The Management Curve

I’ve invited a select group of sales management trainers, consultants, and product developers to join me in this discussion of how sales technology is and will change how the sales function is managed. By no means are we all in agreement–hopefully that will lead to a fuller discussion and a broader understanding of the impact sales metrics technology will have on sales leaders, salespeople, and the companies that employ the products.

Management Trainers/Consultants:

Jonathan Farrington: CEO, The JF Consultancy and its parent, The Sales Corporation, France
Jonathan is a globally recognised business coach, mentor, author, and consultant, who has guided hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels. Challenging assignments took him from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and the USA, providing him with the opportunity to work with a number of the largest and most successful international corporations including: IBM, Wang, Legal & General, Andersen Consulting, Litton Industries and The Bank of Tokyo. Jonathan’s first book, “Tougher At The Top ” will be launched in September 2008

Paul McCord: Blog owner and President of McCord Training, USA
Author, sales trainer, speaker, and management consultant, Paul has over a quarter decade experience selling, managing top performing sales teams and departments, and has trained thousands of salespeople from hundred of companies in dozens of industries. Clients such as Microsoft, Dell, UBS, GE, Siemens, and Mass Mutual rely on Paul to help them increase their sales team’s effectiveness.

James Obermayer: Principal, Sales Leakage, USA
Jim is a principal in Sales Leakage Consulting, Inc., an Orange County, California based sales and marketing strategy consulting firm and a principal of Cerius Consulting. He specializes in helping small to medium-size companies identify sales and marketing leakage issues that stifle sales growth and waste valuable marketing dollars. Aside from consulting, his career has been equally divided between sales and marketing positions in business-to-business corporations. He is the author of Managing Sales Leads: Turning Cold Prospects into Hot Customers.

Silveraman Swaminatha: CEO, Customer Equity Solutions, India
Formerly Executive VP of icontact, India, Swami has extensive experience in sales and marketing with an emphasis on combining technology, data and services to help companies create an actionable analytical framework to optimize performance and accelerate real-time customer engagement.

Jan Visser: Founder, Sales Team Tools, USA
Jan has over 10 years of progressive experience in direct sales, sales management, business development, international marketing and technology management in highly competitive segments of the IT industry. A senior executive, strategic thinker and proven producer of sales and profits with ability to pinpoint business opportunities and plan, develop and execute effective business strategies under challenging market conditions. A high-energy leader with distinctive people skills.

Michael Webb: CEO, Sales Performance Consultants, USA
Michael founded Sales Performance Consultants, Inc., to help business executives make their sales funnels flow faster, and is the foremost expert on sales process improvement. He has worked with clients such as American Express, 3M, Marriott, and many smaller companies to improve their sales processes and results. He also works with certain sales training firms and CRM firms to help integrate the best selling practices into their client’s sales operations. He is the author of Sales and Marketing The Six Sigma Way.

Sales Performance Researchers:

Dave Stein: President, ES Research Group, Inc., USA
Dave is an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of sales performance, sales effectiveness and especially sales training. He writes the Smart Sales column for Sales and Marketing Management magazine and is the author of How Winners Sell. In 2005 Dave, along with former Gartner president of research, N. Adam Rin, founded ES Research Group, Inc. Dave is quoted and recognized in leading business magazines and websites, including Fast Company, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Inc., Fortune, and Forbes. In April 2008 Dave was appointed as Visiting Professor of Sales and Sales Management at the Dublin Institute of Technology, where he delivers seminars on the subject of international selling.

Product Developers:

Razi Imam, USA: President, Landslide Sales Workstyle Management, USA
Razi has over 18 years experience in global marketing and business development, as well as over 10 years sales and sales management experience where he adopted the consultative and solution selling approaches. He has hired, trained and implemented a global sales force, developed a global distribution channel, and formed strategic partnerships with leading system integrators. Razi has held executive positions with Wang Labs, IRIS Technologies, Display Systems, CoManage, and Cramer Corporation.

Patrick Stakenas: President, ForceLogix, USA
Patrick has over 20 years of industry executive and entrepreneurial experience and has served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations at CCC Information Services, FileNet, and OpenText. He also started the US Operations for an international CRM company, where he successfully grew annual revenue to $14 million within 18 months which led to a successful acquisition. Earlier in his career, Patrick served for 13 years with Moore Corporation in various sales management and executive roles where he created the foundation for what is now ForceLogix’ industry leading Sales Force Optimizer suite of solutions.

Alan Timothy: Chief Scientist of i-Snapshot, UK
Consistently named one of the 50 most influential individuals in data technology in the UK, Alas formed i-Snapshot in 2007 to provide sales management with the metrics they need to significantly improve their sales team’s performance. He has degress in Medial Bioteriology, Mathmatics and an MBA from UCLA. I-Snapshot now has clients in 8 countries and has recently launched their North American operations