level think reps are not very good, are overpaid, and could be dispensed with if they could afford a direct sales team.
Fortunately for you, they can’ t.
Producing Real, Substantial, Significant Results
The most important part of positioning your rep firm to be a stand-out among the reps that sell for your most important manufacturers is results.
Rep firms have only one job— sell. When you sell, you position your firm to stand out and be rewarded by the manufacturers. Everything you do with your salespeople has to be focused on sales results. Working with each salesperson to identify their most important customers with the most potential for the most important lines is the key. As the sales manager you have to be on top of the customers, lines and programs to make your business stand out.
At the same time you are enhancing your commission income and building your firm’ s reputation.
How Do You Get Results From the Salespeople?
The plan is the key. Each of your salespeople has just a few important, high potential customers. It probably is not more than five.
Plan by Account
What has to be done with each account on each of the five to seven key lines that they buy to make the results show significant improvement? This is the sales manager’ s number one task— get each salesperson to commit to a written plan for each key customer for each key line. And then keep working with the salesperson every month to get results.
Sales Management Pays
By focusing on specific plans by customer and by line, the sales manager builds a solid frame of reference for every customer that can impact the firm’ s commission income.
That’ s the name of the game.
Good luck and good selling!
MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at mana @ manaonline. org.
John Haskell