Looking For A Rep?
Since
early 2000, Edward Blake Associates, Inc. elected to downsize its operation
to take advantage of improved efficiencies, cut costs and overhead and concentrate
on specific areas of the electronic marketplace in Northern California. To
that effect, our company is a one-man operation.
From reading our Company History, one can discern
that we have acquired a wide range of experience with various component types
over the past 35 years we have been in existence. Edward Blake Associates
is always on the lookout for those new lines which will enhance its product
offerings and be synergistic with its other product lines and offer
state-of-the-art capabilties to our existing marketplace. If you have not done so, please take the opportunity to review our current Line List of products and services by clicking here.
If you would like to consider us as a candidate for your product line, we
do have a few questions that we would like to pass by you for review and response.
- What do you know
about the Northern California, Northern Nevada marketplace?
- How large of a
rep firm are you looking for?
- Do you have any
reservations about working with a 1-person rep firm?
- Was your product
line previousily represented in Northern California/Northern Nevada?
- What was the name of this organization?
- If yes to the
above, what were the underlining issues that caused you and your previous
rep to part company?
- How much business
do you currently do in Northern California and Northern Nevada at this
time?
- What level of
business do you forecast for this territory in the next year? 2 years?
5 years?
- Does your company
have a well-thought out product catalog and brochure? Would you send us
one?
- Is it available in electronic/media formats?
- Does your company
have a website? What is its URL?
- Does your company
have an e-mail system in place?
- Are all of the
pertinent employees of your company accessable via e-mail?
- Do any of the
product lines that we currently represent cause a conflict with your current
or future products? If yes, which ones in particular?
Unless
circumstances change, or an opportunity comes along that would be difficult
to refuse or ignore, Edward Blake Associates plans to remain a 1-person rep
firm. Some
of the items that we have prided ourselves on over the years are as follows:
- We follow up on
all open quotations aggressively
- We follow up on
all sales leads aggressively.
- We are a customer
service oriented firm who will sacrifice short term rewards for long term
relationships.
- We have an excellent
reputation in our marketing area and have no intention of sacrificing
it on the altar of greed, deceit, or dishonesty.
- We believe in
and practice a high standard of business and personal ethics.
- Dishonesty and
deceit has no place in this company or with the relationships we have
with our customers or the principals we represent.
Let us
share with you some of our assets.
- We maintain a
fully functional website. We update this site on a periodic basis after
business hours so as not to infringe on the time we need to be spending
with our customers.
- In the past, we
have offered those principals who did not yet have an established website
space on our site for which to make their products known to the global
marketplace. We have gone to the extent of maintaining and updating product
information so as to present a current and viable presence on the world
wide web.
- For a company
our size, we have an excellent telecommunications system that permits
our incoming office calls to be forwarded immediately to me when I am
out in the field.
- We have and use
e-mail very extensively. What we have discovered over the past 10 years
is that a majority of the engineers and purchasing people we would prefer
to see in person do not have the time for such "routine" visits
unless there is a compelling reason. In short, if your goal is to achieve
a face-to-face meeting, you need to bring some compelling value to that
meeting. Silicon Valley business practices will not tolerate anything
else.
- In support of
our e-mail and website, we have a high speed DSL line which allows us
to send and receive important documents (DWG, DXF, PDF, XLS, DOC, PPT) rapidly.
- We have an account
with UPS and access to other shipping entities.
- We are not afraid
to be creative when it comes to serving our customers or our principals.
In the past, we have created literature in electronic format to hold us
over until our regular literature arrived.
If the
the above information finds us still worthy of consideration, we would welcome
the opportunity to dialogue further on these and any other issues or topics
that need to be addressed.
