Meet the Broker: Bernice Willis

Today we meet Bernice Willis of Matt Brown and Associates. She became president of the Dayton, OH firm during the summer of 2003, before her father -- the company's founder -- died in 2004.

Willis has been brokering business-to-business lists since the company first started over 20 years ago. In more recent years, she has been delegating some brokerage work, but still spends the majority of her time dealing personally with brokerage clients and working with list resellers.

"I sell lists to all kinds of industries. I am product of the multi-tasking generation," she says.

She maintains client relationships, for example, with PetEdge Inc., Hubert Co. and United States Plastics Corp., as well as agencies and printing companies.

"Nearly all my business is with catalog companies. I inherited my clients from my father and I brought on some clients myself," says Willis. "My father was my direct marketing hero and I still miss talking shop with him."

Matt Brown and Associates is one of few surviving family-run enterprises in the list business. "You just don't see many families in the list business any more," she notes.

For small companies to survive it's important to provide a full range of direct marketing services that go beyond list brokerage, which invariably means outsourcing certain work. "That's how I stay alive in this industry," she adds.

When she's not working, Willis plays tennis about three times per week. She's married and has an 11-year-old daughter. Willis keeps active in her church, where she volunteers as a youth group leader.

What are your industry pet peeves?

"I'm not thrilled with keeping up with the terminology. We used to say data processing, then data management and then data mining. It seems like every few years there are new catchwords for the same thing," says Willis.

What's more distressing for her though is how the Internet has spawned a generation of people doing business online—who in her opinion are not professional list brokers. Net name negotiations, list updating and list hygiene practices are unfamiliar to pretenders.

"I've checked out some of these people for clients," she says. "One time I felt like I was talking to some lady working out of a shoebox."

That's why she prefers to do business only with companies that are members of the Direct Marketing Association in order to maintain best industry practices.

How do you feel about compiled response lists?

"I've tested some and unfortunately my clients have not seen substantial response. Compiled response lists seem to have a little more wow than reality," Willis says.

Definitions of what constitutes response for such compilations can be loose and many compiled response lists contain a large number of attendees and controlled circulation subscribers, rather than actual buyers.

Willis follows the "common sense method" for selecting lists. "First I go to buyers lists, then subscription lists, then compiled response lists and then the compiled lists," she explains.

She points out that the real detective work for brokers begins with looking for productive segments in out-of-category lists to introduce products to new markets.

Know someone you'd like to suggest for Meet the Broker? E-mail Jim.Emerson@Penton.com