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.

Spicing up the Recipe

Heading into September’s IMTS, Weinacht wanted to create more distributor foot traffic at the booths of the manufacturers his agency represents, so he created a flyer/spiff program. He printed a flyer with a “menu” listing the manufacturers Weinacht & Associates represent, and prior to the show, mailed it to the sales managers and sales staff of the agency’s top distributors planning to attend the show. Distributor managers/salesmen visiting one of these booths would receive a “check off” next to that listed manufacturer. Sales managers “hitting for the cycle” received a $100 lunch for his inside sales staff to be provided by his Weinacht rep.
“The program’s whole purpose was to get them in and educate them on the product,” Weinacht says. “From the feedback we got from our distributors, this program was a success.”

Among the other “spices” Weinacht & Associates adds to its marketing recipe are:
One hundred percent follow-up on all sales leads for distributors. He credits the program in producing a number of projects for the agency and the respective distributors.

Cooperative marketing ventures: “We recently did a cooperative promotion with a manufacturer and its distributors where the distributor salesman who sold the most targeted products would win a trip to Las Vegas,” Weinacht says. The trio split the cost of developing a flyer, its printing and mailing, and the trip’s cost.

Development product literature: “We’re not going to wait for the manufacturer to come up with a flyer program the whole country uses,” Weinacht says. “We’re going to be proactive and tailor a regional flyer program for the distributor.”
Attending regional trade shows: “It’s important for us to show our product to the end user,” Weinacht says.


Organizing seminars

Establish business plans for each product line the agency reps: Lastly, the agency is currently developing a presentation for its key distributors to show what it can do for them in the next century, reinforcing that at Weinacht & Associates, preparation is the preferred path to success with its channel partners in industrial distribution.

Weinacht & Associates is a leading representative firm providing innovative, professional representation.

The Weinacht approach to representing an industrial manufacturer focuses on the synergy among the lines represented. Since 1980, Kevin Weinacht and strategically placed associates (St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Iowa) have produced substantial sales and market share increases for a broad cross section of industrial supplies, machine tools and accessories.

Weinacht is known for representing the top lines in each segment of the market. Sales increases are the direct result of Weinacht’s highly professional approach to total representation:

Marketing and sales planning
Detailed implementation
Outstanding customer service
Representation Has Changed

For the 21st century, Weinacht & Associates is developing new standards of performance around six action areas.
Lead follow up programs designed to assure Manufacturers 100% follow up.
Sales training systems for all Reps to build a consultative sales force capable of creating new opportunities with distribution and end users.
End users programs designed to open doors for distribution and manufacturers.

Marketing and business planning with key distributors geared toward aggressive planned growth for all lines.
Sales meeting programs designed to stimulate distributors sales personnel building a favored position for Weinacht and its manufacturers.
Consistent reporting and forward planning for each manufacturer represented.