Entrepreneurial Selling Columbia Business School

Entrepreneurial Selling

April 13, 2015

Charles Cohon, CEO

Manufacturers’ Agents National Association

ccohon@manaonline.org

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

ccohon@manaonline.org

PBC