Do Business Well

How do you find reps? Call the buyers you wish to sell. Tell them you’re planning to introduce a new line into their area, and you wonder whom they might recommend as a rep. I have never had any problem getting one or more suggestions from every call.

After you’ve amassed a list of potential candidates, call each one and do a brief telephone interview. Give him some background on your company and product to see if he’s interested. Determine if he has any conflicting lines (it’s usually considered a conflict of interest for a rep to carry the same items from two factories). Continue Reading »

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Manufacturers, wholesalers, business-to-business service providers, and job shops can all benefit from the use of outside sales representatives. Some companies who deal with the public have the same opportunity, such as travel agents, mortgage lenders, and apartment owners.

What is an independent sales rep?

1. The term “independent representative” sounds exactly like what it is. This person works for himself. He or his company, generally referred to as a rep firm, will not be on your payroll, but will earn their money from three sources of services they may provide: Continue Reading »

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Once you get yourself past some of the barriers that seem to be an inherent part of the writing process, you can confront some of the issues particular to the business plan. The overriding point, though, is to keep yourself focused as much as possible on business issues rather than on writing issues. My experience is that the better understanding you have of the business issues, the more easily the writing comes.

While there’s no one right way to write the business plan (or any other material), here are some approaches/techniques I have found to be useful:

1. Determine the priority of issues/success factors for each area of the business. In other words, for each section of the plan—the company, marketing, product/service, sales, and financial sections—list in order of importance the challenges facing your business. Also provide your approaches/solutions for handling the challenges.

For example, for the sales segment, suppose that key issues are whether you can justify an in-house sales force, how you will train it, and how much advertising you can accomplish within the $10,000 advertising budget you have available. List each of these issues and then explain the justifications or solutions for each. This is how your analysis might look: Continue Reading »

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