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INNOVATE
10 •
PPB
• OCTOBER 2015
INNOVATE
PROFILE
TRAILBLAZER
HOW THE INDUSTRY’S FIRST FEMALE MULTI-LINE REP SOLD HER WAY TO SUCCESS
BY JULIE RICHIE
RESH OUT OF ENDICOTT COLLEGE after studying broadcast journalism and communica-
tions, Dale Johnson Cornell was hired as a secretary in the admissions office at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. It wasn’t a good fit. “It was the biggest joke because I couldn’t sit in my seat,”
she says. “I was always getting up and going into the hallway to talk to everyone. I just had more fun meeting
people and making friends.” Clearly she was meant to be in sales.
Selling ads for the MIT student newspaper on the side, Johnson Cornell
found her calling. But there was just one problem. In the early 1980s, virtually
no women were working in the sales field in general.
Fortunately, Johnson Cornell loves a challenge. And at just over six feet tall,
she makes a memorable presence, something that “probably didn’t hurt,” she
says. After being hired as the first female sales representative by a Boston radio
station, she successfully sold broadcast air space for four years before answering
an ad in the
Boston Globe
from Sheaffer Eaton, a division of Textron, looking for
a New England area representative for its ad specialty business. “The only rea-
son I answered the ad was that it had the word ‘ad’ in it. I remember thinking to
myself, ‘I know Sheaffer Pens and I know Eaton diaries, but what the heck is
this ad specialty business?’”
Important Mentors
After interviewing and doing a lot of following up, Johnson Cornell became
the first female sales representative hired by Sheaffer Eaton and fell in love with
the promotional products business. “I loved the concept of selling a hard good
as opposed to air,” she says. While at Sheaffer Eaton, she was mentored by her
boss, Koyne Ahlstrand, as well as her fellow reps John Sweeney and Mike
Valentini. “Mike trained me. When he left to start his own multi-line rep firm
F
Dale Johnson Cornell was named Multi-Line Rep Of The Year by the New
England Promotional Products Association in 2010.