MANA Changes, but Remains the Same--11/22

MANA Changes, but Remains the Same

The year was 1947. Harry S. Truman was president, the World Series was televised for the first time (the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven games), and Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. And on October 17, 1947, the Manufacturers’ Agents National Association joined the community of not-for-profit trade associations. Fast forward to July 1949, and MANA members discovered the first 24-page issue of The Agent and Representative magazine (eventually renamed Agency Sales) in their mailboxes. Digging through the first few issues of The Agent and Representative reveals how much MANA has changed and also how much it has remained the same. In those first few issues, we find sentences like, “I know it’s customary for men who call themselves and believe themselves to be ‘practical men’ to pooh-pooh anything savoring of academic classification in salesmanship.” No thought of women as salespeople or as customers in those earliest editions. But in today’s MANA, woman-owned firms are common, and Michelle Jobst currently serves as MANA’s first woman Chairperson of MANA’s Board of Directors. Another glaring change since 1949 is that, although manufacturers were invited to advertise in our magazine, the articles in that 1949 issue focus solely on the needs of manufacturers’ representatives. Today Agency Sales strives to be relevant to manufacturers and manufacturers’ representatives. And, also for the first time, a manufacturer (Charlie Ingram of Eriez Magnetics) served on MANA’s Board of Directors from 2017-2021. What hasn’t changed? The very first issue of The Agent and Representative reminded reps to get written agreements by telling the story of a manufacturers’ representative who failed to get a written agreement and was fired so the manufacturer could cut the customer’s price by the amount of the rep’s commissions. Thank you to our members who made this 75-year journey possible and entrust MANA’s staff and Board of Directors with the responsibility to continue MANA’s proud legacy. I owned and operated a manufacturers’ representative business back in the last decade of the last century. How I communicated with my principals (and vice-versa) differs from the communication options available today. Back then we used landline phones, fax machines and the U.S. Postal Service. Manufacturers’ representatives were asked to fill out “call reports.” Needless to say, more options exist today, such as emails, texts, virtual meetings, social media, and online CRM reports. Life is definitely more complicated. One thing has not changed and that is the need for good, open communication between manufacturers’ representatives and manufacturers.