entrepreneurial selling columbia business school
TRANSCRIPT
Entrepreneurial Selling
April 13, 2015
Charles Cohon, CEO
Manufacturers’ Agents National Association
Entrepreneurial Selling Professor Eric Baron
(right) and MANA CEO Charles Cohon
One Rep’s Story
Came With Bragging Rights
Hotels on Las Vegas Strip
33 hotels over 4.2 miles
Major league baseball stadiums
30Source: Wikipedia
One Rep’s Story
Came With Bragging Rights
Disney World 2012 Attendance:
126,479,000(Disney's Hollywood Studios, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Magic Kingdom)
Source: Wikipedia
One Rep’s Story
Came With Bragging Rights
Times Square: The most visited place globally
360,000 pedestrian visitors a dayOver 131,000,000 a year
Source: Wikipedia
One Rep’s Story
Came With Bragging Rights
http://issuu.com/signbuilderillustrated/docs/february_2015_signbuilder/24
February 2015
By Ashley Bray
Patrick DooleyVP of Business Development
North Shore Neon
On a project like this, if you don’t have a professional like Yorston, you’ll spend way too much of your time and energy researching something that Yorston already has the resources already at his disposal for.
One Rep’s Story
Came With Bragging Rights
•Voltarc Fluorescent Lamps
•Keystone Technologies Ballasts
•SignComp Ballast and Socket Raceway
Line Card Synergy
• Easier to find qualified talent by hiring a manufacturers’ representative company that has that talent on staff than it would be to track down an equally talented person to hire as a direct salesperson.
• With direct salespeople we have a good bit of turnover, while some of the manufacturers’ representatives I work with are the same ones I started with 24 years ago.
Joe Walsh, Sales Manager
Sign Products, Voltarc
Push Button Gutter
Fortune 500 Company Bought My Employer
• Found an inventor with a great patented product.
• Asked for the whole country.
• He thought I was crazy but agreed to give me six weeks to see what I could do.
• I sold everything he had, and put him two months behind.
• Picked up reps as Fortune 500 company terminated them.
• Inventor will hit $40 million in sales this year.
55 store chain was not getting their “spiffs.”
• Rep took piles of printouts and fixed it.
Reps Get Their Hands Dirty
Important wholesaler had returns nightmare:
• Dug through totes.
• Separate our product from others’.
• Separate salable from not.
• Repackage salable.
I plan to be in this territory for decades.
I don’t want an order.
I want _________________.
I Am Not Thinking About Orders.
“This constant travel is killing me,”
says Sam, Regional Sales Mgr.
Where Do Reps Come From?
“I don’t want to relocate,” says Pat, Regional Sales Mgr.
Where Do Reps Come From?
CSX Intermodal Terminals, Fairburn, GA
Port of Seattle
Long Beach Container Terminal, L.A.
Rotterdam World Gateway
North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Share cost of sales with complimentary, noncompeting products.
Ryan Hertel
Phoenix Products Company (PPC)
Harvard Business School R&R
Case 386-019 November 1985.
• Beat 1983 Canadian board
game Trivial Pursuit to the
U.S. market
• $3 million profit in eight
months
• R&R case used in more than
100 business schools, 40%
international.
• One of Harvard’s best sellers
Harvard Business School R&R
Case 386-019 November 1985.
Feedback
•Q&A
•Evaluation
Entrepreneurial Selling
April 13, 2015
Charles Cohon, CEO
Manufacturers’ Agents National Association
PBC