No one in the supply chain is more responsible for gathering and disseminating information than the middlemen — distributors and industrial representatives. They are required to understand and pass on ever increasing amounts of technical data about every product they sell to industrial plants.

In fact, today's industrial representative must be a problem solver. While each has an opinion about for whom they actually work — distributors, end users or manufacturers of the lines they represent — they all agree that solving customers' problems is their raison d'etre.

As solutions to problems and the products used to solve them become more complex, reps must learn more. They attend formal education at manufacturers' facilities. They read manuals and texts. They hold more technical meetings with their own staffs than in years past.

Some manufacturers' reps handle acutely specialized lines, although most work with multiple lines in many industries. We talked in-depth with two multi-line representatives about their role as technical liaisons to distributors and end users.

According to Kevin Weinacht, president of Weinacht & Associates, Inc., in Collinsville, Ill., the technical role of the rep has changed dramatically while the basic tenets of representation have not. In business for 21 years, Weinacht says that consistency of planning and reporting, the strength of sales training systems and detailed implementation of programs all help salespeople gain the trust of the end user. He is a Certified Professional Manufacturers' Representative and past president of the NorthAmerican Industrial Representatives Assn.

"The role of the representative is markedly different today than it was when I started, and even in the last 10 years. I think one of the biggest changes is the end-user work that's needed. We do much more than we've ever done," Weinacht says.

"One- and two-man agencies were common years ago. Now, there are more multi-man agencies. They are stronger and attract more major suppliers and end users," he says. "We have to be out in the field, helping distributors pull in business. All my salespeople are out making end-user calls, and we prefer to do that with distributor people, hoping they will learn and will be out selling our products."

All phases of training today include more technical instruction in machine systems then ever before, Weinacht says.

"Becoming a CPMR demands a much higher level of expertise than just good business practices," he adds. "So, with this knowledge there has been a tremendous call from distributors for us to become their technical and sales liaisons. Fifteen or 20 years ago, we were called for problems only. Now, we are out for all phases of the relationship with end users."

So, says Weinacht, in the eyes of most end users, his group is the factory rep. That includes service after the sale, another area in which his people must be proficient. They must diagnose the problem, offer a solution and follow the results of some very technical product applications.

"Training has to offer a lot of 'hands-on,' an approach we prefer. It's an ongoing process with [our salespeople and end user operators] because of the rapidly changing arena of the market. You have to constantly customize," Weinacht says. "Seminars and sales support meetings at the end-user level are extremely important. We do our own if manufacturers are not able to."

Each of Weinacht's salespeople is required to fill out a detailed report about their "top 10" sales successes and opportunities each month. The report details why, or why not, tools succeeded or solved a problem, and what the follow-up will be.

All of that becomes training for the other salespeople as the group discusses results together, he says.

One of the highest priorities at end users is the rep's ability to provide service — through the local distributor, the manufacturer or the rep himself, Weinacht says. He notes that the rep adds value to the end-user sales transaction when he has a quick answer to a problem.

"We develop relationships and new products," he says. "But they also like synergistic selling, more than one product line, so we become their trusted ally in supplying the best product for a price. And we have to know the technical merits of those products inside and out. We all, in the supply chain, need to provide faster service and more of it, to keep moving forward."

For the industrial representative, the more available and the more thorough the training plan, the better prepared he will be to help manufacturers, distributors and end users.

The premise that "experience is the best teacher" is true for a lot of applications in industry, but reps are trying to become more valuable to their customers by improving productivity and reducing overall costs. Reps must create new processes and find better products to fit the ever-tightening constraints of time and expense, according to another long-time representative.

Mack Sorrells, of Mack W. Sorrells Co., Inc., has owned an independent representative firm for over 20 years. Sorrells is a past-president of NIRA and the Manufacturers' Representative Educational & Research Foundation. His distributors and end users rely on his technical expertise more every year due in part to the position in which distributors find themselves, he says.

"Distributors have found themselves working for the customer, supplying the products customers want, which may or may not be a product found in one of his major lines. The distributor has had to spread his vendor base horizontally," he says.

Industrial representatives, Sorrells notes, work for their manufacturers. He says they must find the best product available. However, they must also guide the customer through the most productive application of the product as well.

Cutting tool manufacturing is a prime example of an industry that has evolved into a niche-market supply chain, according to Sorrells.

"If you looked at cutting tool companies years ago, product offerings of a variety of manufacturers were nearly identical. More companies began offering more application-specific, high-performance and material-specific products," he says. "Every material/application specific tool narrows the niche where these tools can be utilized effectively. Guiding customers to use the tools to their full benefit demands that the rep become more and more technically competent."

Application-sensitive industrial supplies proliferate across all industries, Sorrells says. Safety reps, for example, must immerse themselves in training for OSHA and EPA rules and regulations.

"It's no longer a matter of just, 'Here's a respirator, use it all day, but 'Here is a respirator that meets all the ... regulations of the hazards your employees might be exposed to.' There are very technical aspects to safety products, as well as power transmission, bearings, material handling, etc.," he notes.

According to Sorrells, there is no difference between his job and that of the industrial salesperson representing one manufacturer. However, the multiple-line rep's efforts are spread across several product lines.

Technical knowledge becomes critical when reps are solving tooling problems because the majority of operations are links in a chain, the tool being only one link.

"Diagnosis requires strengthening the weakest links to create the strongest chain. You link the cutter with the holder, which is on a spindle, which is running to the motor, and so on," he says.

To a large degree, Sorrells thinks manufacturers are doing too much teaching and not enough training of their salespeople. There is a big difference, he adds.

"Thirty to 60 minutes of a features-and-benefits tour of the catalog that we call a sales meeting, is teaching, not training. Training is giving the salesperson the skills to diagnose thoroughly before prescribing," he says.

Sorrells notes that the lack of real machine training in vocational schools and too little on-the-job training in machine shops are partly responsible.

Multiple-line reps generally have a longer tenure in the marketplace than do factory salespeople, he adds.

"We have a more in-depth understanding of the customers in our territories ... and because we represent several synergistic lines, we tend to look at situations from a broader perspective. A factory rep ... is forced to think that the solution for any problem has to be in his briefcase. That's not true for all factory reps, but ... it circles back to the ability to diagnose then prescribe, not the other way around.

Sorrells and his three salespeople have diverse backgrounds, which helps them see the big picture as a group.

"One is from a cutting tool background, one from a shop, one from distribution and one is from abrasives. We are able to feed off each other to solve a problem in the best possible way," he says.

Sorrells understands that part of the technology explosion in the last 10 years is the electronic management of personnel and purchasing information at every company. End users are more and more concerned about error-free service and delivery. They need to know that the rep who comes into their plant works well with their people and can solve their unique problems.

"The more I know, the more I can do to solve those problems. We have to work together (with manufacturers) on those problems and be compensated for doing so. Sometimes, we do technical work without getting any credit," Sorrells says.

Mack W. Sorrells Co. uses a sophisticated customer resource management (CRM) computer program to track the products they sell and the end users they ship to. The staff can get reports about sales activities that include detailed analyses of the customer's product usage and problems for any period of time.

Weinacht and Sorrells agree on several points about the importance of the expertise each rep brings to the customer's plant. With a combined 50-plus years of experience, they see that the one constant in their business is change.

They also know that selling today is providing solutions to problems and servicing after the sale. They recognize manufacturers need long-term, technically trained experts in their products. And they both say that manufacturers' representatives have an increasing role in filling that need.