Incoming ERA CEO, Ed Smith, shares his vision for ensuring the association continues to serve reps, distributors and manufacturers alike.

Congratulations on your appointment as ERA’s CEO. What excites you most about taking over the reins?

Let me start by saying that Walter Tobin has done a great job and left ERA in great shape. The ERA national conference in February is one of the premier events in the electronics industry but we have many other things that we do for the manufacturers’ rep community.

We have our COLT program which helps leaders in the industry run ERA’s local chapters. We have the STEP program, a virtual sales training program that trains salespeople and gives them a new perspective on their jobs. We have other programs that are too numerous for me to name here but what we’re going to do is try to find out what makes ERA valuable to our members and what is less valuable so, in other words, what should we be doing more of and what should we be doing less of?

The one thing that doesn’t get enough credit or views is our SearchLink.ai tool, our AI search engine on ERA.org, as well as the HoverMap which allows members to search for reps by territory and view territory DTAM data. I believe we can continue to make our website even better with more AI functionality. As I am still new, I will continue to expand what we do and how we do it. I look forward to ERA’s future: it’s bright.

What challenges, goals and plans do you have to assist supporting members at ERA?

The biggest challenge I see in the industry is us having to do more with less. This goes across the industry, including our suppliers, distributors and our ERA reps. We are creating a survey so that we may put together goals and plans for the near future and Walter has done a great job of getting us going in the right direction. The question is, how do we accelerate our success? I look forward to speaking in the near future about specifics on the plan.

ERA has a healthy mix of supporting members who are representatives, distributors and principal component manufacturers. How do you envision this membership evolving?

I think one of the special things about ERA that Walter has brought to the community is making the distributors, the components manufacturers and the reps all belong to one organization. They all have a symbiotic relationship to each other as one day they are partners, and the next day they may be competitors.

If we can add value to all three of those membership classes, I can see how ERA can continue to grow at the rate that Walter has grown it. It clearly is a balancing act to show value to all three constituencies, but ultimately ERA was set up and continues to add the most value for manufacturers’ rep firms. I think we’re on a good trajectory and I want to continue to make sure that all three constituents feel like they’re supported by ERA.

www.era.org

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