How the Outside Rep can make or break a Brand

This is strictly a “Golf in the Family (Business)” entry about the role field sales reps play in the way we do business. For better or worse, our experience of a vendor and its brands is colored by our relationship with that vendor's sales rep.

Doing business with a major (or minor) golf company includes dealing with the inside customer support team, credit department, warranty and repairs, and in some cases, the marketing department. Charlie has always claimed that he could do business just fine with any of our vendors without an outside sales person. He's probably right.

Yet, the outside sales rep can be a big help for managing inventory, turning orders around quickly, implementing promotions and addressing problems. He can make all the difference in how we perceive a company's policies even when I know that our perceptions are biased.

In a former life I was an outside sales rep selling direct marketing services to mostly large companies. I did not recognize the influence I might have had in my client relationships until after I left that career and became a customer.

Now I see that how I feel about a sales rep affects how I see everything he stands for. Does that sales rep keep his word? Does he tell a straight story about his company's marketing, production and pricing policies? Does he take care of problems in a timely way? Does he make and keep appointments, respond to email and confirm pre-booked orders before they get shipped? Does he share close outs and product deals with us?

There are often big differences between the ways one company operates internally from another. Occasionally, a company will establish a standard for doing business because its practices or products are so clearly superior in the minds of the customer.

Klees Golf Shop benefits from a vendor's good image and we have to respond when customers request a brand because of this. However, the brands we carry, promote and repair are largely influenced by the opportunities we have to make money in what has become an extremely competitive market. And this is where the sales rep can help.

2008 is shaping up to be a year of great challenge for many industries, especially the golf business. Bad weather, high gas prices, job instability and a credit crunch are affecting almost everyone in some way, mostly bad. Given this scenario I can only hope our vendor reps step up to the challenge and do what they can to help us get through this year.