How to Find the Best Sales People Today

Great sales representatives are the lifeline for most children's apparel manufacturers and finding a talented and connected rep is pretty hard when your just starting in business.

I'd like to share how I found sales people for Corky when we were a new manufacturer in 1994. Back then there wasn't an Internet to do research, instant communication via email or jpegs that could be easily viewed by anybody. Being somewhat ANALytical, however, I set-up a data collection method and followed up with cold calls.

I collected a bunch of trade magazines like Earnshaws and Childrens Business and extracted all the sales reps listed in the manufacturers ads. Half the ads listed the sales persons name and phone number for a given territory while others only gave a phone number. I compiled this data by territory on a single sheet of paper to find out which sales person in a specific territory had the most companies advertising on their behalf. When an ad listed only a phone number, I simply matched the phone number with another ad that listed the phone number and a name.

This quickly yielded the biggest buying markets in the US as New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles. So now what? I called the rep with the most ads in each territory under the premise that the best rep had the most advertisements. If I was negged, I'd call the number two sales rep and so on. In the end we had five new sales reps in our second year in addition to our first rep from Boston. That year we started with a Philly rep instead of a Los Angeles rep, but that's a twist of fate that I'll save for another post.

After we'd been in business a couple of years, I found the best way to find a new rep was to have an existing rep or a good customer make an introduction for me. I never once called a manufacturer reference when provided, instead I called our best customers in a specific territory and asked how they liked working with the sales person under consideration. You'll be amazed at the tactful honesty of your customers!

When Corky started 15 years ago this is how we found our reps. Over the years we outlasted some rep's business tenure, made some changes or were sent packing from a showroom (only once.) However, 15 years old and three of the original seven sales reps are still with us!

In closing let me say thank you to our hard working, creative and loyal sales people and that I'm sorry, the omission of your names from this post wasn't accidental but intentional selfishness. I want to keep the best for myself!