Speakers

Acuff is the CEO of Delta Point - The Sales Agency in Scottsdale, Az. Delta Point works with sales and marketing leaders to implement innovative ways to sell and market in today’s crowded marketplace. Their client list includes Abbott, AstraZeneca, Novartis Oncology, Roche, Hewlett-Packard, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Zebra Technologies, the U.S. government and the Australian government

Acuff was the vice president and general manager of Hoechst-Roussel Pharmaceuticals prior to its merger with Marion Merrell Dow. In his 20-year career at Hoechst, Acuff was "Salesman of the Year" twice and "District Manager of the Year" five times.

He also serves on the Advisory Board to Northern Illinois University’s sales program in their marketing department. His first book, The Relationship Edge In Business was published in 2004 by John Wiley and Sons. His second book, to be published in early 2007, will be a revised paperback edition of The Relationship Edge In Business. His third book, Stop Acting Like a Seller and Start Thinking Like a Buyer, will also be out in early 2007.

Joseph (Joe) Batista is responsible for building new business realities leveraging HP’s portfolio of assets, and driving new growth, strategy and implementation agendas that deliver real business results. Concentrating on building value by leveraging capital, human resources and market assets, Batista builds new ventures for both HP and his clients. Working with many emerging companies and larger enterprises, Batista is a consultant, a business strategist and a technologist with over 21 years of practical industry experience. Batista actively works with many emerging companies as a business advisor, formulating innovative technology, marketing and strategy for competitive advantage. Many large corporations seek his “creative application theory” of applying real world technology to business domain challenges. Awards include Who’s Who Among American Business Leaders, Who’s Who in Media & Communication and Who’s Who in the Computer Industry. Most recently, Batista was included in CIO magazine’s Top 50 Web Awards for building a leading-edge corporate portal to leverage internal knowledge assets. Batista is also coauthor with the Gantry Group on a wireless research paper entitled “Searching for Wireless Signals,” which focuses on best practices and return on investment for mobility projects. Batista is a guest lecturer at Boston University School of Management. He is featured in a recent book by Jim Dickie, The Sales and Marketing Excellence Challenge: Changing How the Game is Played (Smi Pub, 2003). He is included for his contributions and thinking on new growth strategies in a down economy. Batista holds a master of science from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor of science in marketing management from Bentley College Advance Management Programme at INSEAD University in Fontainebleau, France.

Mike Bosworth is a founding partner of CustomerCentric Systems, LLC. CustomerCentric Systems helps organizations shape their customer experience and build predictable revenue engines by integrating sales process with sales-ready marketing.

Bosworth is the author of Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets (McGraw-Hill, 1993) and co-author of CustomerCentric Selling (McGraw-Hill, 2003).

In addition to CustomerCentric Systems, Bosworth is a limited partner in Shepherd Ventures. He is an advisory board member for a number of information technology ventures, and he continues to develop new intellectual property for CustomerCentric Systems.

Bosworth began his career in the information technology industry in 1972 as an application support person for Xerox Computer Services. He was their top new business salesperson in 1975 and was promoted to national manager of field sales in 1979. From 1976 through 1982 he designed and delivered sales training programs for Xerox Computer Services. His years of experience, plus the knowledge he gained from working with Neil Rackham on the Xerox SPIN selling project, inspired him to start his own sales process consulting company in 1983.

Bosworth has a degree in business management and marketing from California State Polytechnic University. He has been a featured lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Stanford Program on Market Strategy for Technology-Based Companies, the American Marketing Association Customer Message Management Forums, the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, and the Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine. He is a member of the executive advisory board of the Fisher Institute for Professional Selling at the University of Akron. Bosworth is a speaker for numerous professional associations and major corporations. He is certified (CMC) by the Institute of Management Consultants.

Bob Carr has created a billion-dollar NYSE-listed company in less than a decade. Heartland Payment Systems, the company he founded in 1997, today is one of the largest processors of debit and credit card payments in the United States, processing nearly $40 billion of payments per year. By employing Bob’s unique views of business management, Heartland has established a reputation as an upstart competitor that redefined card processing services for small- to mid-sized merchants In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Bob Carr is one of the Philadelphia region’s most generous philanthropists: Together with his wife Jill, Carr founded "The Give Something Back Foundation," which is committed to donating $100 million of academic scholarships to disadvantaged students across the country Carr received a B.S. and M.S. in mathematics and computer science from the University of Illinois.

