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Last week a MANA rep member thanked me for MANA’s work to champion Shared Market Development Fees (SMDF). In recent years, said the rep, manufacturers have become more and more receptive to SMDF, which he credited to MANA’s efforts to familiarize manufacturers with SMDF.

SMDF are monthly payments a manufacturer pays to a rep when the manufacturer needs that rep to pioneer a territory without existing sales. Because it can take a year for the first commissionable sales to close where that manufacturer’s product is unknown, the manufacturer pays part of the rep’s costs for pioneering activities.

MANA began championing SMDF because manufacturers with no market presence often ask reps to introduce unknown brands into their territories without compensation because: “You’re in there anyway, just add us to your sales call.”

“No,” MANA explained to manufacturers. “Customers give reps limited time during a sales call. So they lose income if they take time from a principal that generates commission income to talk about a principal that doesn’t.”

Later, we discovered that SMDF might benefit manufacturers even more than reps.

Why? Because professional reps with full line cards were always out of reach to manufacturers with lines that required pioneering. But SMDF can make reps who would never before have considered pioneering a line accessible to manufacturers who want the best reps to launch their brands.

Win-win for reps and manufacturers. That is what MANA is all about.

What else has MANA learned about SMDF? Written SMDF agreements are crucial so each party knows the other’s expectations, for example:

• How many sales calls on the manufacturer’s behalf does the principal expect?
• Does the manufacturer expect a monthly report on the rep’s activities? How detailed and how formal does that report need to be? Would phone calls and texts suffice?

MANA is proud to have moved the needle on SMDF. Want to share your SMDF experiences or suggest how MANA can move that needle further? Reach out to me at [email protected].

Until We Had to Do It

Experts tell us that after 18 months of quarantines and pandemic, “The New Normal” is coming.

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Part of that “new normal” will be that things we “knew” could not be done, pre-pandemic, actually could be done. Quarantines and a pandemic have forced us to accept that some of the things we thought we couldn’t do were really just things we didn’t choose to do.

Let’s consider the example of a prospective customer inviting a rep to visit and present one of their principal’s products, pre-pandemic. What would have happened if the rep had suggested a Zoom video chat instead of a personal visit?

The prospect would have been highly insulted. “What, so I am not important enough to visit?”

The rep probably would have lost that opportunity right away. And if the prospect complained to the rep’s principal, the line could even have been in jeopardy.

Pre-pandemic, we knew that presentations had to be done in-person. That was that way we always had done it, so that was the way it had to be done.

We knew that presentations had to be done in person until we couldn’t have face-to-face meetings anymore, and then reps found creative, non-contact ways to take care of customers and principals.

Another example of the things we thought we couldn’t do that were really just things we didn’t choose to do was many employers’ mandates that employees “had” to work from employers’ physical offices. “You need to be here for meetings. If you worked from home, I couldn’t keep an eye on you. We need the staff together to build camaraderie.”

Until the day that those employers announced, “Everybody grab your laptops, go home, and figure out how to make this work.” Home offices not only worked, they often actually improved productivity.

As the “new normal” approaches, one of our lessons learned from the past 18 months is to look hard at things that we “know” can’t be done, and remember how many other things looked like they couldn’t be done right up until we did them.

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“I get plenty of voicemails, and I actually return lots of those calls,” explained the anonymous executive. “When I don’t return a call, it’s often for reasons like these:

