The Question Every Manufacturer Is Asking About Your Rep Firm
"How deep is your bench?" If you run a rep firm, you've heard a manufacturer ask some version of it. This is the gap behind the question — and why it's getting harder to answer.
Where the Rep Channel's Missing Generation Went
The HVAC manufacturers' rep channel is missing a generation, and the gap is not any owner's mismanagement. What the gap is, and the question manufacturers are asking about it, is in The Question Every Manufacturer Is Asking About Your Rep Firm. Of the Valley's two causes, the first is external, and it is visible in the government's own data.
What It Costs a Rep Firm When the Bench Is Thin
The Leadership Valley is the missing generation in the HVAC manufacturers' rep channel: the professionals aged 35 to 50 who should be the industry's next branch managers, sales VPs, and owners. On one side stands the generation that built these firms, now 50 to 70, holding the client relationships; on the other, a young cohort in their 20s and early 30s, entering in healthy numbers. Between them, in the years where leadership is normally forged, the ranks are thin. The Question Every Manufacturer Is Asking About Your Rep Firm takes up the definition in full, along with what manufacturers are watching for.