The Secret Sauce Behind Manufacturing Rep Firm Success: Chris Atwell’s Strategy

[00:00:03] Welcome everybody back to Flow Sales. Today we are honored to have Chris Atwell in the virtual studio with us. He was kind enough to give us some of his time. I'm excited for this one. Chris has a really interesting background. I guess you've been a music producer in the past.

[00:00:19] You've worked in sales obviously and then you also own a company now that trains manufacturing sales reps specifically to perform it.

[00:00:29] So I think that's a pretty cool combination. So tell us your story man. Tell us where you've been, what was your work on?

[00:00:34] Yeah, well thank you Kurt and Craig really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me today. So my background, you know, if you go way back,

[00:00:42] I grew up a military brat. So my father was in the army and I moved around the country here in Canada.

[00:00:50] Almost every year of my childhood. And as I stepped into adulthood, I played a lot of music and started college studying business.

[00:00:58] And over those years, I started a music company which did music promotional music stuff. And I started making music myself performing recording albums selling albums.

[00:01:11] And that was my first foray into business itself running my own business. But I jumped into the sales row where I've got a background working in multiple sales functions all the way from inside sales through to sales leadership and developing

[00:01:27] strategies for sales teams to really hit the ground running hard and create an environment where they're producing top results.

[00:01:37] And I've done that in the logistics world, the building supplies and distribution world.

[00:01:43] So as the manufacturing world, all great great experiences that allowed me to taste every single angle of sales from, as I mentioned,

[00:01:51] inside sales to technical sales, to managing a team of my own and working closely with the principles and the presence of the company. So I recently started doing full time.

[00:02:01] I say recently, I've been doing this since 2021 where I work directly with manufacturers, read agency owners and understanding what challenges they're faced with in their business,

[00:02:12] what direction they want to take their business and helping them get really clear on that vision so that they can work on their business rather than in it and develop a high performing team of their own.

[00:02:24] So they can take their business to the next level.

[00:02:27] How did you get, I mean manufacturing sales reps specifically is such a niche in the sales world, right? How did you land there?

[00:02:34] When I was working for a plumbing manufacturer years ago, I developed the technical sales division of that company. So they reached out to me as working for a wholesale distributor prior to that as an international council role and they said, hey we're looking for someone to figure out how we can obtain specification of our product and drive sales in the long term by getting products included in the construction documents and seeing it through

[00:03:01] to the purchase of that product once the project is being built. And as always building that team and the strategy for that business it involved working with local manufacturers,

[00:03:13] those rep agencies, these are companies that you partner with when you're a manufacturer to go and represent your product from a sales marketing standpoint in different territories across North America is what I was responsible for.

[00:03:26] And when I did that, I really connected with those manufacturers rep agencies, incredible incredible business model that we had, you know we would work together collaboratively on driving forward the strategy that I put in the place.

[00:03:41] And that's where it all started and developed from there. Yeah, I was going to say most people don't even know what a manufacturer is.

[00:03:48] I mean, I'm sure my I don't think my kids know I've tried to line it in it's it's funny when you tell somebody I have a manufacturer and they're like, what is that?

[00:04:10] I started to understand what their role was, but when I work closely with them in the capacity that I just described over a decade ago, I really started to understand what it really takes to represent multiple lines.

[00:04:24] When I mean by lines as manufacturers rep will have anywhere from you know five to 25 different manufacturers that they represent and go to market with and and sell.

[00:04:37] There's a lot of challenges that that come with that and there's a lot of competition that comes with that I certainly appreciate what they do in the marketplace.

[00:04:44] How did you have success? I we just had Scott president of Quill on our show a little while ago and he he mentioned how he also, when you first started a quill he started the manufacturing sales revenue initiative.

[00:04:56] He said if you want to grow, you got to get reps and he believes in the model and so that's me.

[00:05:02] You can talk us through that process for you of how you work with like in the shoes of manufacturer for example that doesn't have reps or thinking about using reps.

[00:05:12] What are the things they need to think about to take advantage of the model?

[00:05:16] Yeah, great question. I've worked in both scenarios. I've worked for a manufacturer where we had strictly factory people that did all the legwork of building the relationships.

[00:05:25] The distribution partners, the end users in the marketplace and to a certain extent depending on the prototype those product specifications that I was talking about.

[00:05:36] And one of the things that manufacturers should keep in mind is that how far can you extend your current resources right so if you've got a whole country to cover.

[00:05:46] Right, like the United States and you've got six regional sales managers that are responsible for covering the entire country and their factory guys.

[00:05:56] Are they going to be able to reach every single lead every single project every single end user along or is there a better way?

