Primary Services

• Customer Service Satisfaction Surveys
• Partner Relationship Management
• Sales Channel Improvement
• Technology Planning & Integration
• Software Evaluation & Selection
• Speeches, Presentations, Training
• Marketing Planning
• Strategic Planning
• Supply Chain Management, Distribution

Company Background

Rep Connection Inc. was initially founded to help manufacturers and their sales partners work more effectively together and to be the home for a large audio/video library (subsequently donated to a non-profit association). It also is the vehicle for Gregg's public speaking activities.

Over time, our clients have asked us to be involved in a wide variety of assignments, including business plan development, product positioning and marketing, public relations, technology assessments, industry standards development, and supply chain management. Most of our business comes from customer referrals.

As appropriate, we are teamed with experts in a variety of fields to bring the highest quality, objective solutions to virtually any need a business might have.

Partner Relationship Management

Partner Relationship Software (PRM) is a new breed of software designed to streamline the workflows between you and your channel partners. PRM isn't as much about the technology as recognizing the need to develop better relationships with your sales partners. PRM isn't about micro managing them, or manipulating them to sell more of your products. PRM is about increasing the amount of value you provide to your sales partners, reducing the overhead of working together, and strengthening the bond between your companies. Do that and sales increases will naturally follow.

PRM has three primary goals: 1) Increase Revenues, 2) Decrease the costs of managing your sales partners, and 3) Creating unbreakable partnerships and vendor bias. PRM focuses on 4 functional areas:

1. Marketing Automation - creating quality leads and following up on them
2. Sales Automation - closing those leads into sales
3. Customer Service - resolving pre and post sale customer issues
4. eCommerce - making transactions efficient

Like CRM (Customer Relationship Management), many PRM efforts are destined to failure. They can't be undertaken in a vacuum, and they need to be integrated into you and your business partners' operations. We can help you avoid the CRM/PRM quagmire by: facilitating top management support, effective analysis of existing processes, identification of solution options, prioritization of implementation, and introduction & training of your sales partners.

There are many high return, low investment options for PRM. One client saw a 40+% reduction in customer service telephone calls installing an internet based order status system that was up and running in just a couple of weeks for less than $30,000 with a pay back period of less than 6 months for the average $20 million per year manufacturer.

Sales Channel Improvement

Most indirect sales channels are leaving business on the table. If you feel your sales partners (manufacturers representatives or distributors) aren't getting you all the sales you think you should have, you're probably right.

Most manufacturing companies make it hard for their sales partners to do business.

Technology can help, but there is also an element of simply understanding what motivates them. There are vast opportunities to minimize paperwork, improve communications, and make your indirect sales efforts more effective. You can automate workflows and make it easier to get the information everyone needs, when they need it and where they need it.

How easy are you to do business with? We can survey your sales partners and identify areas where you can quickly and inexpensively improve your processes usually resulting in increases in sales.

Looking for new / additional sales partners? We can help with sales agency searches, interviewing, and hiring decisions.

Looking to get more out of your existing sales partners? We can review your existing processes and collateral materials, audit your sales partner needs, and help implement improvements. One often-overlooked need is adequate, on going training for sales partners and their employees.

Technology Planning & Integration

Are you facing decisions about choosing, implementing or managing technology? Today, those decisions have become more complex and more vital than ever. Long-range technology planning has been proven to have significant financial benefits. The implications of any major automation decision should be weighed in terms of your overall plan.

We can work with you to optimize the return on your systems investments. We can help you avoid dead-end technologies by creating a cost-effective plan to migrate from existing expensive, proprietary platforms to more cost-effective and flexible client-server computing environments.

We start with an assessment of the current state of affairs: infrastructure; people; perceptions. In conjunction with these interviews, we review the factors that are driving technology and the factors that are driving the business. Finally, our analysis leads to an understanding of the desired future state, and what is needed to do to get there.

Sometimes, a little outside perspective can help keep the focus. It really helps to have someone who can help you work on the business without being mired in the details of the business. Someone with whom you can speak frankly and confidentially. Someone with whom you can check out new ideas. Someone with whom you can problem-solve.

We operate under the vision that data should be available to anyone who needs it and that data should only be entered into computers once, and then shared, even across business partners. If you look at your internal operations, or your interaction with your sales partners, you'll find data being keyed off one report into spreadsheets, legacy systems, and private databases.

