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A long-term partner.

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"One of the main things that attracted me to this business, even back when I was just a 5-year-old making sales calls with my dad, was his emphasis on building long-term relationships so that it's like we're dealing with our friends," Greg Pardue recalls during a recent interview--held shortly after Deery-Pardue & Associates, Inc. had been named pme's Manufacturers Rep of the Year for 2009.

Dave Pardue, Greg's dad, co-founded Deery-Pardue in 1973 with Bob Deery to represent Wade Drains. Dave began his career in 1963 as part of a sales trainee program for Wade Inc., which at the time was headquartered in Chicago. According to Greg, Reader's Digest wrote about his dad as part of a feature story on that Wade sales training program.

Greg joined the company in 1989 as an inside sales person after working for a plumbing contractor and a wholesaler while a student at Eastern Illinois University. He moved to outside sales in the early '90s. After Bob Deery retired and Deery-Pardue purchased M.A. Barr Enterprises in the mid-'90s, Greg helped his dad manage the company.

In Jan. 2004, following Dave Pardue's retirement, Greg was officially named president, even though he'd been pretty much running the company for a few years prior to that. Then in June, Deery-Pardue merged with Stanzi-Simms Marketing, a manufacturers rep firm.

Dick Simms, one of the owners of Stanzi-Simms, is now both an outside sales person...

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