In Search of the "New" Rep

This coming Sunday (25) I'm heading off to Albuquerque for the annual IMRA Marketing Conference. It's the premier gathering of Incentive Suppliers and Representatives, a confab to meet, greet, network, and perhaps get a peek at the future of the Rep/Supplier relationship. As I prepare to go, I've made a little list of things I expect to see and/or hope to learn:

• A small group of Reps will be more highly motivated this year than in the past. I'm speaking about the Coach Reps, a group that has just seen a significant drop in their top-line revenue. I would expect to see them more assertively pursuing available lines.
• There will be some "buzz" about at least two relatively high-profile Supplier Management jobs--Samsonite and Cross appear to still be "in play" and it's likely some current Managers will seek to move to one of those opportunities
• I sense there is still a disconnect between many Brands and the Promotional Products Community. Some Brands have determined that the market is fertile ground to increase business, others have decided to approach it indirectly (through master distribution like Indigo and others) or ignore it altogether. But Reps are in the middle--PP distributors are a significant and (most likely) increasing percentage of their sales, and they must get their suppliers on board with tools and selling approaches to maximize that market.
• Allied with the above is some "grumbling" I've been hearing about some of the traditional "Big Kids" of the Incentive business--that the business with large Incentive clients is down somewhat but the demands of doing business with them haven't changed.
• Reps are being pressured to take on more lines because more suppliers are in the market. At the same time, Reps don't have the personnel and/or resources to effectively serve a large number of suppliers. Again, Reps find themselves caught between opportunity and resource allocation, and there are no easy answers.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will be bringing two new entrants to IMRA in search of Representatives. Both have cool selling propositions, but both will be challenged to find a way to cut through the "clutter" of an expanding Supplier universe. I'm going about my search the old-fashioned way--by appealing to the Reps to consider what we have to sell, how we're going to manage the business, and what's in it for them. Should be interesting.

And somewhere in all this I'm eager to learn what Reps and Suppliers believe is the state of their relationship and what (if anything) can be done to improve it for both parties. Pressures on Reps are increasing because of "unfunded mandates" placed on them by Suppliers, themselves pressured by the ongoing challenge to "do more with less". The dynamic is increasingly important because most Suppliers are in a symbiotic relationship with Reps--it's the Shark and Remora thing and both have a life-and-death stake in the outcome...

Talk to you after the Conference, with my two cents...

Pete