit to our members, and continue to apply ourselves to making your MANA membership more valuable. Your feedback will help us serve you better. Please e-mail us at [email protected] or call us toll-free at 877-626-2776.

It started with a phone call from one of MANA’s manufacturer members. He had an excellent point. His concern? Most of the articles in Agency Sales magazine that describe rep-principal relationships, he said, seem to focus on bad relationship topics like:

• Rep lands big account, gets terminated so principal won’t have to pay commissions.
• Principal cuts commissions or takes house accounts.
• Rep sues for unpaid commission.

After all, if bad relationships outnumbered good relationships the way that articles about bad relationships outnumbered articles about good relationships, the rep industry would be in terrible trouble. But the rep industry is thriving. So the manufacturer felt like those negative articles set a negative tone and was unfair to MANA’s overwhelmingly professional and fair-minded principal members.

After several staff meetings, some soul-searching, and a good, long, hard look in the mirror, we had to agree that we need to vigorously strive to maintain balance in Agency Sales magazine’s articles. Of course, we still need to share with reps those cautionary tales of potential pitfalls in their principal relationships, but MANA also needs to recognize and affirm that rep-principal relationships are overwhelmingly professional and cordial. For evidence that those relationships can last for decades and transform into lifelong friendships we need look no further than longtime MANA principal member Eriez Manufacturing, where six of its agencies have represented Eriez for at least 50 years and all six are MANA members.

Then came the question: How do we best signal MANA’s recognition that rep-principal relationships are overwhelmingly professional, cordial, and mutually profitable? That question led to more meetings, more soul searching, and another good, long, hard look in the mirror, and we finally reached our answer. MANA has a new tagline: Manufacturers and Agents: Professional Partners in Profits. And we’ve commissioned a new, enhanced logo that incorporates that new tagline.

So, with prompting from the principal member who asked us to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror, we find ourselves circling back to one of MANA’s fundamental principles for MANA’s existence: To provide tools and educational resources that help reps and principals achieve mutually profitable, long-term relationships. Yes, we acknowledge that relationships will sometimes go bad and that we need to help all of our rep and principal members prepare for those situations, but we also need to acknowledge that most relationships are professional, cordial, and sometimes even spectacular. And, going forward, we have to be sure that MANA is at least as much about creating success as it is about avoiding failure.

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In recent issues of Agency Sales magazine reps shared how they define the ideal principal and principals shared how they define the ideal rep. What was the common theme from both? The bars that reps set for an ideal principal and that principals set for an ideal rep are higher than ever. It’s a great time to be a high-performance, ideal principal or a rep, but measuring up to those increasingly high standards is more challenging than ever before. And as those new challenges surface, many reps and principals turn to MANA resources to improve their skills and business practices.

The number-one resources MANA rep and principal members cite in their quest for self-improvement are MANA’s Agency Sales, the only monthly business magazine that focuses on crucial topics facing reps and principals, and its companion, MANA’s monthly iToolbox electronic newsletter.

MANA members also take advantage of free regional seminars like those MANA scheduled this year in Fort Worth, Texas; Atlantic City, New Jersey and Las Vegas, Nevada.

And for those cases where individual help on a particular topic is needed, MANA members also take advantage of business telephone counseling with MANA’s staff or legal telephone counseling with attorneys who offer MANA members up to an hour of time no-charge as a benefit of MANA membership.

But MANA reps and principals don’t just set the bar higher for each other; they also set the bar higher for MANA. So MANA is stepping up to meet member expectations with exciting new programs for reps and manufacturers that will be announced before the end of this year.

One change that is visible in this month’s issue of Agency Sales magazine is a new Board of Directors structure that will make the board more nimble and effective, based on recommendations from the American Society of Association Executives book Race for Relevance.

“The change to a five-member, competency-based board comes first. Tackling the remaining changes will be far less formidable and the prospects of success go up by a factor of 100 with a small, carefully selected board….Your best argument for the five-member board is that it exists today, de facto. Almost all associations, regardless of board size, really operate at the direction of an executive committee or group of officers,” explain the authors.

