Category: Getting the Most From Your Reps
What Would It Take For Reps To Come Back To PCBs?
Simply put, getting reps to sell printed circuit boards is getting harder all the time. Too many have been burned, the competition is too stiff, performance is not up to par, blah, blah, blah, a million reasons why not to sell boards. Don’t get me wrong there some happy reps out there. But, interestingly enough the ones who are happy […]
Do You Have The Patience To Be A Great Sales Manager?
I once worked with a company president who hired a salesperson in a new territory on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend and fired him before the Fourth of July weekend. Befuddled, I asked him why. He told me, “Look, the guy had not brought in a single order.” I asked if he had brought in any quotes, and he […]
Creating Sales Heroes
The making of the best sales team in the world So many people spend time tearing down their sales people. Blaming all of their woes, and worries, on the very people who can make or break a company. I once worked for a PCB shop owner who insisted on having a very expensive annual sales meeting, flying in his sales […]
Taking Stock Of Your Rep Network
Do you feel you are getting everything out of your rep team that you should be? Do you a full network of sales reps, reps all over the country yet you are just not getting much out of them? How about these problems? Try these on for size: You keep hiring new reps but you never get anything out of […]
How To Get – And Keep – Independent Sales Reps
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 for our shops. They seem […]
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 almost always disastrous. One of […]
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 have to dig a little […]
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 we are going to switch […]
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 year because this task is […]
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 to represent us. I know […]