[00:06:05] And depending on the product that might be perfectly capable of doing that, but in some cases leveraging manufacturers rep agencies.

[00:06:14] They are the experts in their territories. They've got their pulse on what's happening in the marketplace. They've got relationships with with the end users and the wholesale partners.

[00:06:24] They've oftentimes got technology in place that they can leverage to share and communicate information back and forth to the manufacturer.

[00:06:33] And it becomes an extension of your sales team which allows you to get more touch points in the marketplace.

[00:06:40] So the key thing to ask is are the resources that I currently have going to have the impact that I need to drive my business forward or is there an opportunity to extend my reach by tapping into another type of resource like a manufacturer's

[00:06:54] agency.

[00:06:55] And then on the manufacturing rep agency side, because you do a lot of this work right in your company, when you go into taking a soul with a manufacturing sales reform, where's them the first things that you try to dig into how optimized their their sales and whether they're operations.

[00:07:11] I always start at the top right these agencies are generally owned by a private business owner maybe a couple of partners, right, that have been in it.

[00:07:21] Often times as generational you've got a business that's being hand down from a father to son or father to daughter grandfather to son to daughter and there's multi generational things that happen here.

[00:07:32] So what you notice is they've been doing business a certain way for a long time, right?

[00:07:37] And as it gets handed down and there's some sort of transition and this where oftentimes where I find myself stepping in is okay, are you clear on the direction of your business?

[00:07:47] So one of the first questions that I typically ask one of these owners is perfect world one year from now everything's aligning.

[00:07:55] It's going exactly as you plan tell me what's happening in your business that's making it run so smoothly and usually with that does is it it sparks a level of information that maybe they're not fully thinking about could be living in their subconscious, but they start thinking about that vision a little more clearly right?

[00:08:12] So I ask can you tell me about what's happening in your business in a perfect world one year from now that's making it so successful?

[00:08:20] Yeah, and I think that's something as a rep. You get kind of called up in the doing and then you don't take as much time to have those kinds of conversations to be able to really dig down and say, all right, to your, you're question like what does it look like? What are you mean?

[00:08:35] What's going on? I mean, it's just you don't think about those things sometimes and we all should more. You said it best is that you work you're working in the business so much sometimes you're working on it takes a back seat to really live up to the potential of your rep for me got to do both.

[00:08:50] I mean, you got to work in it, but you truly got to work on it because if you're not then you're just sometimes you're just doing the same things over and over again in your successful, but what could you be if you were able to work on the business,

[00:09:02] if you were able to answer that question, you just pose right out of the gate this is what it looks like. This is what we're doing. So I think that's a good question to kick it off because I'm sure sometimes you probably get a lot of blank stares like

[00:09:15] I don't know let me think about that because a lot of times you don't take time to think about those things.

[00:09:20] Yeah, certainly I certainly tend to to open up the conversation around what could it look like, right? They may not have thought about it, but at least you can start thinking about it

[00:09:30] and that's where there's this evolution happening within agencies that I work with, where to your point agency owners have been so used to working in wearing multiple hats.

[00:09:42] Right, you're doing sales, you're doing HR, you're hiring, you're probably running all the technology, you know, you're the one who's setting up Microsoft 365, right?

[00:09:51] And you're the admin guy, you've got so much on your plate and you're just your balancing all these plates are juggly. And you're building a sales team and these sales team members are very tactical.

[00:10:02] They're going out there doing their thing and they're reporting back. And what I've noticed over time is as I work with agency owners who start getting clear about

[00:10:11] what the vision is, a year from now, five years from now and make that shift to working on the business. Their leadership role changes.

[00:10:21] Their leadership role changes from being a giving direction to more of an empowering position where they're asking powerful questions to their team and getting them to think for themselves, where they're starting to let go of a lot of these duties that they've been doing in their business forever

[00:10:39] and trusting in other team members to take it on and give them that skill set, expanding their skill sets as a team hiring sales managers.

[00:10:49] In many cases I know countless agencies that the owner is the sales manager, right? These kinds of things.

[00:10:56] So getting clear on that vision is always a critical step in moving forward.

[00:11:02] There's some patterns. I mean, you alluded to one just now having sales managers are there. Are there patterns you see across the board and talking to a lot of these reference that

[00:11:13] These are maybe blind spots you see a lot or things that are higher leverage for for these folks to be thinking about them. Maybe they don't think about as much.

[00:11:21] Yeah, absolutely. So not necessarily blind spots but definitely something worth thinking about if you haven't already.

[00:11:27] One, many of these agency owners champion every single initiative within the organization. Right? So rolling out a new CRM for example.