In this issue of Agency Sales magazine the listing of Board members drops from 10 members to eight. David Ice and Ed Reese will be missed on the board for their wise counsel, but with their two terms of office completed, MANA takes this opportunity to move toward the board described in Race for Relevance. For more about the structural changes that will make us a better association, read the Race for Relevance synopsis at www.manaonline.org/?cat=153. And thank you for holding MANA to high standards; we look forward to meeting that challenge.

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Well, if there were only one fax machine in the world, even if it were beautifully designed, it wouldn’t be very useful, because there wouldn’t be anyone for you to send faxes to or receive faxes from.

What does that have to do with this issue of Agency Sales magazine? I promise to circle back and make that connection at the end of my editorial.

In February, Agency Sales focused on rep professionalism. Now, two months later, we are focusing on “ideal reps from the principal’s perspective.” Isn’t this the just the same topic, slightly rephrased?

OK, I will concede there is a lot of overlap. Professional reps and the ideal reps from the principal’s perspective have a lot in common, like business plans, succession plans, and a commitment to continuing education.

But it is possible to be a professional rep without being an ideal rep. Because an ideal rep will always include one element that could prevent principals from hiring a rep that is merely professional but not ideal — a network.

Consider a highly professional rep firm in Chicago that has identified a new niche that no other rep covers. And because that rep is breaking new ground, it is the only rep company in North America serving that niche.

Will that highly professional rep firm thrive? Probably not.

Why? Imagine that rep’s sales pitch to prospective principals: “My Chicago-based rep firm could do a spectacular job for your company. But if you hire us you are going to need direct salespeople in every other territory, because we are the only firm in North America serving this niche and we only serve Chicagoland. So you are going to have to set up an entire rep-support infrastructure just to hire us, and then keep on doing what you have been doing everywhere else.”

That’s why professionalism isn’t enough, it’s also crucial to be part of a network of reps that can supply outsourced sales force services across North America. It’s the network that makes sales force outsourcing scalable and makes it possible for a principal to serve every territory with reps instead of direct salespeople.

A rep firm in Chicago with no counterparts in any other territories is like that single fax machine. Until it’s connected to a network, it’s hard to make a case for its value proposition. So the ideal rep firm will dedicate itself not only to professionalism, but also to contributing to the community of rep firms and their associations.

The alternative: Be that single fax machine not connected to any network. And if you decide to try it, let us know how that works out for you.

What’s the best way to identify an “ideal” principal from the rep’s perspective? How about “a principal who treats me so well that sometimes I spend more time selling that line than the commission actually justifies?”

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A MANA rep survey revealed that principals who get that kind of time from their reps generally share two common traits:

• “They respect my rep company and my accomplishments.”
• “They make me look good with my customers.”

The overarching message from the reps was clear, “It’s not just business — it’s personal,” and the ideal principal recognizes that fact, demonstrates that respect, and makes the rep look good with customers by:

• Making the rep feel like part of the family — treating its reps with exactly the same courtesy and professionalism as it extends to its direct employees.
• Communicating quickly and accurately with reports, quotes, samples, answers, and responses to quality issues.
• Having a collaborative style and seeking the reps’ input before launching new policies or programs.
• Paying commission on time, the same day of the month every month. After all, the principal’s employees are all paid on time, why shouldn’t the rep be paid on time too?
• Setting commission rates and prices to allow the rep a reasonable return on the time he or she invests in the line.

Is that really all it takes to become an ideal principal? Doesn’t the ideal principal have to offer a unique product or an unbeatable price? Not according to most reps, who generally identify an ideal principal as one who simply has mastered the blocking and tackling of a rep-principal relationship.

Sure, a rep might enjoy having a product that sells itself or earns unusually high commissions, but that’s more than most reps actually expect. Reps are prepared to work to earn their commissions, and for most reps an ideal principal is simply a principal that consistently executes on the fundamentals.

And executing on the fundamentals isn’t just good business, it also sends a clear message to reps. When an accurate commission check arrives on the 15th of every month, it does more than just support the rep’s cash flow. It also sends a message: The rep is a valued partner, not just a vendor, and the principal would no more pay its reps late than it would pay its direct employees late.

