A Slow Day in Cody

Do you remember how much February 2021 sucked? I do. Specifically standing outside Sunlight Sports in Cody, Wyoming on the last Monday of the month. COVID is having one last hurrah and we’re beginning to wonder of the world will ever get back to normal. I’m just four months into being a rep, on a mission to visit every account across Wyoming in a single week. Most of them were giving me a pretty hard time.

About Wes

This is the slow season in Cody. The owner, Wes, took me upstairs and introduced the crew. I inherited that account from my predecessor, and going in all I knew was he’s been around the industry forever. “A real knows-everyone kind of guy” As it turns out, that includes his customers. That afternoon Wes showed me analytics I haven't seen from any of the 100-plus accounts I've onboarded since. We talked about frequency, gross margin, A/B tests, ROI, the threat DTC posed to the brands he carried wholesale. He’s tracking all of it. He has a model and it’s working.

Wes became a constant source of encouragement that first year, and today I’d call him a friend. So when I joined Brio in June, Sunlight was the first retailer to see it. I got Wes on a call with Charlie because he's one one of the most critical and honest people I know. The Outdoor Industry is too nice. Building startups, you need the guy who says what he thinks.

His Article

Last week Wes published a piece about sales reps failing their accounts, and brands failing their reps. It caught my attention the way I'm sure it caught every rep's attention. I went straight to my inbox to double check our last exchange. Just to make sure we were solid.

Why Outdoor Sales Reps Are Failing Their Brands
Wes Allen, Sunlight Sports

The headline stings a little, but the article is fair and thoughtful. It names something that's constant in this industry: brands don't invest in their reps, so reps don't invest back in their own business, and everybody downstream makes less money.

Thinking about it against Brio: reps are stretched thin across big territories and multiple brands. A tool like this speeds them up, deepens the relationships that actually drive the business, and increases how often reorders happen in the first place.

The End of a Long Day

I know exactly what that looks like from the road. Eight to ten shop visits, a lunch meeting, maybe a bike ride forced in. The last thing I want after a day like that is to open my laptop, enter orders, and plan tomorrow. I usually end up doing it late at a rest stop, wifi hotspot in hand, followed by the comedown at home: unpacking the truck, restocking samples, clearing a backlog of emails and orders from other parts of the territory I couldn’t get to.

What I want is more ground covered, more time with dealers, more days on the bike or the hill or the water with them, building something a relationship. That's how I grow accounts and that's how I get paid. Brands only benefit when reps show up.

Relationships are the one thing reps do best, and they're the foundation of this industry.

No orders, no growth, no new doors without them, and AI won’t replace that for a long time. What Brio replaces is everything standing in the way of building it.

To the rep that says "I already have the best relationships. I've been doing it for 30 years." Wouldn't you just want more time to do what you do best and less time on your laptop? Let me show you brio. Hmu davis@getbrio.io

Davis