“Rep relationships”

Town Crier with

Justin Tunstall

Retail consultant, shares with us his cheese selling experience

• “Sticky fingers”
• “Everyone’s a winner”
• “Myths and legends of Turophilia”
• “When ‘cheese’ is not cheese”
• “Don’t disrespect the Cheddar”

Are you now, or have you ever been, a rep? I was for a number of years, with responsibility for selling advertising in newspapers that had circulations in the millions (it was the 1980s), both in the US and the UK. Most of the job involved negotiating with regular clients and their agents, with very little cold calling, especially of the door-stepping or face-to-face kind

The exception was when I used to jet or motor off to trade shows with a brief to network, show my face to existing clients and also conjure up new business. I was never comfortable with trying to sell to people at these shows – my targets had all paid good money for space and time to sell their own products and services to customers, not to buy mine.

Similarly, in my current life as a cheesemonger, when my shop is open for business, I am there to sell to my customers. If I’m not actually dealing with customers there’s always something that needs attention, and contact from sales people is by and large an unwelcome interruption to those efforts. Nonetheless, there’s a constant stream of telephone calls made by eager business development folk, brimming over with self-assurance and the belief that time for their sales pitch trumps the needs of my customers. We also get unannounced visits from reps. They wait in the queue, A4 presenter clutched to chest, seldom looking at our merchandise but focused primarily on me, waiting to strike just as soon as they think I’m free to hear their pitch. Having ‘been there’, I feel for them, but they could help themselves more.

Lest this view sounds classic poacher turned gamekeeper, I’ve found certain interactions with reps invaluable in the development of my business. A tip of the hat to the rep that came and spent a day helping me set up the cheese stock before we opened. Thanks, too, to the wholesaler who took me through their entire stock, sampling as we went along, to establish a wish list of cheeses for my opening. An ad rep made a massively helpful suggestion about a product range that worked exceptionally well for us. All these examples of help came from people who bothered to find out what we were looking to do and positioned their offerings and advice to support those aims.

Shop owners and store buyers have responsibilities too, if we are to keep our side of the street clean and behave professionally. If I’ve asked for an email pitch, then I think it my duty to read it and be ready with an opinion – or be prepared to apologise if I haven’t had time to do so – when I get a follow up call. If you’re really not interested in a product that’s presented to you, don’t waste the rep’s time with ‘maybes’ and requests for samples. Their time and their products have costs attached, and an honest ‘no’ means that they can direct their resources towards more likely prospects.

A good relationship between rep and buyer can be really fruitful for both parties and bear testament to the old saying: people buy from people. But if you are a rep, please never forget that we have selling to do to our customers, who will always be our first priority.