Asia and Europe Hire America’s Sales Talent. U.S. Manufacturers Should Too.

The sales layer is part of the productive capacity of industry. A factory can be capable of making something useful without being capable of finding the right applications, qualifying the product, reaching buyers, supporting commitments and learning from the equipment in service. The commercial organization connects those activities. When it works well, it turns productive potential into a business that can keep operating and investing.

This is the larger argument behind my concern that industrial salespeople are underappreciated. The job title can hide the work. Someone described as an account manager may be carrying a relationship across engineering, pricing, production, quality and finance. Another person with a sales title may handle a repeat transaction with a settled specification. Both can do valuable work. They need different skills, authority, support and measures of success.

This analysis focuses on U.S. industrial components, equipment and the channels serving them, with hydraulics as a recurring example. It examines functions as well as employers. A distributor, a manufacturer's sales office, an independent representative and an equipment dealer can perform some of the same work while carrying very different obligations.

I call this the American commercial layer. I want to understand how the people doing this work can build stronger businesses, connect manufacturers with customers, and challenge unnecessary obstacles to productive work. That includes investigating where regulation or weak leadership creates avoidable burdens, with specific evidence about the rule, decision and consequence. The ambition is to turn industry knowledge and relationships into useful action, alongside the detailed analysis that follows.

Understand the function before judging the title

There are two separate maps to draw. One shows the organizations: manufacturers, representatives, distributors, integrators, dealers and customers. The other shows the work: finding demand, defining an application, establishing a technically acceptable offer, negotiating terms, making goods available, financing a transaction and supporting the installed product.

These maps overlap. A distributor may employ application engineers. A manufacturer may operate a separately located sales branch. An independent representative may develop an OEM account while the manufacturer invoices and ships directly. Census classifications distinguish merchant wholesalers that take title from agents arranging transactions, and place some manufacturer-owned sales branches within wholesale trade. A wholesale industry label alone therefore does not identify an independent intermediary. [1]

Nor does one occupation describe the whole layer. BLS distinguishes sales engineers from wholesale and manufacturing representatives, including technical and nontechnical product categories. Support, adaptation and coordination appear in the occupational descriptions alongside selling. The boundaries also reach beyond industrial equipment, so those counts cannot simply be presented as the number of industrial salespeople. [2] [3]

The practical unit of analysis is a responsibility: what must this person or organization make happen, what can it decide, and what risk does it carry? The roles and routes chapter follows those responsibilities from the first application discussion through production and aftermarket support.

The layer has to connect five different realities

The customer has a job to perform. Engineering has technical requirements and limits. Manufacturing has processes, capacity and lead times. Finance has cash and risk constraints. The installed equipment has a service life that extends beyond the initial order. Commercial work becomes difficult where those realities conflict.

Consider a hypothetical equipment builder evaluating a different hydraulic component. A catalogue match does not settle the application. The buyer may need an approved drawing, tests, production consistency, a credible delivery plan and a service route. Someone must discover those requirements and arrange decisions by the people authorized to make them. A salesperson cannot substitute personal confidence for engineering approval, but can be essential to getting the right engineering question answered.

The 2021 Danfoss–Eaton competitive-impact record is relevant here. DOJ's analysis connected competition in particular hydraulic products to practical supply and support conditions, including local availability and service. It is a historical case record, not a current census of the entire sales layer. Its useful lesson is that a theoretical alternative and a commercially usable alternative can be different things. [4]

Relationships have economic value when they make that work more reliable. Knowing who can resolve a drawing question, why an earlier proposal failed or how a customer's production release process operates can prevent repeated mistakes. Familiarity alone is insufficient. Trust has to remain connected to competent performance and an organization able to support its promises.

Sales creates value by reducing the cost of doing business

A useful commercial organization reduces the total effort required to obtain a reliable result. It can lower search costs, interpret an unclear requirement, combine purchases, maintain stock, extend credit, arrange service and bring evidence of recurring problems back into product decisions. These are distinct contributions. A business should be able to explain which ones it supplies.

This changes the question about intermediaries. Removing a distributor's invoice does not automatically remove inventory, order handling, application support or credit exposure. Those functions may move to the manufacturer or customer. Direct supply is attractive when that reassignment reduces total cost and preserves performance. Distribution is attractive when specialization, stock, local coverage or combined demand makes it more effective.

