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How You Can Acquire Exclusive Rights To Products; Part 2 of 2

The steps to gaining exclusive rights

You will need to give valid reasons to the manufacturer as to "why" you should have exclusive rights to his product for your specific niche markets. Don't be in fear of this requirement, believing you must be a fortune 500 company or at least doing millions of dollars per year in sales to be deserving of it. Nothing could be further from the truth. You may be a new Internet marketer with no real sales track record, but you have valid reasons why you believe you can do a good job for him.

In this case suggest a performance agreement. After 6 months your agreement specifies you are to have sold a specific number of units and after one year another number, and so on. If you meet these sales quotas, you keep your exclusivity. This way both you and the manufacturer are not locked into a long-term unproductive relationship. But if you perform, you are protected for your work performed, retaining you exclusive marketing rights.

Look professional. Have high quality business cards and stationary. You can print professional looking business cards that are undetectable as home printed by using the new Avery #8879 glossy Inkjet business card paper and a color Inkjet printer. Use their paper template #8371. These cards have the new patent pending Clean Edge process and appear to be professionally printed. A simple but professional business card with stationary can give you that professional big company image.

Have a professional looking website. Review some other quality business websites and follow their example of a clean and effective design. Amateurs make amateurish designs. Emulate an established successful companies design. The manufacture will expect you to look like a real company, not an amateur.

Present your proposal on your company letterhead, and mail it to them. Don't try to do everything by email or just a phone call or two. Real business requires real paperwork, and contracts are part of that process. Get it in writing and have a true paper trail, always keeping the original envelopes (stapled to the correspondence) for future date validation if needed.

Be sure you've done your research before asking for exclusive rights for a product. Do your homework, verifying there is a market for your product niche, showing its true potential. Then back up your finding with statistics and other forms of validation you've found like news articles, press releases and etc. You should consider the following in creating your exclusive rights agreement:

· Markets wanted

· Geographical territory wanted, national, international etc.

· Minimum sales performance required for retaining exclusivity rights

· Contract time length

· Sales performance requirements

· Type of relationship you desire, as Exclusive Agent, Exclusive Distributor, or Licensing Agreement

Here's a simple overview of the features of each category

· Exclusive Agent - Manufacturer maintains inventory and handles product shipping and customer billing. Then pays you a commission.

· Exclusive Distributor - Purchase and resell physical inventory.

· Licensing Agreement - You have manufacturing rights, produce and sell the product yourself, paying a licensing fee to the original inventor, patent owner or other entity owning rights to the product. This is common practice in international trade where it isn't practical to import the product for whatever reason. Licensing rights are generally obtained by paying a fixed fee, a royalty, or a combination of royalty and fixed fee. It's whatever you can negotiate.

The manufacturer or person offering the product exclusivity wants to be in a comfort zone, believing that you can perform according to his expectations. Your understanding of those expectations will help you make your presentation for exclusivity targeted to his desires, answering his questions about your qualifications and ability to perform. Once you understand how he is likely to think, it's not so difficult addressing his needs by answering questions he will have through a well-written proposal. Put yourself in his position, and think what you would want to know about him if the tables were reversed and he was requesting exclusivity for some product from you.

This simple overview should provide you with a basic idea of how you can acquire exclusive rights to products and services.

Bob Dean Stanford, aka Maverick, age 58, is host of the upcoming television show "The Maverick Entrepreneur," scheduled to air in September 2005, targeting aspiring entrepreneurs and home business individuals. His new Internet radio show of the same name is scheduled to air in July 2005. He specializes in creative and backdoor (creative) marketing techniques with emphasis in business consulting, marketing, new product development, and newsletter publishing.

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