The Rep Connection

When a line that can increase your commission income by 10 to 20% is looking for a rep in your territory, how do you make sure you are in the running? A rep firm's success is all about a planned and carefully executed marketing and sales program. You are in the sales business, but do you do a good enough job selling your firm? On this MANAcast, we discussed: What high-quality principals look for i...

Originally recorded May 2020

In less than 10 minutes, hear what it means to become a professional manufacturers' representative.

An introduction to MANA's steps to rep professionalism

Insights For Hiring Salespeople for Your Manufacturers' Representative Firm

Entrepreneurial Harvard Business School students often use outsourcing as a tool when they launch new ventures. To explain how the selling function can be outsourced, Harvard Business School invited Manufacturers' Agents National Association (MANA) CEO and President Charles Cohon to speak to its MBA students on how to find, recruit, contract with, and work successfully with independent manufacture...

Peter Zafiro, General Manager, LinMot USA, Inc. is an experienced hand working with manufacturers' representatives and in this episode of Outsourcing Selling he shares how he views working with reps. "I've gone to market with a variety of business models over the years. I've worked with factory direct-only salespeople, hybrids of direct and independent reps and with independent reps only," says Za...

Years ago, your principal signed a rep agreement with you that protected your commission earnings, so you invested time and hard work to grow that line. Now your principal wants you to sign a new rep agreement. What should you do? In this podcast attorney Randy Gillary shares his recommendations on how to evaluate a principal's proposal to re-write your rep agreement. Principals don't re-write rep...

In this podcast Charlie Ingram, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Eriez Manufacturing, gives representatives a chance to see themselves as a manufacturer sees them. For representatives' benefit, Charlie shares his perspectives on sales reports, rep councils, international sales meetings, manufacturers' recruiting practices to locate and onboard new reps, 50+ year representative relationships, a...

Sometimes a new owner makes things better for reps. More often, a new owner eventually challenges legacy reps to prove their value, or even fires all its reps to save on commissions. Whether the outcome is positive or not positive, the news that your largest principal is always jarring, and the first thing that comes to reps' minds when that news breaks is "What do I do now?" In this podcast, atto...

In this podcast the first woman member of MANA's Board of Directors, Michelle Jobst of Jobst Incorporated, Eden Prairie, MN, discusses her recent Agency Sales magazine editorial The Untapped Talent Pool and her own experiences as a woman working in the manufacturers' representative industry since 1994. Opportunities for women, and opportunities to capitalize on the untapped skills of talented woma...

The year was 1947. Harry S Truman was president, the World Series was televised for the first time (the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven games), Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and on October 17, 1947, the Manufacturers' Agents National Association joined the community of not-for-profit trade associations.   Fast forward to July 1949, and MANA members discovered the first,...

Manufacturers' representatives are thriving in North America, but that's not the only place where sales force outsourcing has robust support. European manufacturers' representatives, known there as commercial agents, are flourishing on the other side of the Atlantic. In this podcast we speak with Olivier Mazoyer, president of commercial agent company AJM Forces de Ventes Associées about his compan...

Business networking groups bring together business owners from a wide range of businesses. A veterinarian, a real estate agent, and a restauranteur could be part of the same networking group, with their only common interest being the desire to bring their business problems to a fresh set of eyes. But what if you could assemble a group who had deep, detailed knowledge of your business and industry...

Manufacturers' representatives famously coddle their customers, the people and companies that buy products from the manufacturers listed on the representatives' line cards. The manufacturers listed on the representatives' line card, often referred to as the representatives' principals, are the entities that send the representatives monthly commission checks. Too often representatives remember to s...

Last year Mexico imported approximately $182 million from U.S. companies. One of the ways U.S. companies can pursue their own slice of that $182 million pie is through manufacturers' representatives in Mexico. In this podcast MexicoRepresentation.com President Ed Juline describes how U.S. manufacturers can engage with Mexican manufacturers' representatives and clears up some of the misconceptions...

"Questioning is the prequel to selling," says Manufacturers' Agents National Association Board Member Stephen Fowler. "The RIGHT questions should discover the RIGHT answers. Questions uncover facts, beliefs, timing, and circumstances.   Open minded, curious, goal-directed, RIGHT questioners have interest, enthusiasm, respect and need a special sympathetic intelligence. Armed with the right answers...

I've heard of manufacturers' representatives going to court and being awarded past due commission on a million-dollar order. I've even heard of manufacturers' representative s going to court and being awarded a million-dollar commission. But this is the first time I've heard of a manufacturers' representative going to court and being awarded a $76,877,889.41 commission judgement. In this podcast m...