How to Find a Sales Rep for Your Product (and What One Costs)

What a rep actually does

They carry a portfolio of non-competing brands into a territory.

They already have the buyer relationships you are trying to build. They show your line alongside others in the same call. They take orders you would otherwise have to win yourself.

They are not your employee.

They are a small business selling access, usually to several brands at once. Your line is one of many competing for attention inside their own bag.

What they cost

Commission only. Commonly five to fifteen percent of net sales in consumer goods.

The rate moves with how hard the product is to sell, how big the orders are, and how much support you give.

The thing that catches brands out is not the rate. It is the basis.

Some reps work on a ledger, meaning they earn on every sale in their territory. Including orders a retailer places with you directly.

That can be perfectly fair, since they built the awareness. You just need to know before you sign, not when the invoice lands.

• The rate, and whether it is on net or gross
• The territory, precisely, including online orders shipped into it
• Whether commission is on their orders or all orders in the territory
• When commission is paid: on invoice, or on your receipt of payment
• What happens to the accounts if the relationship ends

Why commission only, and not a salary

There is a genuine reason this whole category is paid on commission rather than a wage.

Basu, Lal, Srinivasan and Staelin worked it out in Marketing Science in 1985. When you cannot observe how hard someone is working, and outcomes depend on both their effort and a lot of luck, commission shifts risk onto the person who controls the effort.

Which is elegant in a journal and awkward in practice. Because it also means the rep, not you, decides which lines get pushed this month.

Your job is to be the line they want to push.

Where to actually find them

In rough order of how well it works. None of these is a database search.

• Ask the stores that already stock you which reps call on them, and whether any are good
• Trade shows in your category, where reps walk the floor looking for lines
• Rep directories and industry association listings
• Non-competing brands your size, who will tell you who works and who does not
• Distributors, who usually know who covers which accounts

What a rep wants before they say yes

Brands underestimate this part badly.

A commission-only rep is deciding whether your line earns them more per call than what is already in the bag.

They are not evaluating your product. They are evaluating your product's velocity.

So: sell-through data from stores that already carry you. A line sheet with a margin a buyer will accept. Enough stock to fill what they win. The ability to ship on time.

A brand with none of that is asking a rep to fund its market research.

The chicken and egg, and how through it

Reps want brands with proven sell-through. Proven sell-through comes from being in stores. Being in stores is what you wanted the rep for.

Yes. That is a real loop and nobody is going to break it for you.

The way through is to win the first block of stockists yourself, and treat that as the qualification round.

Twenty independents with reorder data is a completely different conversation than a good product and a hope.

It is slower and it is unglamorous. It is also the version that works.

When a rep is the wrong answer

If your margin cannot carry ten percent off the top, a rep makes an unprofitable model less profitable. Do that sum before you go looking.

And if the job you need doing is the first hundred approaches, a rep is a poor fit.

Reps are depth, not breadth. Finding and contacting a long list of independents you have never spoken to is volume work.

That is why brands increasingly do the breadth with software and save the rep for the accounts where a human in the room genuinely changes the answer.