It’s hunting season so we’re trekking out into jungle to bag some manufacturers reps. And while on this wild and vast safari we will try out some of the hottest artillery and old fashioned tools available to spot and capture some of these exotic creatures.  

 

Reps, Manufacturer Representatives or Sales Agents as they are called are often crucial participants in a business. The scouts that ferret out customers from leads or from hitting the streets are commonly some of the only links between manufacturers and customers. In some cases manufacturers cannot survive with out a reps keen ability to produce sales and negotiate accounts.

 

For some companies there are needs to have many reps covering many different products or many different markets. In large companies there are needs to have entire rep firms that have diverse staffs that cover very broad lines and huge areas. Other companies may need only one or a few reps, while there are other companies that need no reps and rely on direct sales or tight markets. Then there are other companies that may have abilities to configure their company to not need reps at all. With today’s Internet capabilities the latter scenario is broadening for certain types of companies.

 

Like any species there are good ones and bad ones. Due to our own business model and the niche markets we serve I’ve more than on one occasion referred to reps as “reptiles” as we are conditioned to using an unusual methodology in getting our products to market. We position our products into the media in order to draw attention to retailers that come to us to purchase instead of us having to go to them to ask them to buy our products. Our own methodology and the technology that runs it has given us the ability to get by without the use of reps for the most part, although we do have a couple good ones that we have collected over the past eight years. During that time we did encounter some bad matching of reps, still other companies simply cannot survive without good reps. 

 

Do you need to join the Rep Hunt? If so we’ve been test-driving a very unique and seemingly powerful new service offered by RepHunter.com. This subscription service website provides the ability for a manufacturer to be matched to reps through a Match.com type approach. The manufacturer registers on the site, chooses a plan level ranging from $299 for three months to $999 for a 12-month plan. Either plan can be cancelled at any time.

 

To put RepHunter.com.com to the test we signed up and are using our own Wizard Industries, Inc. products as bait to catch some top notch reps. If our hunting expedition works out we’ll go on to include the 800 plus manufacturers products we distribute. If it fails….  Well that will be outlined in another article. Although don’t get excited. We don’t intend to show the effects of a slaughter. We will however point out what did work for us as in this type of test there are many different variables and any limitations on our end should not reflect as a bad review.

 

So far though we’re VERY impressed by the size, shape, form and agility of this beast. It does seem to offer a formidable amount of rep hunting power and is surprisingly easy to keep the targets in the crosshairs. In fact the first few days of use produced surprising results in pinpointing reps. We’ve not had enough time to sign any agreements or see any deals made but we do see potential in locating some worthwhile reps that can produce sales for us.

 

RepHunter.com is the brainchild of Matt Tronnier and Jeff Simon. Matt is a sales professional and Jeff is a financial manager and systems developer. While growing increasingly frustrated by the difficulties of searching for new opportunities Matt came up with the idea to develop an online system that would profile manufacturers and reps and match them together through an introduction type pairing. Jeff provided the technology expertise to build RepHunter.com.com

 

The system has several thousand users who are introduced together after data on each party and their product types and market focuses are entered. Once a match is made the manufacturer and the reps are alerted and can communicate outside the system via email or phone in order to discuss further match criteria and then if both are compatible they can make arrangements to try each other out.

 

The system is very well thought out and is easy to understand, easy to navigate and easy to operate. It is double barreled as it can assist in a manufacturers hunt for a rep or a reps hunt for a product line. A reps ability to find new lines is a free service. This is potentially good for manufacturers as it seemingly allows reps to be hunting out manufacturers products to add to their lines.    

 

So far our sizing this animal up is showing an 8 pointer. Our rating scale is 1 to 10. Stay tuned as we continue to use the system to find the perfect reps for our own products. In our next issue we will give you some tips on what to look for in a rep and how to work with them so you and they are effective in getting products to market. Also we will explore what sales materials a good rep will need and how you can produce those materials.