Shannon’s Brewery in Keller, Texas is expanding distribution to a number of cities along the I-35 corridor south from Dallas to the Gulf Coast. Shannon’s typically distributes through large distributors such as Ben E. Keith located in Denton, Texas. However, Shannon Carter, CEO of Shannon’s Brewery, wants to employ a series of missionary sales persons to service restaurants, bars, supermarkets, and liquor stores. Their job will be to promote Shannon’s craft beers to these retailers and encourage them to place orders with Shannon’s normal distributor in that area. Based on research, Shannon Carter has identified an initial 733retailers that are potential adopters of his beers. He estimates that it will take ten visits per year to acquire and then service each account. Each sales call is expected to take 26 minutes. Assume a 40-hour work week for sales reps and that 50% of each rep's time will be consumed by non-selling tasks and travel time. How many missionary sales reps will Shannon need to hire? (Note: you must convert the time allotted for each sales call from minutes to hours.)
Round your answer up to the nearest 1/10 of a rep (in reality, as noted above, you would round to the next whole rep).