services. It’ s you who establishes the level of support. You develop the tools and policies; you set the pricing and choose and manage the reps. Where in there does it say you lose control?”
He continued,“ The manufacturer is always in control. Manufacturers call all the shots and they control the contract, which gives them a specific time frame in which they can terminate the rep agreement without all the legal hassles of terminating a direct employee.”
Keeping the Rep in the Loop
A hearty endorsement for complete communication was provided by a manufacturer who maintains she was forced to make one of her customers into a house account. Here’ s how she explained what developed:“ One of my major customers told me he wanted to be served by a factory direct salesman. This painted me into a corner I didn’ t want to occupy.” She continued that the move wasn’ t done quickly or willingly— nor was it done without input from the rep who had worked long and hard to develop the account.“ I’ m not saying what was done was what I wanted, but even if you contacted the rep involved, I know he’ d tell you that through negotiations they were well taken care of. All I’ m really trying to say there is that I did all I could to be up-front in all my dealings. There were no secrets, and I consulted with my rep at every step along the way before making a move.”
Finding the Right Fit
It’ s hardly unusual to hear from reps that while they truly value and depend upon product training from their manufacturers, truth be told, no one way of training is effective for all reps. Included in that“ not all” category are reps who are soundly put to sleep by training that really has no application for them. One manufacturer who is more than aware of this concern communicated with Agency Sales that there’ s real value for him in the way that he’ s been able to put his training programs together.“ We couldn’ t create training for each person in every one of our agencies. That’ s simply out of the question for a number of reasons. First of all, that would be too costly and far too time-consuming. What we did to address this concern is to operate with the assumption that there is some basic level of knowledge that most agents had, and that a few knew more and a few knew less than anyone else. We prepared a written test which was administered to every one of the agents at each of our agencies. This test and the answers were all given anonymously. What we were after was an overall picture of what and how much each of our agents knew and what they didn’ t. We didn’ t want them to feel threatened by the test. When the results were thoroughly reviewed, we felt that we had a fairly clear picture of where we should pitch our product and application training in order for it to accomplish the most good for the largest number of our agents. Our training was put together to suit the needs of most of our agents. We feel that it is far more effective now than the old system that we used and which was probably used by the majority of manufacturers.”
Who’ s in Charge of the Sales Call?
Some sage advice from a sales consultant came to mind when the subject of relegating the rep to the back seat during a joint sales call was brought up among a group of manufacturers. According