PPB April 2018

D eborah Mann has spent the past 26 years in the promotional products industry, including 12 years on the supplier side, almost two years on the distributor side and another two years working for a multi-line rep group. In 2007, she formed the Chicago-based multi-line rep firm DMannding Results, Inc., and today she covers territory including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. A career in the promotional products industry was a surprising turn of events for Mann, who was seeking a marketing/public relations job after graduating from the University of Iowa. “My momwas a friend of George Goldstein, who owned supplier A La Carte,” she says. “He was looking for someone to do marketing for him—catalogs, flyers and the like. I knew very little about desktop publishing (which was a growing field at the time), but I knewmore than he did, and it was enough to land me the job!” An unexpected opportunity got her involved, but it’s the people and variety that have kept her interested and engaged. “I genuinely like our industry and the people who are in it,” she says. “On any given day, I can be in a home office chatting with my client, in a fancy showroommeeting with a large sales team or at a Starbucks running down project ideas with a distributor and his end user. That kind of variety is hard to come by in most jobs, and it makes long days go very quickly.” Her client and nominator, Aubrey Cocklin, director of sales-major accounts at distributor Consolidus, says, “I have very demanding customers (who doesn’t?) and I recently sent Deborah a long list of wishes from a customer. Within 10 minutes, I had an email back full of suggestions for every wish she had—and I could quickly close the sale. I don’t have the time to get to know each of the lines as I would like, but I know I can count on Deborah to be an extension of myself. She truly personifies what I love so much about this industry. She is a fabulous person, rep and friend.” Deborah Mann DMannder in Chief, DMannding Results, Inc. What’s your biggest challenge? Aside from the weather in the Midwest in the dead of winter, it’s the us vs. them mentality. There is so much antagonism built into the supplier‑ distributor dynamic, and it doesn’t serve anyone. Each thinks the other is making a fortune at their expense. My job puts me in the middle, so I strive to see both sides and pull everyone together. Suppliers need to better understand what distributors really need (it isn’t always something “new” and “cheap”) and distributors need to learn more about what goes into making the goods they sell (the “how hard can it be to do …?” mindset that diminishes what we do every day). One of the beautiful things about our industry is that people can build their businesses to suit them and be successful. No distributor company operates exactly the same as another. It’s the same thing with suppliers. Yet, there is an expectation and an overgeneralization that “all suppliers should” and “all distributors should.” I embrace the “each” rather than the “all” because my goal is to make sure that everyone involved gets everything they need in every interaction. It’s definitely a challenge, but it isn’t impossible. What is the most important issue faced by multi-line reps today? Everyone wants instant results (including us reps!), and things just don’t happen that way. The lines that work successfully with multi‑line reps know this and prepare for it. I can’t grow business overnight. I can’t bring a client to a new line overnight. I can’t overcome past difficulties overnight. We spend so much time talking about the critical need for relationships in this industry but when it comes down to spending the time to truly build those relationships, many simply aren’t in it for the long haul. It makes it challenging to find the right supplier partners. We are the face in the field but not a face in the office, and not every supplier company is comfortable working that way. I am extremely lucky that the lines I represent are strong believers in multi‑line reps. I have lines that I have worked with for many years, and I trust them as much as they trust me. What does the future hold for reps and how can they remain relevant? I have found that supplier lines turn to multi‑line reps for a variety of reasons, and I don’t see those reasons changing. But how we do our jobs—that part has changed—and I think that’s what keeps us relevant. Multi‑line reps are business owners and entrepreneurs too, and we are nimble enough to embrace new ways of achieving the goals before us. What do you wish more distributors knew about working with reps? I can do so much more for them than waive a set‑up charge or move things up the ladder if there happens to be a problem. If they let me know how they like to work, I can work with them better. Do they prefer email or phone calls? Are they concept‑driven or project‑driven? Do they want to hear from me proactively or wait for them to reach out? The distributor partners who say I help them most are the ones who bring me into the equation early. Best Multi‑Line Reps 2018 | FEATURE | APRIL 2018 | 35