Today’s Distributor Article
Spicing the Mix with Value-Added
As the channel evolves, smart manufacturers’ reps will deliver the ‘spice’ of value-added for its channel partners
Collinsville, IL – Kevin Weinacht looks to the future knowing the turf in the channel currently inhabited by manufacturers’ reps will change. To meet with success, he believes, reps will need to be more than salesmen.
Weinacht, owner of the manufacturers’ rep agency, Weinacht & Associates, believes this development is a natural progression of what is currently occurring in the channel.
“The industry has changed at every level,” Weinacht says, “and this means the rep business is going to have to change. There’s more to it than just going out and getting the sale. You have to be a full, well-rounded salesman.”
Weinacht knows his agency’s strength is in the services it provides. The company’s line is technical in nature – machine tools and accessories, cutting tools, abrasives and other industrial supplies – and in-depth product knowledge allows his staff to provide solutions quickly. This insight has served Weinacht well for the past 18 years.
From humble roots . . .
Weinacht didn’t discover his life’s calling – selling – until he worked six months as a door-to-door insurance salesman. What the insurance industry eventually lost became industrial distribution’s gain.
Later, while serving as the national sales rep for Emerson Electric Industrial Tool Division, he began asking questions of Emerson’s manufacturer reps. A recurring theme he heard was they wished they would have become reps a lot earlier in life. Intrigued, Weinacht took the plunge.
Weinacht & Associates started as a partnership in 1980 in St. Louis, MO. Weinacht bought out his partner in ’85 and in 1995, moved across the river, back to his hometown of Collinsville. The agency currently covers Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and Illinois with five outside salesmen. Complementing them are two full-time and two part-time inside employees.
Weinacht covers the Midwest with reps strategically placed, instead of all out of one centralized office. Weinacht and his reps share their market views and challenges via a monthly telephone conference call. They also travel quarterly to Collinsville for meetings. The new hires allow Weinacht to hang up a few of the many “hats” he wore when first starting the agency; spend more time with his “A” accounts (top 25 distributors); and focus on growing the agency.
“I’ve learned to get to the next level, I’ve got to delegate, and let everyone take ownership in their areas of expertise,” he says. “I feel the multiman agency is the only way to go, and what we’ve done is employ a marketing consultant who has added some things we haven’t had in the past.”
Weinacht now looks to build on this initial foundation to prepare the agency for business in the next millennium.
A Recipe for Success
Weinacht’s original formula for success was sparse: Manufacturers and distributors want reps to go to an end user experiencing a problem and use their extensive product knowledge to provide solutions. Further, with time a critical issue, the end user can't afford to wait for a factory technician to address the problem.
“As far as we’re concerned, we’re their field sales office,” he says. “They need somebody like us who knows the product well enough to handle those end-user situations.”
To do this requires sending the staff to repeated factory training seminars to gain the necessary product knowledge.
“Distributors today want to make sure that we know our stuff before we go to an end user,” Weinacht says. “They want to trust us, but they want to know that we’re going to add value at the end-user level. They have to have that comfort level.”
To add value to this mix, Weinacht looks for ways his agency can do more for all his channel partners and consequently grow everyone’s share of the pie.