© f11photo | stock.adobe.com

Face-to-face.

Good for selling? Yes!

Good for manufacturers’ representative education? Also, yes!

We’ve all heard that the Internet would end face-to-face selling. Yes, it’s changed face-to-face selling, but the overall outlook for manufacturers’ representatives remains strong.

We’ve also heard that the Internet would end face-to-face manufacturers’ representative education. And for a while, face-to-face manufacturers’ representative educational programs did suffer a slump.

But high-quality, face-to-face education is making a comeback, and MANA has joined with the Electronics Representative Association (ERA, www.era.org) to give you an unparalleled opportunity to participate in manufacturers’ representative education on February 25-27, 2018 in Austin, Texas.

The educational session at ERA’s 49th Management and Marketing Conference promises to bring you the kind of company-changing ideas that make the difference between being an average rep firm and a world-class rep firm. And by special arrangement, 25 attendee slots at ERA’s conference have been reserved for MANA members.

The theme of this year’s ERA conference is “Tools of Our Trade — Constructing a Successful Future.” Says ERA Conference Committee Chair Rick LaPiana, the conference focuses on “Tools to help you, your team and your company be more productive and increase your importance to your business partners while sharing your success with them.” Monday morning will include a breakout session with MANA’s CEO.

To view complete details and register for the conference, visit www.era.org and click on the “ERA Conference” button.

The 25 MANA-member attendee slots and rooms at the conference hotel will go quickly, so please visit the ERA website and register soon. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Tried to register too late and all 25 slots were gone?

E-mail Susan Strouse [email protected] and ask to be put on the waiting list for cancellations, added slots, and alternate programming.

© Dan Kosmayer | stock.adobe.com

A cornucopia, often referred to as a “horn of plenty,” is one of the most popular decorations at Thanksgiving. It’s a symbol of abundance, often depicted as overflowing with produce, flowers and nuts.

But sometimes abundance comes with its own set of issues. And it’s the issues raised by abundance and the ways that MANA representative members can capitalize on those issues that are the topics of this Thanksgiving-month article.

MANA manufacturer members report that some searches in MANA’s RepFinder database result in a manageable list of five, 10 or 15 agencies.

But some searches return much bigger lists. A lot bigger: sometimes 50 or even 75 candidates.

Abundance is usually a good thing. But when it comes to a cornucopia of candidates to represent a line, manufacturers have to find ways to trim a list of 50 to eight or 10.

How does a MANA manufacturer member capitalize on this information? By learning how manufacturers trim their lists and positioning themselves to get onto the short list.

This is how manufacturers tell MANA they get to a short list of candidates:

• Download the list of reps into Excel and sort by website. Firms without websites are cut from the list without ever even knowing they might have been in contention.
• Eliminate reps with an “I’ll rep anything” line card, cutting reps whose lines card don’t demonstrate concentration on a particular market or product category. Representatives with lines that include castings, stampings, molded parts, scented candles, and garden tools don’t make the short list.
• Reps whose e-mail addresses don’t match their websites may not make the long list. If a rep’s website is www.repcompany.com but his or her e-mail address is
• @aol.com, it may be enough to keep that representative off the short list.
• A MANA member profile that claims a representative firm with one or two employees covers 12, 20, or even all 50 states suggests lack of focus, and can eliminate that firm from consideration.
• A MANA member profile that claims 20, 30, or even all MANA product categories are sold by one firm also suggests a lack of focus and disqualifies that representative with some manufacturers.
• And a sloppy MANA member profile also can keep a representative firm off the short list. Capitalization and grammar errors may be held against a representative whose profile says “abc rep company sells machine parts to avionocs customers our phone number is 3125551212.”

The first step to getting on manufacturers’ short list of candidates is knowledge of how manufacturers create short lists. And the final, more important step, is acting on that knowledge.

© Noel Powell | stock.adobe.com

“The Stars We Are Given.
The Constellations We Make.”
— Rebecca Solnit

(And why this is important to you and your rep business or rep relationships.)

There really aren’t any constellations.

