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Who's Who Consulting Thought Leaders recognizes those significant contributors to the Sales Training Learning Community who are considered to be independent experts not associated with either suppliers or customers. These Who's Who Thought Leaders are available for member inquiries by clicking the “Ask The Expert” button.
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Steve Andersen founded Performance Methods, Inc. following a successful 20-year technology career within the high-growth business applications software industry. As President and Managing Director, he is involved in client projects, solution development and establishing strategic direction for PMI. Steve has served as ‘senior sales executive’ multiple times during his career, and his background includes extensive experience in field operations and sales management. He is the primary architect of Performance Methods’ Strategic Account Management Methodology™, Strategic Opportunity Management Methodology™, Customer Engagement Methodology™ and Collaborative Planning Methodology™. He has addressed numerous audiences on a variety of sales best practices topics, including the Strategic Account Management Association, the Pan-European Conference and the American Marketing Association. His recent speaking topics and publications include:
Keys to Effective Strategic Account Planning; Aligning the Business Objectives of Suppliers and Their Strategic Customers Through a Collaborative Planning Process; Creating Customer-Specific Value Propositions for Strategic Accounts; Value-Based Planning: Creating Customer Value at the Account and Opportunity Levels; Creating Customer Value Through the Global Deployment of Account Planning and Management Best Practices: An Infonet Case Study; The Importance of Relationships in the Creation of Customer Value; Balancing the Short and Long-Term Tensions: An Integrated Approach to Strategic Account Management and Sales; Opportunity Management; Charting the Future with Your Customer: How Assurant Solutions Implemented Collaborative Account Planning; The Road to Trusted Advisor; Building a Sales Culture: Best Practices of High Performance Sales Teams; Innovate to Differentiate: How Top-Performing Strategic Account Managers Achieve Competitive Advantage Through Innovation; Accelerated Account Planning: Driving Customer Value Through High-Velocity Collaboration
Steve’s client work has brought him into direct contact with many of the world’s largest corporations, including Adecco, Assurant, Coca-Cola, Colgate Palmolive, Delta Airlines, Dow, EDS, ExxonMobil, Fujitsu, GE, Hasbro, Honeywell, HP, J&J, John Deere, Nike, Philip Morris, SAP, Schneider Electric, Sony, Staples, 3M, Verizon, Wells Fargo and Zurich Financial Services. He has been actively involved in global client deployments of sales processes and best practices and frequently serves his clients in a strategic, trusted advisor capacity. He demonstrates a fresh perspective regarding modern processes for effective supplier/customer relationships, and leverages his extensive management experience to ensure that PMI solutions connect with sales people, sales leadership and the needs of the customers that PMI’s clients serve. He holds BS and MA degrees in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and resides with his family in Alpharetta, GA.
During his highly successful sales career, Conrad Elnes analyzed the research that wasbeing conducted on America's top salespeople. The result was his book, “Inside Secrets Of Outstanding Salespeople” (Prentice-Hall) that introduced him to salespeople throughout the world. Dozens of his articles have been published in national sales journals, and many credit his ideas for increasing their sales to spectacular levels. You can learn and employ his ideas to increase your sales and enhance your career.
Conrad earned his Master of Arts in Training (M.A.T.) Degree from Washington State University. He has been the lead trainer for Sales Training Institute (STI) since 1988 when he authored STI's QUAD-TRAK® Consultative Selling Program, Major Account Selling Strategies and PHONE-TRAK Tele-Prospecting Program. In addition, his Customer Satisfaction PLUS is employed by many top companies to improve their service groups. His programs have established STI as a key player on the contemporary training scene.
Conrad is an interesting and humorous speaker who has addressed hundreds of groups, as diverse as sales representatives, bank officers and professional consultants. He travels extensively in order to provide custom training for companies such as Motorola, Allstate, Milliman (Consultants), Alcan Aluminum and Polycom Videoconferencing. Conrad is also Chairman of the Board for STI International®.
Your competitors are either a little bit ahead of you, or a bit behind and striving to surpass you. Your choices? Improve your skills, or settle for being second best.
Ed Shineman is a consulting authority and thought leader on how to more effectively market and sell education-related products and services.
Ed's 30 years of training marketing and general management experience include chief marketing officer and division VP assignments with Xerox Learning Systems and Learning International and U.S. sales & marketing responsibility for Digital Equipment Corporation's $300 million customer education business.
