Katie Kailik, director of sales at Peerless Umbrella (asi/76730), has worked on the supplier sales side of the industry for nearly two decades.

But it wasn’t until she started thinking of her distributor partners as “teammates” rather than “clients” that she saw real change in both her sales and in her industry relationships, she explained at an ASI Show Orlando Education Day session on Jan. 5.

Katie Kailik speaks at ASI Show Orlando Education Day.

“As much as our industry likes to put us on two different fields, we are truly business partners,” said Kailik, ASI Media’s 2025 Supplier Salesperson of the Year.

In fact, she argues both suppliers and distributors really have the same client: the end-buyer. And when that sale is made, everyone wins.

“At the end of the day, even though suppliers and distributors each have different functions and different roles, we have the same end-goal,” Kailik added. “I don’t make money unless you sell my product – so if you’re not successful, I’m not successful.”

When she asks distributors what the most valuable qualities are in a supplier relationship, she said, the two most common answers are “inventory” and “on-time delivery.”

While those are crucial for establishing reliability, focusing only on those factors can make a relationship transactional, rather than consultative – they are far from the only attributes that matter when it comes to building a long-lasting, successful business relationship.

With that, Kailik said, she encouraged a focus on collaboration, both in terms of specific client projects and general planning. Suppliers have access to a vast trove of product data on what items are selling in which verticals, or what categories have been most successful in a given quarter – that’s information that could be helping distributors sell, if they know to ask for it.

Katie Kailik of Peerless Umbrella (asi/76730) joined ASI Media’s Hannah Rosenberger for an episode of the Promo Insiders podcast last year to break down the importance of the supplier-distributor relationship.

Speaking of asking: She also thinks that everyone should be asking more questions. A lot more questions.

That goes for both sides of the relationship. She kicked off her new approach to sales years ago by conducting “partnership development meetings” with all of her existing clients where, for once, she didn’t show up with any product, but with a list of questions and a listening ear. She wanted to know about exactly how her clients went to market. Who were they prospecting? What support tools did they find most effective? What clients do you wish you had a little bit more time to be in front of?

And she encourages distributors to ask tough questions of their suppliers, too. Do they sell directly to consumers in any capacity? If something goes wrong, what’s the process for problem resolution? What protections do you have in place for data breaches?

“These are all questions that, as business partners, you can and should be asking,” Kailik said. “For a real partnership to exist, there has to be transparency.”

Ultimately, these types of conversations will likely give both suppliers and distributors a better indicator of what relationships are worth cultivating. Not every sale – or even every supplier partnership – has to be built on these foundations, Kailik said, but investing time in the right relationships with the right people will almost always pay off.