Small Changes and "Trifling Matters"

“Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding, but they should remember that human felicity is produced by little advantages that occur every day.” — Benjamin Franklin

What did Franklin mean? One example dates back to the days when America was still a British colony. Streets were lit at night by oil lamps, with the flame protected from the wind by blown glass globes. Franklin observed two issues with that practice: Breakage was a problem because blown glass globes had to be imported from England, a time-consuming and costly process. Soot from the flame darkened the globes, reducing the illumination they provided. Franklin designed a replacement for the globes with four panes of flat glass. When street lamps were damaged, flat glass to repair them was readily available. His design also left an open chimney at the top to let soot escape before the glass was darkened.

I can share two more modern examples of small changes from MANA’s journey to advance the professionalism and use of independent manufacturers’ representatives:

• By capturing statistical data from searches in MANA’s RepFinder® database, we now send quarterly emails to rep members to let them know how many times their firm appeared in the results of RepFinder® searches.
• We had so many best practices resources available to reps and manufacturers that finding the resources they needed was challenging for our members. So VP & GM Jerry Leth curated our resources to let members view our most important online resources. For reps, “Steps to Rep Professionalism.” For manufacturers, “Steps to Selling Through Independent Reps.”

Little changes like these can be just as important to MANA members as breakthroughs like MANA’s launch of the first rep search smartphone app.

What kinds of small changes could you make that would make a big difference to your customers or partners? Do you have an example to share? Reach out to me by email at ccohon@manaonline.org with the details.

Recently, I was attending a MANA function with many other manufacturers’ representatives and my peer group from various industries across the U.S. During the conference, we held an open forum Q&A and amongst the group were many single person agencies or simply rep agencies seeking advice or counsel. The discussion included topics like representative-principal contracts, succession planning, acquiring new lines, buy‑sell agreements, marketing techniques and the many other areas we all face running a manufacturers’ representative agency in today’s environment.

As I sat and listened to the discussion and each rep’s carefully thought-out reply, one common theme was apparent: the importance of small changes and attention to detail in achieving success.