By Lorrie DeFrank
Tracey Phillips is a prominent entrepreneur in the Northeast Florida business community as the owner of Promotional Presence, a company that has been providing businesses with gifts that leave a lasting impression for clients and employees. She has participated in JAX Bridges twice, focusing on her two business endeavors. Both are thriving thanks to the valuable guidance she received through the JAX Chamber entrepreneurial growth program.
She first joined Cohort 8 in spring 2018 to enhance Promotional Presence, her already successful corporate marketing business. She participated again in Cohort 13 in fall 2020 for assistance in formulating a new business idea based on her more than 20 years in sales that blossomed into the REACH Sales Success System.
“Both times I participated, JAX Bridges was critical for helping me think outside the box and see beyond my own viewpoint to what was really possible,” said Phillips, the JAX Chamber Professional Women’s Council’s Business Owner of the Year in 2019-2020.
Skilled at building relationships, Phillips has relied on the strong people and customer service skills she has cultivated throughout her career to grow and ensure success in both of her businesses. She has been involved in local women’s organizations, embracing a belief in mentorship and networking to grow the community.
She started her first business, a consumer gift company, in 2002. In 2010, she changed its branding and direction to focus solely on business-to-business sales, renamed it Promotional Presence, and specialized in helping companies find promotional gift products that match their branding. Her company offers more than 750,000 items such as pens, mugs, apparel, journals, coolers and office items from over 3,000 suppliers.
“We have been fortunate to increase our profits year over year, except during Covid in 2020 where we held steady. We’re having a banner year this year, and if things stay on track, it will be our best year to date,” said Phillips, who has seven employees who keep Promotional Presence going while she turns her focus to developing and growing REACH.
“They helped me embrace the vision for generating over a million dollars in sales,” she said, giving a shout out to VP of Innovation for the JAX Chamber Dr. Carlton Robinson. “He said, ‘As a small business, you need to be consistently looking for new opportunities while thinking out of the box.’ That made me focus on where additional revenue streams were and what I needed to do to get there. JAX Bridges really helped me change the vision of how I was going to position my company.”
She credits JAX Bridges with helping her set ambitious yet realistic goals for Promotional Presence and creating the vision for leveraging her experience to help others. During the pandemic, she had a lot of downtime with her promotional products business and decided to go through JAX Bridges again.
“It really afforded me the opportunity to think about how I wanted to move forward. I felt like the sales process had changed and was totally different now because it was based so much on building and maintaining relationships,” she said. “So I wrote a sales success system called REACH that is designed to teach someone how to elevate their sales.”
REACH stands for: Reach Out, Educate, Attract, Collaborate and Hold on for the long-term Success. It focuses on helping other companies establish and meet lucrative goals through training in sales, leadership and development for service excellence, and teaches sales teams how to use their communication style to attract and sell to prospective and current customers.
In pilot for three years, REACH officially launched this year, but it has been serving clients since 2020, including a company that tripled its revenue during that time, according to Phillips. “We initially worked on increasing sales. Now we are working with their leadership team on really developing and honing emotional intelligence,” she said.
In July 2024, Phillips started the first physical, real-world training of REACH where participants representing professions such as law, business development, medical, and handyman services will attend weekly sessions for a year. She facilitates the training with Stephanie McPhee, who helped her write the workbook. McPhee owns The SunBuggy Co., which offers business consulting.
Phillips said her biggest takeaway from both JAX Bridges sessions was “learning how to analyze a business—being very strategic about your canvas, looking at your business in its entirety, breaking it down to identify the most profitable aspects, seeing what other revenue streams you can you create, and deciding how best to grow.” She said the whole ecosystem that JAX Chamber has built with its programs is amazing. “It really is a great place for someone who wants to start, build or enhance a business. Their programs are first rate.”
How to contact Tracey S. Phillips:
Promotional Presence, LLC