[00:11:36] That's a big trend in the industry right now, right? People are bringing on software like Salesforce, Repfabric, HubSpot, Odo, Microsoft Dynamics, whatever it is to get better at collecting data from their sales force on what's happening down the pipeline when it comes to project opportunities and tracking opportunities in general

[00:11:55] As well as activities and contact management. One thing that happens is that if you're already running the whole business and you, you want to champion that project as well. It's not going to roll out as effectively as you would hope.

[00:12:09] All right? Good intentions taking ownership of it may feel like it's going to get done but one of the things that I've noticed as a trend in the industry is when the agency owners are taking our championing rollouts of new technology oftentimes those rollouts are very slow and adoption is very

[00:12:25] weak. So considering empowering a team member, a senior member of the team to become the champion and hold them accountable to becoming the expert and rolling a new technology platform out is something that could be very helpful.

[00:12:39] Same around sales management right? Agency owners have built amazing relationships with their partners in the field, right? And sometimes they've known these people for 20 years and they're the go to resource.

[00:12:51] They're running this multi-million dollar business and this customer calls them every day and they pick up the phone and welcome the call and don't want to lose that loyalty.

[00:12:59] And how sustainable is that as you age in your business as an owner?

[00:13:04] And you're looking for somebody to take over the business one day, how are you going to do that effectively if you own all the relationships down the road?

[00:13:12] So this is where the potential of hiring managers, a sales manager where that person can build the trust and report with these customers down the road can be very helpful.

[00:13:22] And we'll free up time for you so that you're focusing on the business in a different capacity.

[00:13:27] But it doesn't mean you're relationship with those customers ends. You could still reach out to them and take them out and be a part of that.

[00:13:33] But all the day to day need a gritty, the pricing requests and all of those things, why isn't owner doing that?

[00:13:39] Yeah, and somebody had an original manager for one of our factories and pretty hot shout out to a pretty, he's retired.

[00:13:47] The way you put it is a baseball analogy. You would say look, if you're the manager of the baseball team, it's the night thinning.

[00:13:55] You got to go to the bullpen, call in the left hand or the closer, you can't call yourself in on that as the manager.

[00:14:02] You can't walk out there and take the ball through it. You got to have faith in that person that you're bringing in, the empowering power them.

[00:14:09] So when they get on the mound, they're able to deliver. And when he's kind of put it like that, it is a lot of times you just can't insert yourself as the principle of the agency.

[00:14:20] You got to have the right folks. We're lucky we have that and that's one of the things I try to do a better job of the past few years is turning loose some of those things.

[00:14:29] I think my crowd would probably argue that there's some things I do better than others of turning loose, and there's probably a lot more I need to turn loose.

[00:14:37] But that's an important thing I think is you grow in an organization that's having those people that can lead those initiatives that they can take the ball and run with it.

[00:14:46] I think that's important. And that sometimes is hard. I mean, obviously the first one to admit it's been a hard thing because you had those relationships with those customers and when you're somewhat removed from it from in the weeds with them every day.

[00:15:01] That's hard because customers become your friends and it's something that you have a hard time. You're not walking away from it but you're just in a different role. And that's just a challenge sometimes.

[00:15:11] So I'm sure you struggle with that when you get us to now and people like me, and say look, you got to step back. And you've got to walk you said before working on the business.

[00:15:21] I'm sure you see that a lot for sure.

[00:15:23] Yeah, and I empathize because you've been in the weeds with these people. You're on the front lines, right? You get it. You know what it's like being out in the field.

[00:15:32] And these people trust in you and they see you as their go-to resource. So of course it's going to be difficult to walk away from your friend like that.

[00:15:40] I get it. The idea is how can you build new friendships and keep that communication open so that it doesn't feel like you're breaking up or things are slipping through the cracks.

[00:15:52] Yeah, just like you mentioned to you, I mean, part of it is the relationships but the technology side you mentioned. We've seen it too when we're people looking at flow right off the times of day.

[00:16:01] We're going with someone the other week. They put someone in their organization and charge of the real loud initiative, right? And like you own it.

[00:16:09] This is what I want to do as the agency owner. This is why I want to do it. But you own this, you meet with them. You implement it.

[00:16:16] You train everybody and then that's it. Then we found actually that works way smoother, right? Because that person owns it. They have more time to dedicate to it.

[00:16:24] And they can push it through and give themselves.

[00:16:26] Yeah, the important piece in all of this is to be clear on what what are the objectives and the goals. What steps are being taken to achieve them?

[00:16:34] And how are you going to measure the progress along the way? You can't grow what you can't measure. You can't implement what you can't measure. So you need to know what the milestones are.

[00:16:42] What does accomplishment look like achieving that angle? And if things aren't being done properly that you're pivoting so that you're getting back on track.