As founder and CEO of Xerox's Personal Learning Systems business, Shineman introduced subscription-based desktop learning, pioneered in multimedia and computer-based instruction, and was responsible for coining the now ubiquitous term "Discovery Learning." Later, at Digital he invented subscription-based volume purchase plans blending classroom learning, technology-based training and consulting services.
FUSION, the consulting organization Ed founded in 1992, works with many leading education firms including Pearson Education, Learning Tree, AchieveGlobal, Advantage Performance Group, Communispond, DDI, IIR/Informa, Huthwaite and NETg. In addition he has worked with Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Business Objects, PeopleSoft, Parametric Technologies and other high tech customer education organizations. For a more complete list, please see the FUSION training marketing clients page.
Client assignments have included: competitive positioning, lead generation, event promotion, new product launch, media advertising, Website development, solutions pricing, direct marketing, teleselling, sales potentials planning, new venture assessment, competitive benchmarking and strategic planning.
A graduate of Cornell University, Ed Shineman began his career with several leading Madison Avenue ad agencies, where he was awarded ANDY and EFFIE awards for creative excellence as well as a gold medal from the International Society of Business Communicators. He has spoken on marketing topics at the International Direct Marketing Conference, the Direct Marketing Club of New York, the Instructional Systems Association and at Harvard Business School. He has twice been honored to serve as a direct marketing industry John Caples Finals Awards judge.
As part of his training marketing practice, Ed Shineman publishes Training Business E-Visory, an e-mail advisory service that reaches more than 3,000 education company owners and executives.
An avid musician and tennis player, Ed resides with his wife Jan and four children in the Boston suburb of Sudbury, Massachusetts.
Prior to creating Action Selling in 1990, Duane Sparks owned and managed a computer company named Currentech. During the 1980s, even though the computer industry as a whole was growing at exponential rates, Currentech grew six times faster than the industry average. This was only possible because of the way Duane taught his people to sell. In 1989, he sold the company and decided to package Action Selling Sales Training into a sustainable way to boost the performance of salespeople in any industry.
Five years of initial research focused on developing a clear understanding of exactly which selling skills had the greatest impact on performance change. Five Critical Selling Skills emerged: Buyer/Seller Relationship, Sales Call Planning, Questioning, Presenting and Gaining Commitment.
Research into the sales-training industry turned up another key fact. The greatest weakness of Action Selling's competitors was their failure to ensure that skills and knowledge learned in class actually got applied on the job. Two decades later, that is still our competitors' biggest weakness. In learning theory, it's known as the problem of "transfer." You can teach people to do something in class, but getting them to do it that way in the field is a different thing altogether.
In 1995, Action Selling began assessing the skills of salespeople with the use of its validated Selling Skills Assessment. This assessment technology has been continually refined. To date, more than 300,000 salespeople have been assessed, trained, certified, and measured against standards of performance change. No other company has developed anything remotely comparable to this database of skill measurement and corresponding performance change.The knowledge we have gained has been completely incorporated into the Action Selling sustainable sales training program. That is why Action Selling can claim these major sales training innovations:
The Action Selling sales training program trains and certifies salespeople in the critical selling skills that have the greatest impact on sales performance. And from the ground up, our programs are designed to ensure that those critical selling skills are not only "learned" but used, consistently, in the field.
After an early career as a professional trumpeter, Dave Stein held many diversified technical, sales and executive positions: programmer, systems engineer, sales representative, sales manager, director of worldwide sales development, VP of sales, VP of international operations, VP of client services and VP of strategic alliances. He worked in the technology sector for Fortune Systems Corporation, Datalogix International (acquired by Oracle Corporation), and Marcam Corporation (acquired by Invensys, plc).
In 1997 Dave founded the sales consultancy, The Stein Advantage, Inc. The company provided expertise and assistance to their clients in these, among other critical areas: hiring of top sales professionals; more effective positioning in the eyes of industry analysts; development of corporate and selling strategies to overcome tough competitors; increasing compliance by their sales organizations to sales methodologies that were installed; and re-engineering their selling efforts to achieve new levels of credibility and differentiation with higher-level customer executives. Among the many companies with whom Dave worked are: ALLTEL Corporation, CGI-AMS, ASAP Software, AT&T, BASF, Bayer, Cardo, Centra Software, Inc., Convergys, Enterprise Ireland, Hewlett Packard Company, Honeywell, IBM Corporation, Infor, Intermec, The Irish Software Association, Global Crossing, Ltd., Hall-Kinion (Kforce, Inc.), Kronos, Lorentzen-Wettre, MCI, Manugistics, Inc., MAPICS, Inc., Matrikon, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Microsoft, NEC Japan, NPD Group, Oracle Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Progress Software Corporation, RCM Technologies, Richardson Electronics, Inc., Siemens Energy and Automation, Standard and Poor's, SunGard, Towers Perrin, Unisys, United Technologies, VSP (Vision Service Plan) and Xerox Office Systems.
