Regardless of industry, all manufacturer reps have similar challenges – well at least HVAC, plumbing and audiovisual (AV) reps do. How do we know this? Because we’re AV manufacturer reps and we attended AIM/R two weeks ago.
John Hood, our founder and CEO, started The Farm AV 17 years ago in Northern California and has not only expanded his lines, but he’s expanded The Farm’s geographical territory from the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies, all the way down to San Diego. This is a pretty big deal for a manufacturer’s rep firm. How’d we do it? There are lots of reasons – our people, our passion, our process. Setting aside our most valuable asset – our people and their passions, let’s focus on process.
John was frustrated with CRMs. All he wanted was a tool to track opportunities, historical and future pipeline and bust out a quote – and do it on the fly – easily and quickly. CRM after CRM just kept failing. Companies went out of business and subsequently, took The Farm’s data with them. Companies were too complicated, too expensive and just didn’t work for multi-line manufacturer rep firms. So, John built his own. Well, he didn’t build it per se (we have developers for that), but he designed it. And he designed it for The Farm. And this is where RepDonkey was born.
After years of perfecting the software, we’re currently on version 4.0 of RepDonkey – eliminating all the weird little nuances and adding features suggested by folks like you. This isn’t a sales pitch – more of a pain point article on how we might be able to help you – like how RepDonkey helped The Farm.
Do these gripes sound familiar?
But we have a CRM already.
We’re not a CRM – we’re an overlay that sits on top of your CRM. Major CRM platforms like Salesforce and Zoho – we work with all of them.
Our salespeople hate using CRMs.
That’s okay because we’re not a CRM. We’re just a tool that works with your CRM. It’s so frickin’ easy – you can bust out a quote in fewer than five clicks. You don’t even have to use a keyboard – literally just a few clicks of the mouse.
We’re sick of manufacturers questioning our value.
We made it easy to track mentions of manufacturer brands in real time and we publish them to a secure portal. We do this to reinforce the value of independent sales representation. Everyone has a seat at the table.
We need real-time data.
Not only can you access real-time data by just logging in, your manufacturers and customers have their own login portals to view historical and future pipeline as well. As a matter of fact, customers can even create their own quotes.
We’re sick of paying a small fortune for these software platforms that all do the same thing.
A RepDonkey subscription is $35 per user per month.
We need real-time data.
Not only can you access real-time data by just logging in, but your manufacturers and customers also have their own login portals to view historical and future pipelines as well. As a matter of fact, customers can even create their own quotes.
We need to be able to create a quote on the fly from our phones.
RepDonkey easily allows quote creation from a tablet, mobile phone, etc. Create a quote on the golf course, at a customer dinner – in the bathtub, it all works.
What if we decide to leave RepDonkey?
We’d be sad, but that’s okay. And because all of your data lives in your CRM, you lose nothing. Other than our friendship (just kidding, we can still be friends).
RepDonkey has helped The Farm. We wouldn’t be growing like we are without it, which is the reason we want to share it with the world. Or at least the manufacturer reps of the world. If we can be successful, anyone can be successful.