[00:16:50] And that's where communication feedback and ongoing communication is critical for any project. For any relationship you want to make sure that you're in the know and you're getting updated.

[00:17:02] The pivoting one is necessary and supporting the implementer in a way that they've got all the tools and the resources necessarily to get job done.

[00:17:10] But you mentioned measurement. That's an interesting topic because on the one hand you could measure too many things or you can measure the wrong things. So how do you think about what are the right things that I should be measuring that actually help and don't just

[00:17:25] Or distraction or even worse leave me down the wrong path because I'm measuring the wrong thing.

[00:17:30] And that's where clarity on the objectives comes in. You could set a million goals in your business every day, set new goals and objectives. But as long as you're really clear on what are the core initiatives? What are the really important initiatives that are going to drive 80% of my total revenue 80% of the results that I need in my business.

[00:17:50] And highlight those particular objectives. The other ones you can certainly check in on the location, but they're just they're not having the same level of impact as those primary core objectives would. So by identifying what those initiatives are and then building in measureables within that using using simple tools, you know smart goal settings specific measurable attainable relevant time bound.

[00:18:16] So one of the most effective measureables is time. If you establish that this this part of this project or this part of this sale or this part of this activity needs to be completed by this date, you can certainly measure that quite effectively right so the idea is to identify what's most critical set measurements in place for those and work from there.

[00:18:39] There's any anything else you've seen that you think is super critical or important to share and also how can people work with you right and reach out to you. Absolutely. So one of the most important things for any principle or any sales leader in any industry is taking care of yourself first, right?

[00:18:59] And this is where people have asked me, you know what are the most important things that any leader should consider. Well the first one is take care of your own health and well being first.

[00:19:09] Because if you're sharp and you're healthy, you're going to be able to show up for your team, for your business, your family at a much higher level.

[00:19:18] And that's where your health and well being trumps anything in business because everything else follows from there what I make sure that I keep everyone in tune with is no your numbers or countless challenges in running an agency where you get delayed information from your manufacturers.

[00:19:38] You might not have up to date sales figures and stuff like this which may cause you to not look at it at all but by knowing your numbers from the first knowing your objectives and your goals.

[00:19:48] And then tracking and measuring along the way, you're going to have a much better understanding of where you are in your business so that you can communicate that to your team and help them pivot and make the necessary decisions strategically in order to support moving towards the goals.

[00:20:06] So, know your numbers. Health wellness, know your numbers. Number three is create the habits and the routines in your day to day to support your health and well being and work towards your numbers and your objectives. And that's where I help is I assist you in getting really clear on the vision of your business.

[00:20:25] Establishing those goals and objectives around personal and business to support the three things we just discussed and hold you accountable to it along the way so that you can step up in your leadership.

[00:20:36] Let go of the things that might be holding you back from working on the business rather than in it empower your team into high performance by supporting them rather than directing them and helping them think critically and more strategically while you're doing the same so that you can grow your business to the next level.

[00:20:53] Yeah, it's funny so like number one the first point of taking care yourself. That's like a for me personally that's a role in history there's times I like yeah I'm on it feeling good working out doing one of you know quite times things like that doing great and it's just like a role at coaster number two.

[00:21:13] The numbers I mean that's really what drove me to contact Curtis and his team at data crunch was I was tired and not knowing where we stand as a company and we're having to make decisions on information.

[00:21:29] That didn't trust and that's no way to run a business I don't care what business you're on it so that was a huge point was I got to know our numbers we got to be able to feel sound and secure that what we're looking at is going to be able to direct us.

[00:21:43] To make these decisions that are going to impact us for the next year five years and ten years in some cases and then the habit piece I mean that's a that's a huge thing is you got these two things but you got to ingrain them into your day to day right and I think that's something that we can do a better job me personally as well.

[00:22:00] And now you had the nail you're speaking to me I appreciate the the reminder so thank you for that.

[00:22:08] Yeah you're welcome. The best way to get a hold of me is on LinkedIn you can search Chris at well on LinkedIn and I'm quite active on there and always happy to connect my website is mindset dash conquest dot com and my agency my business practice is really focused on the the rep agency owners.

[00:22:29] So I help rep agency owners inspire and develop high performing teams while creating more free time for themselves and my vision is to be to be the premier partner for agency owners looking for transformational change in their business.

[00:22:44] So I invite you to reach out anytime connect with me and happy to have a conversation.

[00:22:48] That's awesome. That's an awesome vision. Thanks again for being here.

[00:22:52] Yeah appreciate nice to meet you. Thanks for all that the inside.

[00:22:54] Yeah my pleasure. Thank you Craig. Thank you Kurt. Have a great day.