Rep's Ahoy

Today I had a visitor at work. Bob, the Midwest Market Development Representative (MDR) for the Rockport shoe company, stopped in to say hello. On a Sunday. Before Easter. Turns out the kid just graduated from UW Lacrosse, has been on the job for 3 months, and is living in Chicago. Somewhere near Lincoln park.

Reps are a strange breed and I was surprised to see such a young pup toting around the requisite fancy briefcase filled with useless stuff. What Bob is realizing, as he makes his initial rounds across this great middle west of ours, is that he has the most useless job in the world.

Seriously.

Modern merchandising 101 here:
These days, sales managers in retail store are exactly and only people who manage sales. We are not people who buy merchandise to sell. We are not even people who decide how to present the merchandise that someone else decided to sell. We are essential just the worker bees that move someone else's product and someone else's presentation out the door. Oh, and we deal with angry customers and employees as well (but I digress).

Now imagine you are a rep coming into a store to talk to a sales manager. What kind of information might you want to obtain? What is selling well? What is the inventory position of the store? How is the store presenting my product? As it turns out, the sales managers are only particularly useful for determining what's selling. and useless for the other two.

Sure, said rep can see what the display looks like, but if you've been (all)inside one JCPenney(or Target, or Nordstrom, or Macy's, etc, etc, etc...zzz) you've been (all)inside every JCPenney. Mr./Ms. Rep may also determine the inventory level, but again without communication with the people who actually buy your merchandise this information is not particularly helpful.

So here's a brief overview of my conversation with Bob, the Rockport Rep:

Me: Hi.

Bob: Hi. Blah blah blah this merchandise would look great if it were all on the same table, right up here on the aisle.

Me: Well Bob, I would love to put your stuff right up on the aisle, but I have to follow my company's planograms and they are pretty picky about exceptions.

Bob: Yeah. Boy it'd be nice if you had some different graphics.

Me: Wouldn't it? Unfortunately, I can only use graphics approved by the home office.

Bob: Yeah. How's your inventory?

You get the point. Sadly the new guy didn't so I decided to have some fun with him and make him walk through the stockroom with my resident complaining employee Don. Don loves reps because its a great chance for him to vent about all the merchandise he could supposedly sell if only our stupid company would send it to him. When I left the two of them, Don was explaining his wife's foot problems and how she really feels comfortable in Rockports.

Now, forget everything I told you about this dynamic because Bob is a fake rep. His job is basically to help the real reps come up with leverage to use against the big, bad buyers. You know, the people who actually make the decisions? Not just the pawns.