Meet the Broker: Pat Leone
Today we meet Pat Leone, senior account executive at Leon Henry Inc. She’s been doing brokerage work for 30 years for a diverse array of clients, so she knows how certain lists perform like the back of her hand.
“I’ve learned how many lists behave, whether a file will generate a good response and then have a good or bad payout,” says Leone.
Most of the brokerage she has done has been in consumer book, catalog and magazine markets. Over the years she has done brokerage for EarthLink, Arizona Highways, Numa Corp., Scholastic Books, Time-Life Books, the American Museum of Natural History and such magazines as Field & Stream, People and Money.
Leone began her list career at Kleid Co. in 1978, where she stayed for 20 years until the company closed. Then she moved on to Unimail Corp. and later Walter Karl Inc.
Since joining Leon Henry in March 2006, Leone has been doing list and insert media brokerage with the Kids Wish Network, agencies and a host of smaller clients in education and publishing markets.
The opportunity to work in many diverse markets is what keeps brokerage work both interesting and challenging for her. “If I don’t know a market, well then, I get to do a lot of research,” she says.
Leone enjoys her leisure time gardening and perusing suburban tag sales. She’s a single parent with 14-year-old daughter. Leone has a very soft heart for cats. Besides keeping several of her own, she volunteers for animal shelters and provides a foster home for felines awaiting adoption.
What does it take to be a successful broker?
“The most important thing for success in brokerage is intellectual curiosity. Once I start asking questions about a list it generates another question and then another,” says Leone.
Her curiosity takes flight when she first looks at product. “I start thinking about who would buy, why they would buy it and how they would buy it. Then it’s brainstorming and like working to solve a puzzle to find the right lists,” she says.
Brokers need to do a lot of listening, thinking and reading, while being tenacious about research, which Leone says means not merely recommending lists based on the information in online list directories.
“I call for usage and I find out who has been using a file successfully and report back to my client,” she says.
What do you like most and least about the list business?
Leone likes being able to work in many markets, which affords her opportunity to learn new things practically every day.
“Each client has a unique product. So I get to experience working with many different kinds of products, she says. In many cases I get to see response history and how many recommendations worked.”
As for dislikes, it’s those times when the economy turns sour that bug her. “There have been times I’ve hated my work, when the industry is going the wrong way and the list and insert media business are down,” she says.
It’s no secret that when brokers feel squeezed by rising postage and paper costs, while mailers are cutting back, it’s just not as fun as the good times. “It’s harder to find new clients and when mailers are cutting back they need fewer brokers,” she adds.
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