The rep who said it best said that reps “just want LEIA, to be Loved, Encouraged, Inspired and Appreciated.” Because, as we’ve said all along, “it’s not just business — it’s personal.”

When we talk about MANA members, the first word that always comes to mind is professionalism. The reason is that MANA is the number one resource for professional reps, reps who aspire to become professional, and principals who set high standards of professionalism of reps they choose to be their partners.

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This issue of Agency Salesmagazine discusses rep professionalism, and in speaking with many of MANA’s rep and principal members, I’ve uncovered a number of ways that a professional rep distinguishes him or herself from reps that still need to work on their professionalism.

What are the two most commonly mentioned ways that professional reps distinguish themselves? Professional reps:

• Work on their business, not just in their business.
• Are businesspeople in sales, not salespeople in business.

But are those just slogans, or are they really shorthand for some of the best practices we see among professional reps, such as these:

• Written business plans and objectives, not just sales plans for each of the rep’s key principals, but also a five-year plan for the rep company itself.
• A “hot list” of potential candidates for sales positions kept handy so that the firm can swiftly take advantage of opportunities to expand its coverage within its current territory or expand into new territories.
• Annual reviews of the rep firm’s line card to reconfirm that each line is still synergistic with the rest of the line card. This lets the firm release lines that no longer fit the line card and reallocate time that would have been spent on those lines to working on synergistic lines that are part of the firm’s long‑term plans.
• A continuous commitment to training and education, either on the products the firm sells or the skills that sustain and enhance the firm’s selling and business operations.
• Succession plans that allow the rep owner to receive the value of his or her firm upon retirement and the rep firm’s principals to have continuity of sales services once the rep owner retires.

So when you find a rep firm where the owners and employees have solid plans to be better next week than they were this week, better next month than they were this month, and be better next year than they were this year, then you’ve probably found a true professional, and a highly valued partner in profits for all the principals on that rep’s line card.

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Introducing the newest challenge for 21st Century reps, customers who say: “Someday I may need information about your product. But don’t even try to leave a catalog here; I don’t have room to store catalogs. As a matter of fact, I don’t even want to see your information until the moment I need it, and then I only want the exact information I need delivered immediately and nothing more. And if you can’t do this for me, I will find someone who can.”

It’s a paradigm shift that reps must embrace: customers no longer want reps to deliver libraries of comprehensive information from our principals about every possible product they ever might use. That comprehensive information, whether delivered in three-ring binders or on websites, is more and more being perceived as a burden rather than a resource as customers balk at receiving data dumps of everything we do in favor of receiving only the data they need to address the problem or application directly at hand.

It’s a natural outgrowth of the information overload that comes from having vast amounts of data available on the web. The more information you can access, the more you discover that the information you need is hiding at the bottom of a pile of information you don’t care about. So customers don’t value reps who bury them in information and leave them to search for a needle in an informational haystack. More and more, reps add value not by adding more information but instead by curating the information and helping customers find exactly the data they need.

The latest challenge for 21st Century reps, then, is to become so intimately familiar with your customers’ applications and your principals’ products that you have a comprehensive understanding of your customers’ needs and provide them not with every possible solution from your line card, but instead with the best possible solution from your line card.

With customers’ time constraints tight and skeleton crews in engineering and purchasing, today’s customers increasingly value a trusted rep consultant who can provide exactly the information they need, not more and not less; on a just-in-time, not-early, not-late basis. Become that concise, on-time trusted consultant and you will become an indispensable, highly valued asset to both your customers and your principals.

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This issue of Agency Sales magazine looks at the role of reps in international commerce. And when we consider the fundamentals of the rep business model, we see that international commerce is a marketplace tailor-made for reps.

Just think for a minute about some of the major benefits reps bring to their principals: Local relationships, and knowledge about the local market and its business practices. For example, a principal in Chicago could never duplicate the relationships and knowledge a local Detroit-based rep has about his or her local market, even though the two cities are separated by only 300 miles, a five-hour drive, and a single time zone.

