You want to find manufacturers’ representatives with high-trust relationships with the customers for the products or services your company supplies. They created these high-trust relationships by helping their customers with the other products or services they supply that do not compete with what you supply.
In step 1, select the product classifications that represent these other products or services then click “Continue.” In step 2, select the first small group of states you want to focus on first. Note: Do not select all of them.
When the results come up, download them into an Excel file, and go down the last column to review the products and services each manufacturers’ representative works with. If the description does not match your needs, delete the row. If it does, go to the website column and check out their website where you can learn a lot more about them, including in most cases, who else they work with to make sure they don’t represent a competitor. If they look good, leave them in the file.
Other things to check are their location and the size of the territory they cover given the size of their sales force. If they cover a large territory with a small sales force, that may not be realistic. They may also not be in any of the states you selected.
Once you have gone through the list, create an email to send the likely candidates and copy their email addresses from the Excel file into the BCC email address bar so the others don’t see who else is getting the email.
Before creating your email, please watch the Get Them to Call You Back 7‑minute video. You should also consider including as many of the following “Rep-Friendly Policies” as you subscribe to.
- When we hire a new rep, existing business in the territory is turned over to the successful candidate.
- We have extensive experience working successfully with manufacturers’ representatives.
- We do not have house accounts in rep territories.
- We will consider shared market development fees in territories with no existing business for the right rep.
- We will consider extended post termination commission terms or Life of Part / Life of Product for the right rep.
- We will allow prospective new reps to contact our other reps to learn more about us.
- We provide qualified sales leads.
By following the above steps, you should hear back from a number of MANA manufacturers’ representative members interested in working with you.