• “You called four times without leaving a message. Each time you called, you disrupted the call I was on as my phone prompted me to choose between your call and my current call. To keep you from disrupting more calls, I blocked your number.
• “I called back, but you screen your calls, so you didn’t answer. Your next message to me was, ‘Sorry, I didn’t recognize your number, so I didn’t answer.’ You only get to waste my time once. Number blocked.
• “I called back and left a voicemail. Your return voicemail to me starts, ‘I see you called, but I didn’t listen to your message.’ You called me, but you are too busy to listen to my voicemail? Number blocked.
• “I called back. Your voicemail answers robotically, “You have reached 312-555-1212. Leave a message.” If I don’t hear your name, maybe I misdialed. Suddenly it became just too much work to return this stranger’s call. Never mind.
• “You called me from 312-555-1212, but your voicemail asks me to call you back at 708-555-7834. Call me from the number you want me to call back, and I can return your call with one tap. I was already on the fence about returning your call, and you made me write down your number. Never mind.
• “The voicemail you left for me is a mumbled name and a phone number spoken too quickly for me to write down. I don’t have time to listen to a message over and over to capture the digits.
• “The number you asked me to call is answered by a call screening app. I am supposed to wait while Nomorobo decides whether or not to put my call through? Never mind.

“If I didn’t return your call,” concludes the executive, “now you know why.”

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You have heard it from MANA, from manufacturers, and from reps. In the new normal, manufacturers that sell through reps have significant advantages over manufacturers with a captive sales force:

• In uncertain times, customers don’t take risks with untested vendors. They turn to trusted, proven resources for the products they need to keep their companies running. And, more likely than not, those trusted resources are manufacturers’ reps who may have a decade or two of history with their customers.

• When customers’ buyers and engineers abruptly had to pull up stakes and work from home, regular communication channels often were disrupted. Only trusted, proven resources like manufacturers’ reps were entrusted with customers’ personal cellphone numbers and permitted to text as needed to keep customers up-to-date with information about mission-critical products they need to keep their companies running.

• Face-to-face video chat appointments are granted only to those same trusted, proven resources. A stranger’s request has a slim-to-none chance of getting a video chat appointment. So if your product needs face-to-face demonstrations, but you don’t have trusted, proven rep resources as your salesforce, you are out of luck.

But there is another aspect of the new customers-working-from-home normal that has not gotten much attention. It’s flextime.

Let me explain.

Customers who work from home have discovered that their jobs are to get their work done. But not necessarily between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

What does having customers working unconventional times of day mean to reps? I rarely see a rep who doesn’t check emails outside conventional office hours. Reps are there when customers working flexible hours need answers. When there is an emergency, customers know that reps reply faster than manufacturers, who will likely respond during the next business day.

Reps, go ahead and strut your customer-first attitude. It’s flextime.

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What is backselling? It’s how savvy reps invest a little time every month to ensure their principals understand those reps’ value. They communicate with principals as if the line were in jeopardy even when it is not because they know that anything they say after the line is in jeopardy will sound like an excuse instead of communication.

Backselling means that no major principal ever has reason to think: “You know, I haven’t heard from Rep XYZ for months; I wonder if we’re getting good value for the commission check we send each month.”

Before Covid, backselling might have meant making sure that each major principal received news of some success or an activity relating to that line every week. It was a steady drip, drip, drip of communication to reinforce each principal’s positive impression of that rep.

Now, that steady drip, drip, drip of communication needs to turn into a fire hose.

Why?

Your principals know you are effective in face-to-face customer meetings. But, now that text, phone, and video chat have replaced most face-to-face meetings, your principals may wonder if you are effective in this new environment. And the only way they will know is if you tell them.

Here are some real-life examples of the kind of messages your principals need to receive:

• “Now that many of my customers are working from home, I have had more success getting people like (customer) to take my calls than ever before.”
• “Fortunately, (customer) and I have a long relationship. I have permission to text him, so my messages get through on a priority basis.
• “I spoke with (customer) today. He always used to let all his calls go to voicemail, but I think he is lonely after being stuck in his house for ten months. We spoke for an hour and a half!”

More than ever, it’s time to communicate with your principals as if the line were in jeopardy even when it is not. The line you save may be your own.

Note: Backselling is a word coined by John Haskell, a frequent contributor to Agency Sales magazine and author of Profit Rx under his pen name, Dr. Revenue®.