USE A STRUCTURED APPROACH

If you want to find the right agent you have to use a structured approach. You can’t gamble. You don’t appoint an agent you pick up at an exhibition without checking their references any more than you would pick up hitch hikers along the road and appoint them as your sales reps at home base. The gamble may pay off once, but let’s face it, the odds are against you. How many agents do you want? The US market, for example, is said to have 10 times the buying power of the UK. That means that it’s worth 10 countries the size of Britain. Wouldn’t it make then to divide it into sectors and to give each the comparative attention that it deserves, since each sector has the buying power of an entire country? Yet many companies see the US as a single market and give it comparatively little attention. Several American companies we know have the same problem with Europe. It seems far away and it’s easy to think of it as one place. If you appoint an agent for all of Europe, you’ll find that the language and cultural differences make it difficult to sell across borders.