In her final days before losing a battle with cancer, industry veteran Kathy Beins remembered those who had enriched her life

The veterinary industry mourned the loss of Kathy Beins, director of sales, Teva Animal Health, who died in her home in Baldwin City, Kan., on July 14, following a 15-month bout with cancer. Her husband, John; daughter, Olivia; and her mother, father and siblings, were with her.

“If you were having a bad day, Kathy would show up and change your whole mood to happiness,” says Guy Flickinger, president and CEO, Midwest Veterinary Supply, Burnsville, Minn. “She just had a way of cheering up your day, every time she came. She’d do it without fail. Yet she still got business done.”

“She never took herself too seriously but she always held firm to her beliefs,” adds Ben Coe, vice president of business development, Butler Schein Animal Health.

“Kathy enriched those around her with her positive attitude and love of life, family, friends and career. In other words, she grew in many ways over the years, but remained the same wonderful person I met in 1979. Kathy will be truly missed but fondly remembered.” Adds Mary Pat Thompson, senior vice president of finance and administration, and CFO of MWI Veterinary Supply, “Kathy was a very intelligent person, creative at marketing programs but also very smart with numbers. She understood profitability, for both the manufacturer and the distributor, and really believed in a ‘win/win’ outcome. She traveled the United States calling on her distributor partners and was very active on the AVDA board of directors as the manufacturer advisor. She will be remembered by all, her infectious laugh bringing a smile to everyone’s face when they think about her.”

Dairy farm girl

Kathy Beins was born in July 1962 and raised on a dairy farm in Lisbon, Md. She was active in 4-H in her youth and throughout her life. She began her career in veterinary medicine as an animal health technician in Olney, Md. She performed and supervised all essential procedures, and was responsible for purchasing, inventory control, accounts receivable and payable, payroll and taxes, staff scheduling and training, client relations and health awareness campaigns.

From 1985 to 1987, she was a field sales rep for Penn Veterinary Supply, a Lancaster, Pa.-based distributor. In 1987, she moved to manufacturing, joining Bayer Corp., in Shawnee, Kan., as district manager of distributor sales in an eight-state district. It was at Bayer that she met her husband-to-be, John Beins, who currently is Western regional manager for Bayer Healthcare LLC, Animal Health.

In 1991, she joined DVM Pharmaceuticals (acquired by IVAX Corp. one year later) as a territory manager, with responsibility for the sale of dermatological and insecticide products through distributors to veterinarians in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado. Three years later, she was promoted to regional sales manager, supervising sales reps covering 15 Midwestern states. She was also active as a field sales trainer. In 1998, she was promoted to national account manager, with responsibility for developing and maintaining relationships with all IVAX distributors. And in 2000, she became director of national accounts. She was recognized as the Vendor Representative of the Year in 2002 by Butler Animal Health (now Butler Schein Animal Health). Teva acquired IVAX in 2005.

Beins was routinely called upon to represent IVAX, then Teva, at both national and international veterinary dermatology conferences. She established and maintained relationships with key board-certified veterinary dermatologists and academia, and she served on the board of American Veterinary Distributors Association for four years as an allied industry member.

High school in the vet clinic

Speaking with Vet-Advantage about a week before her death, Beins reflected on her involvement in the veterinary industry, beginning with her early years on the dairy farm. In high school, she worked for her family’s veterinarian, Harold Holbrook, DVM. “It was a good time for the veterinary industry,” she said. “Parvo was hot and heavy, and a lot of money was flowing through vet clinics.”

She never seriously considered taking over the family farm or going to veterinary school. Veterinary school was “a lot of work,” she said. “Being a farmer is tough work too. Being a manufacturer or distributor rep in our industry is also tough work, but it’s a different type of tough work. My fingernails and I cared more for each other.”

Ben Coe recalls meeting Beins as a girl on her family’s farm. “As I remember, the first time I met Kathy was on her family farm when I was riding with one of my large veterinary customers. The year was 1979 and I was a new rep, and Kathy was around 16. What is remarkable is that I clearly remember that first meeting, and it remains with me after all these years.

“I remember Kathy as a bubbly young farm girl who was energetic, friendly, and constantly smiling. When Kathy went to work for that same veterinarian, we connected often when I called on the practice. At some point she moved on to another practice, where I called on her again.

“When she expressed an interest in the animal health pharmaceutical business we discussed a number of options,” continues Coe. “Obviously, she went on to hold various positions and become a respected and positive addition to our industry. That first impression I had of Kathy endured as she progressed through her career and personal life.”

In her conversation with Vet-Advantage, Beins reflected on the most valuable lessons she learned from her early days as a sales rep, first for a distributor, then a manufacturer. “I think back to my first days being a representative … out there making calls, carrying a bag,” she said. The key is to focus on the product and learn it backwards, forwards and upside down, she said. “You know everything you can about it…and you learn to sell it.

“But the most important thing is to be a friend to the veterinary clinic. The person who[m] vets and clinics buy from first is the distributor rep or manufacturer rep who walks in the door and either knows I like coffee and a donut for breakfast before I get started, or who knows I want to get down to business right away. That was the biggest thing – learn your customer.

“Once you learn your customer, you have to learn your distributor rep or manufacturer rep, so you know the inner workings of their brains and how they want to work. If they want to meet you at night and have a cocktail, you conduct business in the evening. Or they may want to [draw up] a business plan in the evening, plan out the next day, so they can go out to sell in the morning. Or they might just want to jump in the car in the morning, and it’s ‘Let’s go out and work.’ So in the beginning, you have to learn this.

“As I moved along and worked more in management, the same thing occurred. I had to figure out, ‘How does management want to be treated?’” she said. She recalls a lesson from Dave Buck of A.J. Buck & Son (now Butler Schein Animal Health). “If Dave told you he wanted a tractor/trailer load of products, he wanted a tractor/trailer load of products. He didn’t want to sit and dabble or argue about it.” The smart rep took the order, said “Thank you, sir,” and walked out of the office, she said.

She recalled one of her first meetings as a rookie with Buck, which left her slightly shaken. The order was smaller than she had anticipated or wanted, but she took it with no questions asked. “I left the office with a tear in my eye,” she recalls. “Then Dick Prince [of Buck] caught me in the hall and said, ‘You passed the test.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so; I didn’t get the order I wanted.’ He said, ‘Dave was testing you. You’re going to work well with him. He’ll respect you, because you looked at him, took the order, thanked him and left.’

“Over the years, Dave Buck became a good friend of mine. I wrote a lot of business with that company.” But different people work differently, she added. Some customers need to be pushed, while others clearly want to steer the ship. “Part of being a rookie in the industry is learning these things, making sure they’re in your memory,” she said.

Passion, leadership, professionalism

“I became acquainted with Kathy via industry conventions and distributor meetings,” says Dave Cunningham, president and CEO of Teva Animal Health. “She was always easy to talk to [and] full of energy, and she was eager to meet new people, regardless of what company they worked for or what their position was with that company.

“I then had the opportunity to deal with Kathy directly as one of her customers for a period of four years [when Cunningham was executive vice president of AgriLabs]. She was one of the best account reps I had ever worked with. I had heard this from other distributors, but I got to experience first-hand the passion, leadership and professionalism she put into her job.

“When I was evaluating whether to make a career move to Teva Animal Health, one of the big positives for me was the chance to work alongside Kathy. She was a special person who had the ability to forge long-term, meaningful relationships with colleagues, customers and other industry associates.”

“Kathy…was always one of the best-prepared and knowledgeable managers I have ever dealt with,” says Steve Liscomb, vice president, Victor Medical Company, Irvine, Calif. “But to me, Kathy’s strongest attribute was her ability to be serious, and yet not take herself too seriously. She had so much energy and enthusiasm, and a laugh that all will remember as infectious. It was our shared sense of humor that made our relationship so special.

“Kathy always made a point of starting a conversation by asking about my day, my health, and my family. And I was always anxious to hear about her life with John, Olivia and Rocky [the Beins’s Labrador]. I miss our conversations. I know I am not alone in feeling privileged to call Kathy my friend.”

Customers = friends
Indeed, the friendships that Kathy and John Beins formed with people in the industry were sustaining for Kathy until her death, and remain so for John today. “We lucked into our careers in veterinary pharmaceutical sales,” John told Vet-Advantage during the interview in early July. “We have been blessed, because a lot of our customers are our friends.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t have a handful of cards in the mail, or e-mails or calls,” he said. “If we weren’t in sales, we wouldn’t have so many friends, people who care. We couldn’t have made it this far without those friends.

“You wouldn’t normally think in terms of love for your job or love for the industry,” he continued. “We have love for one another and our family. But we like what we do so much that you’d have to say we love it too.”

“And so many people,” interjected Kathy Beins, during the conversation.

“When it’s obvious you love what you do, that love comes back to you from the industry and the people you work with,” John continued. “I didn’t know how significant that would be until the past 16 months. It is significant. It is sustaining for Kathy. The saddest thing for her is that she will be leaving that. But she’ll be supported by love in a different form.”

