Insights

When a manufacturer, distributor or service company determines that an important element of its marketing plan is contacting its customers face-to-face on the customer’s turf, it has three options:

• Conduct the field sales process with non-sales company executives and managers who sell part-time.

• Hire direct sales employees whose full-time job is to contact customers and service them.

• Appoint professional, multiple-line field sales firms as strategic partners.

These field sales companies may be known as reps, agents, manufacturers’ agents or representatives, sales agencies or even brokers. They work primarily on commission and pay their own expenses in return for a contractual agreement to be the exclusive “agent” of the manufacturers they represent in a given territory, market or for specific accounts. They profit by leveraging their time so that sales for multiple manufacturers can be made with the same customer, often on the same call.