Following its acquisition of the permanent lighting portion of Topaz from Southwire, Halco Lighting has been reviewing its rep network and making, in many cases, the hard decision of which independent manufacturer representative to go to market within each territory. […]
Thinking about AI is a step towards thinking about innovation and growth of a business. Investing in the technology infrastructure of a company is necessary, and also scary. For this reason, many owners prefer to be conservative and settle for […]
I have interviewed various manufacturer representatives and how they assess their manufacturers and the state of manufacturer / rep relationships. Let me preface this by saying, all also shared that they have some manufacturers that they have great relationships with […]
Over the past month or so I’ve noticed a number of manufacturers who have changed reps since NEMRA. It’s interesting timing as you would think that this would occur at the end of the year with companies reviewing their reps […]
POS, defined as “place of sale” rather than “point of sale” to protect distributor customer privacy should be important to every distributor that operates a CDC or an RDC because it may cost you money … if the manufacturer does […]
The Bottom Line: McAuliffe Sales has completed its leadership transition to Chris Allshouse and is formalizing a vertical market strategy — splitting into dedicated Commercial and Industrial divisions under new VPs Scott Davis and Ken Lee — to deliver deeper […]
Super Bowl Sunday begins the super bowl of industry conferences. NEMRA holds its Annual Conference next week with over 2000 people expected in Orlando. This is the industry’s largest single collection of individuals from the channel under one roof. Did […]
It has been stated that certain events in US history can be cited as specifically changing our economic environment. Until a few years ago, every example was a war – Revolutionary, Civil, World War II, and Vietnam – until the […]
Channel friction inevitably occurs when money is involved. While the flow of money is always good, administering and reporting on it is where the friction comes about. This gets to the issue of “is the information accurate.” Achieving accuracy requires […]
Twenty-five years ago, a CEO and President who had created one of the first electrical industry platforms told me manufacturer representatives should be compensated via monthly salaries rather than commissions as it was a more equitable system. What are Salespeople […]