Through Dave's past work as a sales consultant, coach, and trainer, he has a unique view of sales methodologies, sales training approaches, and the cultural as well as business changes required for corporations to excel at the sales function. Dave understands what works and what doesn't when it comes to the ever dynamic challenges of gaining and maintaining competitive advantage through sales organization effectiveness.
Dave is quoted and recognized in leading business magazines and websites, including Fast Company, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Inc., Fortune, and Forbes. He writes the featured monthly column for Sales & Marketing Management magazine. Dave is a professional member of the National Speakers Association as well as a member of Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI), NASP, ASTD and AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association). He is a member of the Executive Advisory Board of the Fisher Institute for Professional Selling, one of the many institutions of higher learning where his book, How Winners Sell is being used.
Who's Who Supplier Thought Leaders recognizes those significant contributors to the Sales Training Learning Community who represent training supplier companies. These Who's Who Thought Leaders are available for member inquiries by clicking the “Ask The Expert” button.
David DiStefano is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Richardson. Mr. DiStefano is responsible for establishing the strategic plan and direction of Richardson, ensuring its successful execution, and positioning Richardson as one of the premier sales training and consulting organizations. David has been instrumental in developing the business model for Richardson and in raising a significant amount of equity capital to enable the Company to execute its business plan. He also provides senior-level guidance to Richardson's clients regarding all contractual, implementation, and billing matters pertaining to Richardson's products and services.
David joined Richardson in 1993 from PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he was a senior manager for over nine years in the financial service practice. At PwC, David was responsible for the overall engagement and service management for his clients. At PwC, David assisted and guided a number of clients in their efforts to aggressively expand their business, through merger and acquisition, Initial Public Offering, and other strategic transactions.
David is a Certified Public Accountant and continues to be involved in the activities of the American and Pennsylvania Institutes of Certified Public Accountants. He has written and conducted many continuing education programs for accounting professionals and has lectured at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania on accounting for entrepreneurial businesses. David holds a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Drexel University.
As President and Chief Executive Officer of STI International® and Sales Training Institute, Inc., Phyllis Elnes has led the company's sustained growth over the past 27 years. She and a group of private investors purchased STI in 1981. The company had been marketing exclusively to individuals seeking a career in sales and it became obvious that the environment had changed significantly. STI required a different approach in order to sustain growth in the changing marketplace. She quickly re-focused the company's marketing strategy to target corporations that wanted to increase the productivity of their entire sales and customer service teams. This included a major expansion of curriculum choices and a major shift of marketing and sales efforts. It provided a solid platform for successful growth.Under Phyllis Elnes' guidance, the company has provided training in a variety of areas for high-profile clients including Allstate Insurance; Princess Cruises; Sysco Food Systems; Motorola and Milliman. She has received many awards from such organizations such as the Professional Saleswomen's Association, the U.S. Small Business Administration, Women in Business and the Chamber of Commerce.
Ms. Elnes earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Education and taught school for several years before changing her studies and redirecting her career into Business Administration. The combination of education and business experience has given her an important edge in leading STI, the recognized leader in sales and customer service training.
Ernest Graham, a Vice President of General Physics Corporation (GP), is an expert at designing and managing training systems for Fortune 500 companies with franchise operations.
Mr. Graham works closely with major Automotive Manufacturers providing consulting and full- time trainers on subscription-based, training and communication programs. These programs cover new and used vehicle sales, service, parts and accessories, offering blended learning solutions for dealership personnel. The most extensive of these programs focus on developing and sustaining top sales performance.
Mr. Graham serves as Marketing Executive for the Sandy Division of General Physics located in Troy, Michigan and Gardena, California and is a thought-leader for the company's sales training practice.
Mr. Graham is a graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit, MI and has acted as a curriculum development advisor to Ferris State University and has hosted Bowling Green University workshops for their master's degree program in Technical Communications.