But that Chicago-based principal might try to service Detroit on a direct basis. And even though a Detroit-based rep could have penetrated the Detroit market more deeply and achieved greater success than the Chicago-based principal could do on a direct basis, that principal might scrape by and acquire enough business in Detroit to think he or she didn’t need a rep there.

Now consider a principal in Germany who is separated from the Detroit market by 4,000 miles, seven time zones, an ocean, language, culture, and business practices. Or a principal in China who is separated from the Detroit market by 7,000 miles, 12 time zones, an even larger ocean, and even greater barriers in language, culture, and business practices.

So while a domestic principal may think that he or she is “close enough” to the customer to serve them without a local presence, international principals are less likely to labor under the misapprehension that they can serve far-distant customers unassisted.

Reps are uniquely positioned to provide the local presence, relationships, and market knowledge international principals need, and the farther the principal is located from the customer, the more likely the principal is to quickly recognize that the local rep is crucial to his or her success.

And while representing far-distant principals can create new challenges and risks reps don’t face when representing domestic principals, one benefit of representing international principals remains clear. International principals desperately need local reps to do what reps do best — provide local presence, share their knowledge of the subtleties of local commercial practices, and leverage local relationships to create mutually profitable partnerships.

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MANA members are quick to compliment our association on the quality of our magazine, the free legal advice they receive from rep-savvy attorneys, our monthly newsletter, the ways that MANA helps them secure new lines, and the many other benefits of MANA membership. This issue of Agency Sales magazine focuses on those benefits.

Many of the benefits MANA members enjoy today have evolved over the years; for example, the evolution from a printed MANA directory to our online searchable directory. But one of the benefits has changed dramatically: MANA’s role in making information about the rep system of selling available to reps, principals, and the general public.

In the past, information about the rep industry was very sparse, so the MANA-created content was one of the very few resources for rep-related information. Today the situation is very different. Anyone with a computer and an opinion about reps can create blogs, newsletters, and websites about our industry.

This changed the landscape dramatically. Instead of searching for one of the few available sources of information about reps, now someone who wants to learn about reps faces overwhelming amounts of information. And MANA has adapted to become not only a creator of content, but also a curator of the vast amount of data available online, which we distill and bring to MANA members each month in Agency Sales magazine and our iToolbox newsletter.

But in speaking with reps, I have discovered that one of the things they value most highly about MANA is not easily described on the benefits of membership menu we share with prospective and current members: It’s the opportunity to express and demonstrate their pride in the companies and relationships they have built and the industry in which they work.

MANA members, whether they are reps or principals, are almost universally entrepreneurs. And as entrepreneurs they have justifiable pride in the businesses and relationships they have created. Belonging to an association of like-minded individuals provides our members the opportunity to interact with fellow entrepreneurs and be members of something greater than themselves. MANA membership, members tell me, is about more than just enjoying the aggregated products and services MANA offers, it is also a way to say: “I am proud of my company and of relationships I have built, and I want to share that pride with my peers, colleagues and customers.”

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It’s a topic that has been evolving at an ever-increasing pace. Many MANA members can remember when there were three choices for communication between reps and principals:

• Write it down, put it in an envelope, seal the envelope, add a stamp, and put it in the mailbox.
• Find a pay phone, punch in your calling card number, and keep the call short because AT&T long distance was expensive.
• Visit your local travel agent, collect a hand-written paper ticket, and arrive at the airport just before the plane boarded, breeze right through the airport without a concern about security.

Moving ahead a few years, faxes went from exotic to mundane, and then e-mail took the place of faxes. Now, just like a modern paint store with every color available on demand, the options are daunting in their abundance.

• Teleconferencing is an everyday event, and continues to grow as it migrates from computer-only to tablet and phone-friendly versions.
• Document sharing allows users across the world to collaborate through Google Drive, Dropbox, or Sugarsync.
• Social media offers your advocates and critics options not only to communicate with you, but also to share their bouquets and brickbats with the rest of the world. Whether you are getting kudos or a complaint, when someone posts it on your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or (insert any of a hundred different social networking sites here) the whole world will see what is being said about you, and judge you based on how you respond.

