[amayausers.com] Re: Independent Sales Reps
- From: webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: amayausers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:27:45 UT
This message was posted by Mr. Sew & Sew on AmayaUsers.com. PLEASE DO NOT REPLY
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Mary - we faced a similar situation a few years back when starting up. I was
working full-time + at two jobs and my wife was going to be the in-home
embroidery person. This left little time to get leads. Here are a few
thoughts:
1) when you say "independent sales reps" you need to define that. Do they work
only for you, or are they getting business for others as well? If it's only
for you, then they are simply commissioned salespeople, not really independent,
although they are not your employees.
2) How do you train them so they can go bid jobs for you. I had three people
doing "sales" for me early on, and I would say even though I thought I trained
them on cost estimates and clothing costs, I was called in on 90% of the
estimates because they couldn't figure out how to properly price a job.
Customers care most of all about cost. Every job starts with "What would this
cost me?" If they can't ballpark it on the spot, the sale probably won't
happen.
3) I paid everyone (and still do) 10% of the total sales price of the job. I
make more profit on expensive garments, and less on tees, but overall it works
out for everybody. I spent a month trying to come up with scaled commissions,
and all different ways of calculating things but it seemed that 10% of total
retail worked best for everybody. Plus the reps know how much they make on
each sale without doing any math.
4) Depending on how well the reps understand the business, you may have them
oversell your capabilities. I had somebody promise a customer that I could
deliver over 100 t-shirts in 2 days. It gone done but not without a lot of
angst. Unless they understand what your production time is like (do you have
young kids that need your time, etc) they are motivated only to sell as much
product as possible. They ignore the fact that you may have to work 48 hours
straight to deliver what they promised. This becomes more of an issue if you
have more than one sales rep as they don't know what the others have committed
you to.
I probably painted a bleak picture, but I still have some friends that bring me
jobs from time to time for the 10% cut. I gave each of them 500 business cards
with their name on it but my phone number so once they get a lead, I take over
on pricing, delivery times, etc. If I get a couple of leads a month, I'm
happy. I also have one person that I spent about 20 hours educating on the
business and he hasn't gotten me a single job in 18 months.
Just be sure you investigate all the potential pitfalls before moving down this
route.
Just my experience on this topic. Good luck
Tom
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