In today’s economy with the rising costs of employee benefits and increasing pressure from international competition, U.S. manufacturers are looking for every advantage they can get. This is one of many reasons that the use of independent manufacturers’ reps, also known as sales reps, is becoming a more popular option for them.

First, manufacturers are able to save a tremendous amount of cash by alleviating the expense of health & retirement benefits that comes with hiring employees. For example, the median annual salary for a full-time sales representative employee in New York State is $60,000. In comparison, the average cost of an employee’s health and retirement benefits in New York State is an additional $15,000, roughly 25% of the employee’s actual salary. Even if your company has only one sales rep for each state within the U.S., it does not take long for these expenses to add up. When retaining the services of independent sales reps, manufacturers don’t pay for their health and retirement benefits.

Second, independent reps work on commission. And they are only paid a commission when they complete a sale. This eliminates the expenses incurred by employed sales personnel who may be underachieving as they’ve grown comfortable with their salary, but lost their motivation. Simply put, if independent sales representatives want to support themselves, they need to make sales – many sales. That is the best type of motivation sales reps have to perform or even, over achieve.

Third, recruiting independent reps costs you, the manufacturer, a fraction of what it costs to recruit and train your full-time employees. Many companies spend thousands of dollars advertising in local newspapers, on radio and expensive web sites such as Monster.com. Maybe you’re one of them. If you are, you probably discovered that these employment ads — buried among thousands of other job postings — are only seen in one specified city. Then, you are left with the time-consuming task of weeding through endless applicants that, many times, do not even meet your job requirements.

In contrast, there’s a Web site called http://www.manufacturers-representatives.com . It provides its manufacturer clients with one nationwide resource (that includes over 200 clearly defined industry categories) where they can list their sales opportunities. The Web site also goes a step further by pre-qualifying applicants for you. You select the minimum requirements for your sales opportunity. If an interested sales rep does not meet your minimum requirements, they are not able to submit their online profile (or resumé) to you.