And because the options for rep-principal communication are growing at an ever-accelerating pace, MANA made sure to include best practices in communication in our upcoming manufacturer seminar, Best Practices with Reps, Planning with Intent, October 18 and 19 at the American Management Association Conference Center in Chicago.

This issue of Agency Sales magazine includes all the details about this upcoming seminar, which is led by National Electrical Manufacturers’ Representatives’ Association (NEMRA) past President & CEO Hank Bergson and Johnson & Wales University Associate Professor of Marketing Kris Hefley. Hank and Kris are well known for their expertise in the rep industry and long-time friends of MANA, so this will be a great event for principals who want to enhance their rep relationships. We hope to see your principals there!

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This issue of Agency Sales magazine discusses rep best practices for social media. One way to learn the rules of social media is to visit a high-end supermarket on a Saturday morning. Cheerful folk will greet you with free bite-sized samples of the store’s tastiest products, and although the products you sampled are strategically placed to encourage your impulse purchases, the sample almost never comes with a sales pitch.

Why give out free samples? Because the more people try an appealing product, the more people will buy it.

Why no sales pitch? Because a sales pitch accompanying the samples in aisle #1 will prompt customers to scurry past the samples in aisle #2 in order to avoid the sales pitch expected to accompany those samples. And the fewer people who try, the fewer people will buy. So a hard-core sales pitch in aisle #1 undermines the sampling program in every other aisle in the store.

That’s a lesson you can translate into social media success. Social media is all about content, and you have to give free, tasty samples of your content to tantalize customers into buying more of your content or product. And your social media campaign has to be like the cheerful supermarket folk — no sales pitches allowed. Social media is all about tasty samples that entice a customer to learn more about your product, never a hard sell.

And while we’re talking about content, this issue of Agency Sales also features details about the content-rich Association of Independent Manufacturers’ Reps (AIM/R) conference in Boston, September 19-22, 2012, which includes (at press time) seminars such as:

• Strategies for Difficult Territories
• Introduction to Rep Contracts
• Rep Profiles
• Legacy to Leader
• Private Equity — Friend or Foe
• The Future of the Manufacturer/Wholesaler/Rep Relationship
• Utilizing the American Supply Association Educational Foundation Employee Training Program at Your Firm
• The Rep Entrepreneur
• Rep B2B Marketing & Social Media Strategy
• Make Sure Your Customer Service Isn’t a Joke!
• 12 Talents of a Game-Changing Leader
• Adding Tablet Computers & “The Cloud” to Your Agency
• Succession Planning — A Blueprint For Rep Ownership Transitions
• Keynote Jeffrey Dietrich from the Institute for Trend Research: Make Your Move!

So whether it’s a social media campaign or a rep conference, learn a lesson from high-end supermarkets and AIM/R: “Content is King,” and paying close attention to great content will be the key to your success.

If you asked MANA members to produce a list of products commonly found on the line cards of manufacturers’ reps, chances are that crossbow laser boresighters would not be on very many of those lists. And neither would be wine shippers or fashion jewelry.

But it shouldn’t be surprising to find a wide range of products on MANA members’ line cards. In fact, it would be surprising if MANA members didn’t represent products in a very wide range of market niches. MANA members include some of the most aggressive entrepreneurs I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, and one of the things entrepreneurs do best is find an underserved market niche and serve it.

And many MANA principal members are entrepreneurial too! Entrepreneurial enough to find one of those underserved market niches, create a product to serve it, and then recognize that they should focus on what they do best and outsource the sales of that product to manufacturers’ reps. It’s the most natural thing in the world for entrepreneurs who are trying to break into new markets to choose the variable cost of a manufacturers’ rep over the fixed cost of a salaried salesperson.

That’s why MANA members’ line cards include products as diverse as:

• Clay bricks
• Fireplace accessories
• Hardwood logs
• Playground equipment
• Snacks
• Police badges
• Body armor
• Dust collectors

Chances are, if a product is new and exciting, the first sales force to bring it to market will be manufacturers’ reps. And just like that crossbow laser boresighter, MANA reps make it possible for their principals to hit the target first time, every time.