Reps are paid on commission when an order actually ships, not a salary, and they typically don't take title to the product or carry inventory — that's the core difference from a distributor. A single rep or rep agency usually carries a "line card" of ten, twenty, or more manufacturers across related but non-competing product categories, which lets a small manufacturer get local, technical, relationship-driven sales coverage in a territory without hiring a direct sales force everywhere it sells. The model is especially common for the kind of specified, technical equipment that shows up by name in construction specs — pumps, valves, controls, and similar mechanical and electrical product categories. A rep's job, in practice, is knowing which live projects specify one of the lines on their card and reaching the right contractor before that project bids. That's a continuous matching problem across many manufacturers, many projects, and a defined territory — exactly the kind of problem Nonlinear is built to help with, by reading specifications across live bid documents and matching what's named against a rep's actual line card.
Knowledge Base
What is a manufacturer's representative?
A manufacturer's representative (or "rep") is an independent, commission-based salesperson who sells the products of several non-competing manufacturers within an assigned territory, rather than working as an employee of any one of them.