Bruce Haghighat is founder and President of Tricore Interactive, a Princeton New Jersey based training organization established in 1994. At Tricore, Bruce has developed an organization that excels in the delivery of quality training to Fortune 500 companies. Tricore provides comprehensive planning and design of a broad range of intelligent, interactive, end-to-end professional training strategies and solutions to meet the specific set of learning objectives of each of its clients. Tricore’s programs are well recognized in the industry as being unique and innovative, and designed to educate, influence, and motivate to drive desired business results.
Bruce has over two decades experience in the training and consulting services. In the early 1990’s, Bruce started the interactive division of a highly successful and fast growth healthcare communications company. As Senior Director of Interactive Consulting Services, Bruce developed a team focused on the design and deployment of interactive, multimedia software solutions for its pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and healthcare clients.
Bruce was formerly with the Management Consulting Group at Ernst & Young, where he and his team provided strategic consulting services to Fortune 1000 clients. Bruce is a frequent contributor to leading learning and development trade journals including SPBT's FOCUS and ASTD's Training and Development magazines.
Bruce holds an MBA in Executive Management from St. John's University, New York and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
Randy has been is a senior consultant for over five years with FranklinCovey’s Sales Performance Group. He brings over 20 years of experience ranging from accomplished salesman and general manager to successful entreprenuer and board member. Early in his career as a salesman and general manager, he launched business in a new territory. Within three years he grew annual sales to $12 million.
His commitment to client satisfaction led him to co-found a start-up company in 1990. While focusing on client service and consistent results, the company evolved from a hardware supplier to a consulting practice. In 1999, Randy implemented the Helping Clients Succeed methodology with great results, both personally and professionally. By 2001 the company, which started with two employees, had grown to nearly 500 employees, with sales over $50 million.
Randy has sold business consulting services, sales performance consulting services, packaged solutions implementations, technical infrastructure solutions, and application integration and development to both Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. The complexity of the sales ranged from a single decision-maker to multiple decision-makers, affecting anywhere from 20 to 25,000 employees. The sales cycles ranged from three months to one year, with deal values ranging from several hundred thousand to roughly $3 million. In his career, he has sold more than $100 million in services to this industry. The largest single sale was a multi-year contract worth $40 million.
Throughout his career, Randy has received the following awards: the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award; Price Waterhouse Coopers “CEO Under 40” for innovative management philosophy and entrepreneurship; and the Arthur Andersen Strategic Leadership Award.
Randy co-authored with Mahan Khalsa Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play – Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship. He presently serves in various board capacities at a venture capital company. His responsibilities range from identifying investment opportunities and making investment decisions to providing strategic and day-to-day guidance to leadership teams of partner companies.
Dan Miller, a Senior Vice President of General Physics Corporation (GP), has led new business launch and product sales initiatives at GP for much of his career. In his role, he developed marketing and sales strategies for the development of GP’s highly successful training outsourcing practice and custom learning solutions. Using his extensive global experience, he led business development initiatives in North America, Latin America and, most recently, the Asia-Pacific region where he headed the establishment of new operations in Shanghai, China; Chennai, India; and Singapore.
Throughout his career, Mr. Miller has been engaged in customer solutions across market sectors, including Automotive, Food & Beverage, Electronics & Semiconductor, Media, Postal, Aerospace, Pharmaceuticals, and Energy. His success in sales and marketing demonstrates his passion for successful planning and execution of sales—and his deep understanding of the global marketplace.
Mr. Miller works closely with customers to develop highly effective strategies to grow their business. His tactic of educating customers through the development of an effective sales force has resulted in double-digit revenue growth in organizations.
Mr. Miller is a graduate of the New School University, holds an MBA from Anderson University and has earned an Executive Certificate in International Management from Thunderbird University.
Skip Miller is President of M3 Learning, a Los Gatos, CA-based sales training firm established in 1996. Author of the award winning ProActive Sales Management (AMACOM, 2001), ProActive Selling(AMACOM, 2003), Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting (AMACOM, 2005), and Ultimate Sales ToolKit (AMACOM 2007) books, Miller is a sought-after speaker and consultant. He has authored and implemented numerous American Management Association training programs, in addition to M3's hugely successful Advanced Sales School. He has been featured in many publications such as: The San Jose Dallas Morning News, Master Salesmanship, Sales and Marketing Management, Selling Power, The American Salesman, and Entrepreneur Magazine, and has been on stage with Tony Robbins who claims Skip is one of the best sales trainers in the business, and is a regular guest on business talk radio.
