Team Member Profile: Kelli Adkins

Marketing and chemistry may not be the most familiar combination for a college degree, but Kelli Adkins was industrious when she graduated from Northwest Missouri State University – turning what she’d learned into a successful career in pharmaceutical sales.

The arrival of her children led to Adkins’s “retirement” after roughly a decade, but she was open to an opportunity that would allow her to both grow professionally and continue to prioritize her family.

It turned out Bestway International was open to the same type of situation, and in 2011 brought Adkins on to serve as a sales representative.

Adkins quickly recognized that company President Jay Devers, a father himself, was a kindred spirit and understood how beneficial the opportunity could be for both the company and for Adkins.

“They are very good when it comes to work/life balance and understanding when family stuff might come up,” Adkins says. “And it’s run by a father too, and his kids were the same age as mine growing up at the time.”

Realizing the positive culture she had stepped into, Adkins embraced and excelled at learning logistics – and recognized one of the most appealing benefits of her new field.

“I like that I get to work with all different kinds of companies, from a chocolate manufacturer that we’re helping to import chocolate molds to helping a company export assembly line parts,” she says. “Whether super industrial or artistic metals we ship around, I like the variability of all that, learning about different kinds of companies. I also think that leads to what I’m good at, which is getting to the root of the problem that somebody is having pretty quickly.”

In that respect, Adkins appreciates that when it comes to solving customer problems, the Bestway way is that it . . . doesn’t always have to be the Bestway way.

“It’s about hearing the issue and just having conversations with people, then cutting to the chase of an efficient solution,” she says. “I have to be patient and fit into other people’s scenarios, more than force them to work the way Bestway works.”

In addition to scheduling flexibility and work/life balance benefits, that openness to problem-solving strategies is one of the most positive aspects Adkins has found about working at this particular midsize company.

“One of Bestway’s best features is the flexibility we’ve built in,” Adkins says. “And that’s what we have to embrace being a midsize company, as opposed to companies that have no flexibility, or lots of red tape and things like that. We truly have the ability to do whatever needs to be done to help a client. Leadership does not put obstacles in our way.”

President Jay Devers says he is glad the company created an opportunity that worked for Adkins as well as for Bestway and its clients.

“We are so lucky to have Kelli as a role model in our company and our industry,” Devers says. “She’s achieved so much here that we are all proud of, and I know how proud she is of the amazing young men she and Loren have raised during the same period of time. There’s no finer ambassador of who we want to be in the marketplace than Kelli.”

While Adkins focused on serving Kansas City-area companies for most of her first decade at Bestway, she has enjoyed the opportunity presented by new tools and technology to branch out to serve clients all over the place.

“With people willing to have virtual meetings, and the information that’s out there about companies, I have customers all over the country now that I can talk to,” she says.

And those customers know their problems will be efficiently and creatively solved as long as they’re dealing with Kelli.