There is also a genuine case against unproductive layers. Repeated transcription, approvals without a decision, quotations that arrive after the customer has chosen a source, and intermediaries unable to explain their role all create friction. An additional commercial margin needs a defensible contribution. Existing relationships should not become an excuse to prevent customers from receiving accurate information or considering a qualified alternative.

My standard is straightforward: identify the work that would have to be recreated if this layer disappeared. Compare the cost of doing it elsewhere, including failures and delays, with the cost and performance of the current arrangement. That is a better test than either assuming every intermediary is waste or treating every established channel as indispensable.

A sales margin is not a salesperson's pay

Merchant distribution contains a product business, an operating organization and a financing requirement. Gross profit is the difference between reported sales and cost of goods sold. It still has to support the expenses classified below that line. An agent's commission, a distributor's gross margin and a manufacturer's selling expense are different quantities.

Applied Industrial Technologies illustrates the distinction. For its fiscal year ended June 30, 2026, it reported a 30.3% gross margin, an 11.1% operating margin and an 8.3% net margin. Those are company results across its business, not compensation rates or a benchmark for every distributor. [5]

The economics chapter separates product cost, operating expense, working capital and return. It also shows why revenue cannot be added across every stage of the chain to estimate the value of the sales layer: the same physical product can appear in several companies' sales.

This distinction matters to employees as well as owners. A high-revenue account may require unusually expensive support. A smaller account may consume little incremental effort and pay reliably. A development project may be economically promising before it produces an invoice. A system that recognizes only the current shipment total has a narrow view of all three.

Look for the points that confer bargaining power

Creating value and capturing income are different questions. A sales organization may earn bargaining power through an authorized product line, stock close to the customer, a qualified position in a machine design, technical knowledge, purchasing scale or an ability to provide service that would be costly to recreate. A customer may have power through its volume, alternatives and control of the specification. The strength of either side depends on the particular application.

These advantages can reflect useful investment. They can also become obstacles to competition if an organization relies on opaque information or unnecessary switching work. The relevant questions are whether a buyer has credible alternatives and whether the channel's charge corresponds to work, capital and risk that remain necessary. Margin alone cannot settle that question.

For the individual salesperson, influence also depends on access to decisions and knowledge. A long contact list is less useful than knowing which requirement matters, who can approve it and how the supplier will meet it. A business that makes one person indispensable by leaving all of that knowledge undocumented has created a succession problem alongside an asset. Developing colleagues and recording decision context can preserve the capability without treating trust as a database field.

The undervaluation problem is often organizational

There are several different claims hidden inside the phrase “salespeople are undervalued.” They may be paid too little for comparable work; they may have too little authority for their responsibilities; or the business may fail to invest in the technical knowledge, support and time required to do the work well. Evidence for one does not automatically establish another.

My strongest argument concerns responsibility and authority. If a person is expected to maintain the customer relationship but cannot obtain a pricing decision, a technical answer or an honest delivery commitment, the organization has handed them an obligation without a workable means of meeting it. It then risks judging the person for the consequences of its own unresolved process.

Another problem is the treatment of preventive work. Resolving a specification ambiguity before release can leave no dramatic event to count. An account retained through a difficult transition may look unchanged on a sales report. A credible forecast can help other functions make better choices without appearing as a separate sale. These are reasons to design better measures, not permission to assign imaginary revenue to every conversation.

Recognition also has to be reciprocal. Engineering, customer service, production, logistics and finance contribute to commercial outcomes. A salesperson who coordinates their work does not thereby own all of its value. Strong commercial leadership makes those dependencies visible and helps the team reach decisions without claiming expertise it does not possess.

Compensation should follow the job's economics

New-market development and an established production account have different time horizons. A repeat-order role and a complex application role have different information needs. A single commission formula can push people toward the work that pays quickly while leaving qualification, account development or problem resolution neglected.

