Pat Donovan - 2003. 30 years, 30 top business influencers.

2003 - Pat Donovan

America's Return Inc. turns 30 in 2017.  In the first 30 weeks I'll recognize each of the 30 most influential people in the history of my business.

When you walk into the D&H headquarters, you pass by the lobby museum exhibits of 1920’s radios, 1950’s TVs, and 1980’s PCs, on your way to Pat’s office, a few feet from where some of the most sophisticated cloud computing solutions of 2017 are being designed and sold. What keeps this 99-year-old company relevant through constant change is a culture focused on people’s needs, not one distracted by the technology they currently sell. Pat Donovan is a key link between D&H’s cultural legacy and its present pursuit of opportunities, and he is one of the finest business executives to be found in the industry.

When I was brought into D&H for sales enablement 14 years ago, by Bob Hartz of HP, and welcomed by then-President Gary Brothers and Sales SVP Jeff Davis, I did not see the usual hallmark of a broadline tech distributor: the well-known vendor lines that sell themselves to the top 500 high volume enterprise resellers. Rather, the business that Pat was driving was built on manufacturers’ products that were not in demand on their own, but which were selected because of their potential to make money for D&H’s customers – those next 10,000 resellers in size, often too small to receive proper attention by the major distributors. Through a high-touch process of outreach, education, and ease of doing business, dedicated inside sales reps had built a loyal following among owners and purchasing agents in a variety of niche reseller business models. 

I have continued to participate in staff development as D&H’s annual sales have gone from under half a billion dollars to nearly four billion dollars. Many years after my initial visit, the company now carries household-name Tier 1 vendor lines and wins awards at a global level for doing so, without having lost its legacy culture of keeping the customer at the center.  I believe it is Pat Donovan that has been one of the key enablers of that growth and success. His Inside Sales division has proven to be the bench from which scores of people have been drawn to staff internal positions as sales leaders, vendor managers, credit analysts, marketing managers, field sales reps, technical pre-sales consultants, and specialty sales reps. With Rubik’s Cube-like orchestration and without complaint he has repeatedly shuffled and rebuilt his organization to satisfy that company-wide people need. And what he delivers are people who have been stamped with a sense of their roots. New reps aren’t just trained on the “how” of the role. As I have developed S.A.L.E.S. training videos on internal best practices, Pat’s voice is in my head as I convey the “why” he has patiently conveyed to so many new reps -- the unseen motivations and drivers of the industry, the complexities and nuances of a basis-points financial model, the emotional ups-and-downs the reps will experience as their rising professional skills greet larger challenges in satisfying customers, in evangelizing for vendors and in collaborating with other “co-owners” (as their peers are referred to in this employee-owned company).

Over the last 14 years, I have learned more from Pat Donovan about the IT distribution business than from any other single person. There are few who have contributed more to the intellectual capital of their enterprise and have done so with as human a touch as has Pat, perpetuating a culture of change echoed from the generations that preceded and shaped him.

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