Software Evaluation & Selection

Here's a sample of how our process works for our technology clients:

• Assessment: We meet with you and your key people and determine how you really do business.
• Identify Growth Issues: Your computer system will be able to support the growth in your business plan.
• Vendor Identification: We canvass the hardware and software vendors specializing in your industry or profession.
• Solution Analysis: We separate marketing hype from true capabilities. We know how to recommend a system that can grow modularity as your company grows, yet still be cost effective now.
• Conversion Project Management: We know what is needed to phase the new systems and procedures into your environment. We plan the conversion for you: how and when it will take place, who will participate, and what constitutes acceptance.
• Completion: We document for, and train, your staff. We set up procedures for them to follow that will ensure the necessary continuity and stability of your systems-and associated procedures.

We serve as architects - we design an overall business structure; we then "architect" an information system whose structure supports your special business structure. We are also engineers; we "engineer" the proper solution to best suit your needs using contemporary tools and management concepts.

Speeches, Presentations, Training

Gregg is available to groups to speak on a number of subjects. Generally his talks are on technology and how manufacturers' representatives or manufacturers can use technology to greatest benefit, although he has spoken on a wide variety of subjects from education to how to maximize profitability. He can take the most complex technology subject and make it understandable to a large audience.

Gregg usually talks at association conferences, training seminars and at sales meetings. He has also been an instructor for the Certified Professional Manufacturers Representative program and for the Certified Auctioneers Institute. He taught a class for the University of California Berkeley extension program.

Marketing Planning

A marketing plan must be a "winner." If the plan does not help management to gain market share, increase sales, lower marketing costs or otherwise "win," the plan probably is a waste of time. We believe the first order of business is getting the proper strategy in place, ("doing the right thing"), and the second order of business is effectively implementing that strategy, ("doing things right").

Strategic planning includes those processes that lead to an executable marketing plan including identifying areas of opportunity, market segmentation, product line analysis, financial planning, competitive analysis and a project implementation plan. This serves as a detailed road map for the planning and supervision of all marketing activities.

Publicity services, including press releases and "op-ed" feature articles, can help shape perceptions, enhance awareness for your company and its capabilities, and communicate your advantages with the highest degree of cost efficiency.

Other services:

• Marketing Audits
• Sales Strategy
• Product Positioning
• Training And Other Collateral
• Direct Response Marketing
• Seminars, Road Shows and Demonstrations
• Success Stories and Application Briefs
• User Groups

Strategic Planning

"Would you tell me, please which way I ought to walk from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat,

"I don't much care where - " said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you walk," said the Cat.

" - so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

For most organizations, strategic business planning is an intuitive process. Rarely do they have an organized assessment of where they are, often they don't have a vision of where they want to go, and like Alice, find that any path will suffice, if you wander around long enough.

We have developed a formal strategic business planning methodology based around business-based design. We can help you assess each of the three critical elements that go into a strategic business plan: processes, organization, and assets. We start with Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and guide management through a team planning process to integrated strategic, operational and implementation plans

Supply Chain Management, Distribution

Supply Chain is a major topic of conversation in many organizations today. Increasingly sophisticated customers demand that their orders be shipped, complete, accurate, on time, and in the manner they require. A leading-edge logistics program can create competitive advantage for your company.

We analyze the key logistics elements--movement of the product (inbound, outbound, intra-company), movement of information, service/time, cost, and integration--within your company and with customers and with suppliers. From your goals and our analysis we can develop a program of continuous improvement.

Among the projects we can perform:

• Warehouse Review
• Inventory Audit
• Transportation Analysis
• Cycle Time Review
• Cost Analysis
• Service Analysis
• Operations Review
• Systems Audit
• Distribution Network Design
• Reengineering
• E-Commerce
• Trading Partner Integration

Sample Projects

Worked with warehouse manager to redesign warehouse workflows and processes, changed warehouse compensation, implemented computer tracking of productivity.
Results: Reduced shipping times from 3 days to 24 hours while volume increased 133%.

Designed and implemented order entry, sales tracking, warehousing and inventory management system utilizing low cost networked PC's and 4^th generation relational database system. System costs were a fraction of comparable systems implemented by other rep agencies.
Results: Sales per inside person increased from $4.1 million to $9.6 million. Inventory turns increased to 6 versus 3 for manufacturer-managed inventories. Service levels increased to 96+% versus less than 90% for manufacturer-managed inventories.

Wrote user manual for Application Service Provider based distribution operations software system.
Results: Resulting manual combined ease of reading, frequent illustrations and task orientation. Expected to significantly reduce customer support requirements.

Partial List of Clients

• American Supply Association
• Certified Auctioneers Institute
• EagleDirect
• Institute for Professional Advancement
• Manufacturers Agents Food Service Industry
• Manufacturers Agents National Association
• Mestek
• MTI Inc.
• ProfitWorks
• Shamrock Sales