This is a familiar problem in incentive design. Holmström and Milgrom's multitask framework explains how rewarding measurable output can redirect attention away from less measurable responsibilities. Applying that idea here suggests looking at the whole job before deciding which outcome to reward. It does not establish one universally correct industrial compensation plan. [6]

I would use a small set of measures suited to the role: profitable work actually delivered, qualified progress toward future business, retention with acceptable economics, and reliable execution of the commitments the person controls. Rules for shared accounts, inherited business, transfers and long development cycles should be clear before credit is disputed.

The management chapter develops this into decision rights, a role-based scorecard and a practical improvement sequence. Its recommendations are proposals for running the work; they are not survey findings about how every industrial employer behaves.

Ownership matters because it allocates decisions

Your customer can keep the same local contact while the business behind that contact changes ownership. The relevant questions then concern control: who authorizes inventory, hiring, engineering effort, commercial terms, product investment and the use of customer information? Those decisions can affect what the local relationship is capable of delivering.

Bosch Rexroth's announced rationale for acquiring HydraForce included extending its sales network and improving North American market access. That is public evidence that reaching customers was part of the acquisition's strategic value. It does not, by itself, establish whether every later operating decision helped or harmed customers. [7]

The United States is served by domestic and foreign parent companies, independent businesses and mixed channel arrangements. The ownership chapter maps selected examples and distinguishes legal domicile, headquarters, parent control and local operations. It does not turn a list of acquired brands into a population estimate of American salespeople.

The concern is substantial without that unsupported estimate. American market knowledge can help a business win customers, decide what to develop and direct investment. I want domestic entrepreneurs and manufacturers to recognize that capability and give experienced commercial people a serious role in building businesses. Foreign investment can strengthen local operations too; the test is what happens to capability and decision-making, not the nationality of a familiar logo.

Imported products reveal the value and limits of the local channel

An imported product can support American engineering, distribution, integration and service while leaving its production elsewhere. That makes two questions essential: what does the commercial organization contribute here, and what does the customer become capable of doing with the product? An imported component or complete machine can support a domestic producer while also competing with another one.

The local sales relationship should therefore be examined alongside product origin, corporate ownership, importer responsibility and operating authority. A representative selling a foreign manufacturer's products may remain an independent business. A foreign-owned supplier may manufacture in the United States. Neither the logo nor the seller's address resolves the whole supply chain.

The imported-products chapter follows those distinctions through real company disclosures and hypothetical industrial applications. Its practical test asks what people here earn, learn, own, can decide and can replace. Local commercial work has value; strengthening it should also improve technical capability, continuity and the customer's choices.

Digital tools change the work they can actually resolve

Online ordering is well suited to a defined item, accepted terms and a repeatable fulfillment process. It can remove unnecessary touches. The remaining work may concern an unknown requirement, an unavailable product, an application that needs approval or a commitment the current system cannot support. Automating the order form does not resolve those uncertainties.

AI may help retrieve approved records, summarize account history, identify missing information and prepare routine work for review. Evidence from a published customer-support study shows that assistance can improve performance, with different effects across workers. That finding supports experimentation; it is not a measured productivity gain for industrial sales. [8]

The most valuable system would preserve the reason behind the decision: which revision was approved, what was excluded, what a customer accepted and who can authorize a change. That creates an organizational memory people can use. A large collection of contact names and activity counts is a much narrower asset.

What stronger American commercial capability would require

Industrial development needs people who can identify credible demand and help a supplier meet it. That creates an opportunity for independent representatives, specialized distributors, technical sales organizations and manufacturers that give commercial leaders enough authority and support to develop a market. It also creates an obligation to distinguish real business development from more promotional activity.

The immediate priorities are practical: define the customer and application, build evidence of technical and operational readiness, identify who decides each commitment, and reward the work needed to make the relationship durable. Preserve the account's knowledge so that a promotion, retirement or ownership change does not erase the organization's memory.

There are real costs in this approach. Training uses experienced people's time. Stock requires capital. Documentation needs maintenance. Developing a supplier can fail. A case for strengthening the sales layer must face those costs and show how the resulting capability earns its place.

My conclusion is that industrial sales deserves a more serious analysis than either praise for persuasive personalities or complaints about middlemen. Its economic purpose is to make industrial exchange work: the right application, an acceptable product, a viable commitment and support that continues after the order. People who can lead that work are an industrial resource. We should understand their different contributions, equip them to perform, and develop more businesses capable of using their judgment.