Beth Belich made her first sale 15 minutes after joining the promotional products industry.

Before settling down with her husband Jim and raising their kids, the mother of two had worked for a major retailer. Like many stay-at-home parents, as her children grew older, she had an itch to get out of the house. Her son’s baseball coach just so happened to own a distributorship, selling promotional apparel, pens and mugs. He asked her to sell part-time, giving her the flexibility to be with her family while dipping her toe back in the workforce.

Immediately after that conversation at the field, Belich drove her kids to their dentist appointment. Noticing pens and sticky pads on the counter, she offered her services to the staff, asking them when they needed to reorder supplies. Her boss couldn’t believe she was already calling with a sale.

After six years of working for the small business, and with her youngest son turning 16, Belich decided to go full-time. Now the Ohio native manages a territory of $5.5 million in annual revenue for Top 40 supplier alphabroder, achieving 26% growth year over year.

“I don’t think of myself as selling anything,” Belich says. “I’m helping people find the products they need to build their business.”

Beth Belich, the 2019 Supplier Salesperson of the Year.

When Belich joined alphabroder (asi/34063) three years ago, she had to blaze her own trail, covering an expansion of a previous territory. In her first 120 days on the job, she visited every customer from just outside Chicago all the way down to Springfield, IL, as well as South Bend, IN. Distributors certainly took notice. “Beth’s best attributes are her energy, promptness, complete sincerity and her joyful and kind heart,” says Vickie Radde, president at Corporate Graphic Solutions in Elkhart, IN. “Her excitement to assist clients with new product launches and selling opportunities is contagious.”

Humble to the core, Belich professes she’s merely part of a team effort. She credits her first two managers at alphabroder (Scott Buescher and current boss Joél Bastien) for easing her transition from the distributor side to the supplier side. Inside sales account executive Tim Sweeney is in constant dialogue with her. “I’m the face of the company to the customer, but there’s nothing I do without Tim,” Belich says.

By now, Sweeney knows to keep his phone on him at all times because his tag-team partner is always working. “Nights, weekends, it doesn’t matter. If a customer has a need, she’s responding,” Sweeney says.