A MANA representative member recently called for help working through a difficult issue with a sub agent. A few days later, he followed up with this email: “Hi Charley, “Based on our conversation I was able to win an extra

I just got back from what turned out to be one of my favorite business trips of all time. Now, I have visited some amazing cities on business, including Tokyo, London, Stockholm, Salzburg, and Helsinki. So when I tell you

Involving a lawyer is the worst way to launch a rep/principal relationship, except for all the other ways that have been tried. (Apologies to Winston Churchill.) With all due respect to MANA’s friends in the legal profession, one thing I’ve never

When a manufacturer requires call reports from a manufacturers’ representative, does he or she jeopardize the independent contractor status of the manufacturers’ representative and risk becoming responsible for the employer’s share of social security tax and the federal unemployment tax

Once you make initial contact with a list of manufacturers’ representatives who are interested in representing your line, the interview process begins. The interview will probably happen in two phases: A phone interview to establish that there is serious mutual

It’s the same reason so many people love Coca-Cola™. Associations. People associate the flavor of Coca-Cola with happy events: a baseball game, a picnic, a childhood birthday party. The flavor launches memories of those happy events, so naturally many people

“My principal suddenly wants weekly call reports and quote updates,” said a MANA representative member. “I need to spend my time selling, not writing reports. And isn’t there some sort of IRS rule against call reporting for independent contractors like

“So, how did things turn out with that quote we prepared for Acme Corporation?” Following up and reporting on open quotes is a task principals frequently assign to manufacturers’ agents. And there are any number of apps and cloud-based document

As the largest North American manufacturers’ representative association we often get questions from manufacturers and representatives about best practices and how to maintain long-lasting, mutually-profitable relationships. In this post we share 11 recent questions and our replies. Should the manufacturers’

Regular readers of Agency Sales magazine know Harvard MBA Bob Reiss as a “super-rep” whose business successes were so innovative that they were featured in a Harvard Business School case study titled “R&R” after the name of Reiss’ rep firm.

Outsourcing your sales functions to manufacturers’ reps can be a great way for your company to hit aggressive sales goals while reducing sales costs – everybody knows that. But manufacturers’ reps also bring three surprise benefits that only the most

That’s the question a rep asked when I spoke to the Manufacturers’ Agents of Cincinnati (www.maccincinnati.org) in 2011. And it was a fair question to ask. MANA’s RepFinder database gets MANA rep members lots of attention from North American principals,

MANA is constantly looking for ways to improve the value proposition we offer to MANA members, and our new “Member in Good Standing” web page benefit hits a home run by tackling three common problems faced by our members. My

When a major manufacturer of electrical products made the move from a factory sales force to a carefully chosen network of independent manufacturers’ representatives, the entire electrical industry paid attention. For the full story, read the article that appeared in

One of our benefits as a MANA member is an annual half hour consultation with an attorney known to us as being experienced and knowledgeable about the manufacturers’ agency business and laws that govern rep-principal relationships. The purpose of this short

The probability of a manufacturers’ representative being named in a product liability lawsuit is small. The probability of a judgment being rendered against a manufacturers’ representative in a product liability lawsuit is even smaller. In a non-scientific survey done by

The 6-digit NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) business code system replaced the former U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system in 1997. The NAICS system has undergone two revisions since 1997, one in 2002 and the most recent one in