232 | Working with Sales Reps with Carina Murray, Crow & Canary

In an industry and business where your time is valuable and your products are essential for creating a successful and sustainable business, sales reps have your best interest in mind and serve a greater purpose than simply selling you a product. They are a partner in your business. A valuable sales rep is someone you can build a trusted relationship with, who shines a light on your best products and who takes care of your wholesale accounts.

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Carina Murray, founder of Crow and Canary, a sales rep group that works with a diverse line up of stationery and gift brands to sell their products and support their customers with top-notch customer service.

Listen in as we discuss how sales reps were affected by Covid, how wholesalers and sales reps can work with Faire and other third party wholesale platforms, plus we’re highlighting unique benefits that sales reps bring to the sales process!

Working with Sales Reps in the Wholesale Industry

Retail store owners wear so many important hats in their business. With so many responsibilities and so little time, they’re often reliant on others to help with the day-to-day tasks, not only in-store, but also with buying wholesale products to stock their shelves. This is where sales representatives can be a huge help for shop owners. A valuable sales rep can help you navigate products and brand catalogs, set up deliveries, and even curate products just for you and your shoppers.

For product manufacturers, sales reps play an even more important role. Sales reps are a partner in the sales process, proactively meeting with store owners, recommending products and writing orders. For smaller product manufacturers, sales reps expand sales reach and relationships with stores across different geographic regions.

While the role of a sales rep is still so vital for many businesses, there have been major impacts on the industry since the pandemic began. Sales reps were faced with navigating their relationships with business owners, moving the sales process online and many saw their store owners close shop during this time.

For Carina and her company, Crow & Canary, they’ve come out of the pandemic really focused on relationship building with their product lines and stores.. While they're not as focused on trends in the product industry, they are focused on unique brands and designers that have an original point of view; things that aren’t already represented in their current offerings. This variety provides true value to their clients on both sides of the wholesale transaction.

How Third-Party Wholesale Platforms Impact the Industry

With the introduction of third-party wholesale platforms, like Faire, in the industry, there have been negative conversations around the Amazon-style service. On the other hand, there are a number of ways they’ve been beneficial and allowed for collaboration with both brands and sales reps. For starters, third-party wholesale platforms allowed many manufacturers and retailers to stay afloat during the pandemic by offering discounts and extended terms.

The Relationship Between Sales Reps & Retailers

Concierge style services, like Crow & Canary, focus on prioritizing the relationships and customer experience in their brands by serving their customers one-on-one in a customized capacity. A few ways they can serve their clients in ways that third-party wholesale platforms can’t include:

Placing orders on your behalf. Retailers are busy, with limited team members and time, therefore, having sales reps come in, take your orders on the spot, and place them for you makes it a seamless experience.

Creating a tailored & customized experience. While retailers have their hands full, especially during seasonal sales, a sales rep can help you with restocking inventory on a shortened timeline and rush shipping and delivery, which makes all the difference in your business and sales during special holidays.
Curating products for your customers. As a sales rep gets to know your business and the shopping trends of your customers, they’re able to create a curated order based on what’s selling well and what’s new in their own inventory. This is built through experience and trust with your sales rep.

These personalized services aren’t available with third-party wholesale platforms, which makes a concierge service with sales reps so valuable to retailers. While some retailers are hesitant to work with sales reps due to the commission they take, consider what would work best for your business.

As you consider this, think about the time you’re spending buying for your store, what you could be doing with that time instead, or even how much you’d be spending on an in-store buyer’s salary. While every business is different, make sure you’re choosing based on your own needs and what works for you!

How Crow & Canary Selects Brands They Represent

If you’re a brand looking to be represented by a sales rep like Crow & Canary, it’s important to know what they’re looking for in a brand before they represent them. A few important factors they’re keeping in mind while looking:

Designers with an original concept. Adding variety to their inventory is important for a sales rep to always have unique products that can fill the holes for their retailers.

Experience as a Wholesaler. It’s important that a brand understand what it looks like to offer wholesale pricing to retailers so they understand their payouts and what the overall process looks like for their own business.
Follows Industry Standards. While wholesalers can set their own rules, there is a set of industry standards that they should plan to follow, including pricing and minimums, abiding by ship dates, and acknowledging sales reps as liaisons between clients.

Are you interested in working with Crow & Canary or connecting with a sales rep, make sure you head over to crowandcanary.com to connect with Carina and her team.

Today’s Episode is Brought to You By Proof to Product LABS, where we’re bringing together new and seasoned product based business owners to strengthen the way they run their businesses.

If you’re already a LABS members, Carina and I recorded an exclusive episode just for you, where we dive deeper into her thoughts on Faire, misconceptions about working with reps, and she shares advice for both starters and scalers who are looking to scale and optimize their sales teams.

Want access to this bonus content, but not a LABS member? Make sure you join our waitlist to be the first to know when the doors open!

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Important Sections in Today’s Episode:

Get to Know Carina (2:30)
Mentoring (5:06)
Challenges in COVID (6:05)
Faire’s Impact on the Wholesale Market (7:20)
What Hasn’t Been Impacted Since the Pandemic (13:41)
Industry Standards (18:00)
Assessing & Choosing Lines for Her Brand (19:30)
Trends in the Marketplace (20:43)
Understanding Your Customers (22:01)
What’s Next for C&C (24:53)

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MEET Carina:

Carina Murray founded Crow & Canary in 2006 and has grown her business into a nationally recognized rep group with a focus on excellent service and curating a diverse line up of innovative stationery and gift lines. In addition to repping in the Pacific NW region and supporting her team, Carina is a frequent speaker and coach on business-related topics pertaining to the stationery industry and takes much pleasure in helping give emerging lines the tools to grow successful and enduring businesses.

CONNECT WITH Carina

Website: crowandcanary.com | Facebook: @crowandcanary | Instagram: @crowandcanary

Connect with Katie Hunt

Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.

Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct