Selling Power 60 Best Companies 2024

In 1963, Miller Pentecost established Power & Telephone Supply Company as a reliable source for tools and other products contractors needed to save time and money to complete their projects on time. To do this, he developed relationships with manufacturers that saw the benefit of having a sales partner that could help them eliminate or reduce their storage costs and align their product roadmaps to customer projects, future outlooks, and demand forecasts.

Today, a little more than 60 years after its founding, the company – now known as Power & Tel – retains this fundamental mission. However, the industry it serves and how it assists manufacturers and end-customers have significantly changed.

‘We remain a family-owned company, and our reliability and respect in the industry remain constant, even as we provide products, services, and solutions that support our partners’ success’, says Jennifer Pentecost Sims, Miller Pentecost’s granddaughter, and the company’s CEO. ‘Today, we do more than distribution – we can serve as an extension of a company’s end-to-end supply chain as well as fulfill a specific product or service need’.

The company stocks tens of millions of dollars in communications products, representing over 700 manufacturers. Power & Tel serves over 90 percent of all telephone companies in the United States and approximately 5,000 customers worldwide. They operate 10 distribution centers in the United States, three in Canada, and one in Mexico, with additional customer service centers throughout North and South America.

‘Our focus is on being the most cost-effective and efficient source of products and material management solutions to all entities involved in building and maintaining communication and similar-type networks’, Sims says.

Sims became CEO of the company in June 2013, succeeding her father, Jim Pentecost, who now serves as the chairman of the company’s board of directors. Before becoming CEO, she served as president of Power & Tel’s Canadian subsidiary for two years and held several other positions during her total of nine years in the company. ‘Over those years, I worked closely and learned from my father from the ground up about the industry and the important role Power & Tel serves in it’, she says. ‘I am grateful that he still serves as my mentor today’.

Changing with the times

Meeting the product needs of the ever-evolving telecommunications industry requires Power & Tel to be significantly technology savvy. ‘We are a company that has earned trust by consistently meeting the traditional needs of our customers for 60 years as well as a highly progressive firm that leverages technology to meet their ever-changing supply chain needs’, Sims says.

‘We have recognized this need and have made and continue to make significant investments in the latest technologies, operating systems, process improvements, quality controls, and user-friendly customer interfaces to help our customers meet their business objectives’.

The company partially applies these systems through its Power & Tel Managed Inventory (PTMI®) program, which offers technology-based, scalable material management and logistics solutions. These solutions include web portals that provide manufacturers, and end-customers complete visibility of transaction and material movement and warehousing and facility solutions.

‘Our objective is to alleviate inventory and logistics concerns and allow our customers and manufacturing partners to focus on their core competencies’, Sims says. ‘From the customer side, today’s public has an unprecedented and wide-ranging set of demands for broadband services, and our customers must place their financial and intellectual focus on this demand to meet their corporate objectives. The time, resources, and money they spend toiling in the supply chain take away from using these elements to serve their customers better and challenge their competitors for revenue dollars. Our services bring optimization and cost reductions to their operations’.

‘Our manufacturer partners feel a similar crunch brought on by the public’s demand and a highly competitive marketplace. Their charge is to constantly provide new and cost-effective technologies, then, once produced, they must be able to seamlessly provide material where and when it is needed’, she adds. ‘That is where we come in by reducing their inventory costs and effectively managing the customers’ supply and demand’.

Building trust

‘Power & Tel’s ability to improve its customers’ supply chain operations illustrates its overall focus on building customer relationships. At the heart of these relationships is trust, which the company feels it has built up through its 60 years in business through its long-tenured staff and family-oriented culture’, Sims says.

‘It is that trust that allows us to be extremely successful in increasing our manufacturer partners’ adoption rates for new or enhanced products and for the opportunity to be an extension of their supply chain, whether in warehousing, shipping, or selling’, she says.

Of all of Sims’ and her company’s accomplishments, she is proud of Power & Tel’s team. ‘We are a family; act like a family and support our partners like family’, she says.

‘We’re not in the market for an order; we’re in it for our partners’ success and the success of the communications industry’.