“I’ve known so many people in the industry,” added Kathy. “So many people have said – and this goes back years, ‘I can’t wait to meet your daughter’ and all. And now, people are saying they’re going to do this or that for me. And so many have already come through with commitments that they said they would do for Olivia or my family or John or me. It’s heartwarming that it’s not all words, and that these are truly people who have loving, caring hearts.”

In her conversation with Vet-Advantage, Kathy Beins told of getting calls and e-mails from people she had met or trained or called on years before. “They just want to let me know, ‘I remember you and how you helped me,’” she said. “These little things remind you that you did leave a mark on someone’s career. And you say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know it would make a mark.’ But I’m able to have a chance now, because, knowing I am coming to my end on this side, people get the chance to tell me. A lot of people, unfortunately, don’t get the chance to verbalize things like that.”

Based on support from friends and acquaintances across the country, Kathy Beins’ name was one of three carried by biker and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in the most recent Tour de France.

Approached death as life

Kathy Beins approached her imminent death as she did her life – with optimism, humor and honesty.

“Being in sales, I think, you have a sense that things are never black and white,” she said in early July. “When I was first diagnosed, it was, ‘OK, so I have cancer. Well, that’s fixable. It’s not black or white.’ Then in the last couple of months, the reality has set in more, given the type of cancer I have. Then you start thinking about your quality of life; and the quality of life we led.”

Added John Beins, “Salespeople are by nature glass-half-full. We think we can always win, or we’re always the best. Kathy has far less ego than I do, but we still want to win. We like to be measured, or else we wouldn’t be in sales. I think Kathy’s attitude was, ‘We’re just going to beat it.’ Her heart was in it all the way, because of Olivia.”

“A few of her friends from MWI traveled to see her in the hospital after her first surgery and diagnosis, and Kathy was her strong, shining self,” recalls Mary Pat Thompson. “She was positive, upbeat and determined to beat this dreadful disease and live to raise her beautiful daughter, Olivia. We sat in her room and she joked about losing her hair, but never once felt sorry for herself or asked for sympathy. When Kathy was so positive, you couldn’t help but share her winning attitude, even in those tough times.”

Later, Thompson and some MWI colleagues visited Kathy at her home in Baldwin City. “Kathy and John have a beautiful home, just like the two of them – welcoming and warm, with a wonderful outdoor kitchen by the pond, where she sat and talked about life,” recalls Thompson. “Kathy was always in touch with her team at Teva, engaged in work, and eager to resume her responsibilities. Kathy and John attended AVDA this year, where Kathy played all 18 holes in the golf scramble, and everyone was so happy to see her. She looked just beautiful, and was so happy to be back in the industry.

“The next time I saw Kathy was in June [2010],” continues Thompson. “She was back in Baldwin at her home, and she knew she was facing a losing battle. But again she asked about other people and how they were doing. Kathy was so very brave and never felt sorry for herself. I know she was angry that cancer was going to keep her from fulfilling her dream of raising Olivia and sharing her life with John, but I told her that she had already accomplished so much, both in her personal life and professionally.”

A week before she died, Kathy Beins told Vet-Advantage that a part of her was “telling me it’s time to make a change.” Her task, she said, was “accepting that it’s time to make that change.” Though she knew she was near death, she couldn’t know exactly when her time would come, she said. “None of us do. But there is something there that helps you say, ‘The bridge planks are being laid.’”

On the day of Kathy’s death, John Beins wrote this note to friends: “I am sorry to report that Kathy passed away this morning. While this news will cause many of you grief, the end of her life here on earth was actually a blessing. She had communicated her willingness to go about 10 days ago. I was able to tell her I was ready for her to leave. Our love is strong, and we were able to accept God’s plan. By his blessing she is now in a place where there is no pain or suffering, no sorrow; only peace, joy and eternal life.”

Passionate about life

“Kathy was passionate about all aspects of her life,” says Davey Stone, vice president, marketing and sales services, Butler Schein Animal Health. “She loved her farm life childhood and her family, and glowed when she could talk about them. She loved this industry every day she worked in it, and the industry loved her back. She loved the people who worked for her and who she worked for, and respected and defended them at all costs and at all levels.

“She was passionate about her faith and the church she served. She was forever humble in her contributions to the church, but forever devoted to her service. Last but not least, by any measure, she adored John and Olivia with every breath she took, and worked and lived to love them with all her being.

“We are blessed to have shared paths of life with her and to have known Kathy Beins.”

Kathy Beins is survived by John Beins; her daughter, Olivia; and two stepchildren, Jessica and Justin. Other surviving family members include her parents, David and Ann Patrick; brothers Mike, Dennis and John Patrick; sisters Teresa Eschenrode, Carole Murray and Rhonda Winkler; four brothers-in-law; three sisters-in-law and 14 nieces and nephews.

