For years now I have been working with reps acting as the liaison between them and the circuit board shops I work with. During that time I have seen the interest the reps have in working with board shops diminish as quickly as the market for fax machines. Most reps seem to have lost it […]
Finding & Hiring The Right Sales Rep
Just think how much time and money you can save by choosing the right sales person for your sales force. If you take the time to do it right, if you develop and implement a hiring process that fully vets the candidate before you hire her, it will pay off exponentially. Hiring too fast is […]
Questions To Ask Potential Sales Reps
The problem with finding and hiring the right sales person is that, well they are sales people, they know how to sell, they know how to talk a good game, in fact so good a game that it’s hard to figure out if they are in fact really good or just great talkers! So you […]
8 Reasons To Fire Your Principal
Sometimes a rep has to do what a rep has do to. Okay, so now it’s your turn. We have talked enough about making sure that you as a rep make yourself invaluable to your principal. We have gone on ad nausea about the various ways that reps disappoint the companies they represent. So now […]
Why PCB Shops Can’t Get Good Reps
For the past couple of years now I’ve noticed that it is much more difficult to get independent sales reps interested in selling for board shops. One of my offerings, one that is becoming my least favorite by the way, is trying to find reps for shops. My fee for this is getting higher every […]
So You Have Signed A New PCB Rep Firm. Now What?
Finding them is one thing. Keeping them is another. Here’s how. Look we all know that this is one of our industry’s greatest challenges. For a number of reasons not the least being that many board shops have screwed many reps over the years, it is getting more and more difficult to get good reps […]
Manage Your Sales team Like You Would Manage A Sports Team
Managing a sales team is just like managing a sports team. You strive to put the best team on the field and then manage them to greatness. It means just like a sports team you must deal with all the team members as individuals figuring out how to handle each of them from the prima […]
Rethinking Our Approach To Rep Firms
When are PCB shops going to get it? I send a lot of my time helping board shops with their rep issues. I spend a lot of time trying to convince these shops that they are going to have to change the way they handle their rep relationships and start treating them as partners rather […]
Team! It’s All About The Team!
Getting your direct sales people to act as a team For the most part sales people are lone wolves. One of the reasons they choose to be sales people is the independence, they like to run their own race. I have found that the best sales people are truly the loners. Think of Ricky Roma […]
Sales Managers Have To Visit Customers
Yes, sales managers have to visit customers. In fact General Managers and Presidents and Quality Managers and yes, even owners need to visit customers whenever they get the opportunity. Why are we happy to just sit back and have our sales people do customer translations for us? Why are we happy or often unhappy with […]