As President of M3 Learning, Mr. Miller has provided sales and sales management training and has keynoted sales events to hundreds of companies worldwide. M3 Learning was designed, "to make a salesperson better on each individual call." ProActive Selling™ is unique in its focus on the tactics of selling and proactive sales cycle control.
An instructor for American Management Association (AMA) in the areas of Sales, Sales Management and Sales Force Automation, he has additionally authored and advised on AMA training programs and is the Chairperson for the AMA Sales Leadership Conference.
His sales management book ProActive Sales Management has been consistently ranked #1 on Amazon.com for sales management books for the last three years.
Previously, Skip was a Vice President for Dataquest, a leading high technology market research firm and Mcdonnell Douglas. His experience in sales, marketing, and operational management spans 25 years
Linda Richardson, the founder of Richardson, is a recognized leader in the sales training industry. An educational psychologist and consultant, Linda brings twenty-eight years of sales consulting and training experience to Richardson. Linda now serves as Chairman and Curriculum and Sales Strategist.
Linda, a thought leader in the sales training industry, is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling, which is the cornerstone of Richardson's methodology.
Linda is the author of nine books, available in over 15 languages, on selling and sales management, including her most recent works, The Sales Success Handbook - 20 Lessons to Open and Close Sales Now, Sales Coaching - Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management courses at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. She is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences and has participated in events hosted by AIG, Chubb, Dean Witter, Goldman Sachs, National Association of Women Business Owners, Pitney Bowes, and Wharton.
With a background in education, psychology, and business, Linda began her career in the sales training industry in 1979 as a consultant. She was a manager of a global human resource firm. She has been published extensively in industry and training journals and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation's Business, Selling, Selling Power, Success, The Conference Board Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Linda currently serves on the Mayor's Council for the Arts for the City of Philadelphia, and is a Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She served on the United States Small Business Administration President's Council from 1991 to 1993.
Linda received a Master of Science degree in educational psychology from Temple University.
Mike Willoughby, GP Sales Director in the UK, has worked in financial services and banking for over 25 years. He is a certified practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and is accredited as an Executive Coach and Best Year Yet Program Leader, working with people at all levels within the client business.
Mr. Willoughby has developed numerous Customer Service, Sales, Sales Management and Leadership programs at a practical, easily implemented level across a range of businesses, which have included Financial Services and Retail environments, as well as other industries such as Automotive. Many of his clients are blue-chip companies based in the UK, Ireland; but he has also worked in the United States and the Caribbean.
Mr. Willoughby operates from his fundamental belief that the customer should be at the center of any business operating model. Each customer’s experience is fundamental to the sale, whether it is a product sale or a less tangible sale of services. He ensures that the business leaders and managers are there to equip the salesperson with the product, attitude, skills and enthusiasm that make the customers’ engagement one they want to repeat.
Yvonne Sletmoe Wilson, Director for GP’s Custom Sales Solutions, leads development training and communication strategies for GP’s clients. With over fifteen years of experience in adult learning and training consulting, Yvonne oversees the strategic approaches and successful launch of Custom Sales Solutions for multiple market sectors, including retail, consumer electronics, mobile industry, direct selling, finance and high-tech. By staying abreast of training, interactivity and marketing trends, Ms. Wilson identifies and proposes opportunities to enhance clients’ training strategies for their sales forces.
Prior to joining GP, Ms. Wilson worked in corporate and retail training, leading companywide training initiatives for a major retailer and statewide initiatives for a non-profit organization. Her experience ranges from instructional design and curriculum development to face-to-face training, needs assessment and evaluation methodologies. In addition, Ms. Wilson has implemented sales training incentive and promotion programs, helping her clients ensure the adoption of their training and sales solution strategies. She is a versatile training and development leader with experience in leading and managing teams, account management and business development.
Yvonne makes her home in Portland, Oregon, working with GP’s Via Training division, as a member of the Via leadership team. Ms Wilson is a graduate of Portland State University and has completed coursework in instructional design, web design and training strategy.
Who's Who Customer Thought Leaders recognizes those significant contributors to the Sales Training Learning Community who represent corporations, government agencies, and academic institutions. These Who's Who Thought Leaders are available for member inquiries by clicking the “Ask The Expert” button.
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