Memorial contributions can be made to The Oncology Center, Lawrence Memorial Hospital, and sent in care of Lamb-Roberts Funeral Home, PO Box 220, Baldwin City, KS 66006.

Sidebar:

Reflections on an industry

A conversation with John and Kathy Beins

In July, just eight days prior to Kathy Beins’ death, Vet-Advantage had an opportunity to interview Kathy and her husband, John, about changes they witnessed in the industry during their long careers in veterinary medicine. Both were well-qualified to address the topic.

John Beins has worked for Bayer all his life. He started in October 1974, right out of college, working in R&D for four years, and then sales. At various points in his career, he held an international marketing position in Germany, and was responsible for Bayer’s entire food animal sales force and half its companion animal sales force. In 2006, he stepped down and took a regional sales management position in the food animal business, a position he still holds.

His wife, Kathy, joined Bayer in 1987, after having been a field sales rep for Penn Veterinary Supply. In 1991, she joined DVM Pharmaceuticals (acquired by IVAX Corp.) Her most recent position was director of sales for Teva Animal Health, which acquired IVAX in 2005.

Big changes

When asked about key events in the veterinary industry, John Beins didn’t hesitate to point to three:

The Internet and the speed of information. “It changed the way the business was run and managed, and the speed of our business has increased due to that,” he said.

Consolidation among distributors and manufacturers, a trend seen across American business. “When Kathy and I began our careers, we were calling on 20 distributors, and many were regional,” he said. Today, there’s only a handful of the biggest companies.

The birth of so-called “blockbuster” drugs. “Prior to the mid 1980s, a big product was $20 million,” he said. Then they climbed to $50 million. “The advent of heartworm and topical flea/tick was a major revolution, so to speak, in the animal health business.” What had been over-the-counter business shifted to the veterinary clinic, and sales multiplied.

“Changes were also occurring to the distribution model,” added Kathy Beins. “Family businesses were maturing, and they came to a time in their decision-making when they had to ask, ‘What are we doing with our business?’” With the advent of the blockbuster products, which carried lower margins than those to which distributors had been accustomed, distribution owners questioned whether their business could support their children, should they decide to take over the business after the first generation retired.

Challenges ahead

Change never ends, pointed out John Beins. “The shift from over-the-counter, grocery-store pet supplies to the veterinary clinics is starting to reverse itself.” Some manufacturers are taking products that had been sold exclusively at clinics, and instead selling them through pet specialty or online shops. It’s what pet owners are demanding, he said. “When you don’t listen to your consumer customer, you’re in trouble.”

The industry faces another threat – increased regulation, said John Beins. “Every time the government causes us to perform more QA, or puts more checks and balances on production, or further restricts how our products can be produced, it drives up costs.” Greater FDA and EPA oversight jacks up the cost of developing drugs. “The result will be fewer drugs and products being approved.”

Despite the challenges, veterinary sales remains one of the best professions around, agreed both Kathy and John Beins. “We’ve made relationships throughout our careers,” said John. “We can draw on them as sales professionals.” In fact, the very best veterinary sales pros “do far less selling than simply continuing relationships,” he said. “[Your customers] want your product or service, and they buy it because of you.”

Balancing career and personal lives

Balancing two high-level careers with childrearing presented its own set of challenges for Kathy and John Beins. But they’re proud of how things turned out. “We have a daughter [Olivia] who is now 15,” said Kathy. “She’s into livestock, enjoys showing cattle. And she’s very respectful of what her parents do for a living.”

“We never considered it a difficulty to balance business and home life,” added John. “Kathy and I were both ambitious people. We wanted to take on more responsibility, and we did that by working harder. But with that, you get more gratification, and you get to a point where you’re teaching more than managing. We sought out – and were blessed to get – more out of our jobs.” The two were also blessed to get a dependable nanny to help raise Olivia, he added.

“People might think this is funny for me to say,” said Kathy. “But [the responsibilities, including travel demands, of their professions] have made us homebodies.” After traveling all week, “when the weekend came, we’d like to turn the blinds down and, if we could, put a blind up around the yard. I don’t know if he loves it or not, but John does all the maintenance of the yard. Because of him – not me – we have a beautiful home and yard, which is well-maintained. And when we aren’t working diligently at our jobs or maintaining our yard, or being with our daughter, we’re with a very close-knit group of friends.”

“Though we didn’t know it when we started, because of animal health and the relationships that exist here [in Baldwin City, Kan.], we ended up with a huge support group for Kathy’s fight [with cancer], which we didn’t anticipate,” added John. “They’ve helped us through all of this.”