But, when you view the night sky from a particular hemisphere on earth, facing a specific direction, then unique stars are visible. And a creative stargazer spending enough time staring at the heavens from that particular vantage point will start to see patterns and ways to connect the dots.

The patterns form based not so much on the positions of the stars as on the patterns familiar to that viewer.

So, from ancient stargazers, we have been handed down constellations based on images familiar to ancient stargazers: a scorpion, an eagle, a ram, or a charioteer.

It’s just human nature to take those points of light in the sky and see patterns.

We still do it today, but instead of mentally organizing points of light in the sky to fit our preconceived patterns, we mentally organize data points to fit our preconceived notions.

How is this important to your rep business or rep relationships?

Our rep and manufacturer members are awash in data points. Value of products sold, amount of commission paid, percentage of sales leads closed, and orders shipped on time, among many others.

And when it comes to reps and manufacturers, that sea of data points is just waiting for each party to interpret them according to their own preconceived notions.

Viewing the same data points, one sees a great sales year, but another sees great growth for only a single customer. One sees commissions paid to a rep firm exceeding the manufacturers’ CEO’s income, the other sees that firm’s commission spread among 10 of the rep firm’s salespeople.

Once those dots are connected and those business-results constellations are formed, there is little hope of changing anyone’s perceptions. After all, the lines were imaginary in the first place. How can you change imaginary lines in someone’s head?

But you can change their preconceived notions before they form the lines.

Have a conversation about the importance of gross sales vs. the number of new customers brought on board. Let the manufacturer know that the money he or she invests with your rep firm goes to support the efforts of 10 salespeople instead of going into your own pocket.

Then when the data points arrive, the information you’ve supplied will be the framework in which those data points are stored. So, when the time comes, the lines your partners use to connect those dots will be seen as a value instead of a cost.

It’s up to you to give your partners context before they interpret your mutual data points. With context, you can prepare them to connect the dots of your data points into a charioteer instead of a scorpion.

© Ron Dale | stock.adobe.com

Be nice to people you meet on the way up.

No. Not because you meet the same people on the way down.

Be nice to the people you meet on the way up because they are on their way up too!

It’s your opportunity to invest like a venture capitalist, except you are investing in your career instead of your stock portfolio.

Let me explain.

A venture capitalist invests in early-stage ventures with lots of upside potential. Many of these ventures fail. Some break even. And a very small percentage are so wildly successful that they make venture capitalists rich, even after they’ve paid off all their bad bets.

For example, in 2004 venture capitalist Peter Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook in exchange for 10.2 percent of Facebook’s stock. Thiel cashed out his stock in 2012 for $1 billion. Regardless of how Thiel’s other 2004 investments turned out, that was a pretty good year for Thiel. (Today Facebook is valued at $350 billion dollars.)

Your opportunity to invest in your career like a venture capitalist is to invest your time with people who have lots of upside potential instead of investing your money in early stage ventures with lots of upside potential.

Who are these people with upside potential? Colleagues in your own firm who might need a mentor, perhaps a more experienced executive mentoring a Millennial. A promising manufacturer who has no existing business but who offers independent manufacturers’ representatives a contract that includes shared market development fees and/or “life-of-part, life-of-program” commissions. A startup rep who has the promise to do great things representing your manufacturing company.

Venture capitalists expect that some of the ventures in which they invest will fail. And you should expect that some of the people you mentor, some of the prospective clients you help, and some of the manufacturers of new products will never turn a profit for you.

But if you make a few Thiel-like choices, the big winners will more than cover your losses.

And, perhaps more important, it’s a powerful way to insulate your career and your firm from the commoditization of Internet selling.

Websites may be able to compete with you on price and delivery, but the one area where websites can’t compete with you is in the long relationships you have with important decision-makers — relationships based on the time you gave those decision-makers before they were important, and the trust you built when they were just promising beginners starting on their way up.

If you’d like to know important people who will take your calls and buy your products 10 years from now, invest some time with promising early-stage executives today. One of them could be your Facebook!