Al joined the ESR team in August of 2005 as a Research Fellow and principal analyst. Al?s background includes sales and marketing as well as training and education. Al founded the management consulting and investment advisory group Stamford Research in 2003 after leaving Gartner, Inc. ? the world?s largest IT research and advisory firm. At Gartner, Al was a principal researcher as well as a president of Gartner|eMetrix. Under his leadership, the Gartner?s Vertical Industries and eBusiness divisons tripled in size in two years. He grew Gartner|Software from a $400 thousand acquired company to a $25 million software provider. In his 13 year tenure at Gartner, Al hired, managed and trained sales forces for four different divisions. Prior to Gartner, Al was the founder of Nastec/Transform Logic?s Consulting & Education division which provided professional training world-wide.

Al serves on the board of directors of eNucleus, Inc. (OTC:ENUI.OB) and Turbodyne Technologies Inc. (OTC:TRBD.OB) and served on the advisory board of Sky Capital Holdings, Ltd. (LONDON: SKY.L), and serves on the boards of several privately held enterprises, and is an advisor to several private equity funds.

Alan Cervasio has more than 24 years of experience in sales and marketing and brings a unique combination of talents to his role as VP global sales strategy and talent relationship management at Marriott Vacation Club International. In 2003, MVCI was the recipient of the Stevie Award from the American Business Awards as the “Best Sales Organization In America” and in 2004 was recognized by Selling Power magazine as the “Best Service Company to Sell For” under Cervasio’s leadership. In addition to developing a world class sales organization, Cervasio’s expertise includes strategic development, performance analysis, and maximizing associate engagement through talent relationship management. His leadership and ability to drive execution specifically in selection, strength development, training, management development, and performance analysis has been recognized as World Class and a Best Practice by the Gallup Organization.

Mary Delaney is the chief sales officer for CareerBuilder.com, the nation’s largest online job site, with over 1 million jobs and more than 20 million unique visitors. In this position, Delaney is charged with developing sales strategies and programs to drive profitability and maximize market share. Leading a sales force of more than 1,100, Delaney is one of the key contributors to a company that continually outpaces its industry in revenue growth, growing over 80 percent annually compared to the industry’s 20 percent. Prior to joining CareerBuilder.com, Delaney managed the merger of Headhunter.net and CareerBuilder.com. In this capacity, she oversaw two acquisitions, designed a new sales compensation plan, launched new vertical markets, and redesigned sales processes and training programs. Delaney previously was SVP for InterCall, Inc., where she developed the long-term company vision and national sales strategy. While she was at InterCall, sales revenues grew from zero to over $200 million. Delaney received the 2006 Stevie Award for Best Sales Executive from the American Business Awards.

Jim Dickie is a partner with CSO Insights, a research firm that specializes in analyzing how companies are reinventing the way they market, sell to and service customers. He has over 25 years of sales and marketing management experience. Dickie began his career with IBM and Sterling Software and then went on to launch two successful software companies.

Dickie is a contributing editor for CRM magazine, the author of The Chief Sales Officers Guide to CRM and Insights into High Tech Sales and Marketing and the co-author of The Information Technology Challenge as well as The Sales and Marketing Excellence Challenge: Changing How the Game Is Played(Smi Pub, 2003). He is a board member for Baylor University’s Center for Professional Selling. Dickie is a guest host on World Business Review seen on PBS and an often-requested keynote speaker at CRM and e-business conferences.

Over the past ten years, CSO Insight’s survey of over 4,000 customer relationship management projects has become the benchmark for tracking the evolution of the marketing, sales and service automation initiatives. CSO Insight’s clients span multiple industries and include such firms as 3M, GE Capital, Great West Life, Federal Express, IBM, Accenture, StorageTek, Xilinx, Hewlett Packard, McKesson, Unocal, Cessna, Bell South, Vishey Electronics, and Intel.

In May 2000, Ian Gilyeat was appointed senior vice president, marketing and databases. From 1999 to May 2000, Gilyeat served as the vice president of marketing of Direct Alliance.

From 1997 to 1999, Gilyeat was a principal in New Media Communication, Inc., an interactive media consulting firm. From 1995 to 1997, Gilyeat was employed in several positions with Insight Direct, most recently as vice president, customer operations.

Prior to joining Insight, Gilyeat held several senior database marketing positions with Novell and WordPerfect Corporation. Gilyeat attended Brigham Young University.

Gerhard Gschwandtner is the founder and CEO of Personal Selling Power , Inc., a magazine and book publishing company located in Fredericksburg, VA. After seven years as an international sales and marketing executive in Austria, France, and the United States, he started a sales training consulting company and trained over 10,000 salespeople in Europe and the United States. In 1981 he started Selling Power on a shoestring budget and turned it into the leading sales management magazine, with a circulation of 138,000 subscribers in 67 countries. Today Personal Selling Power, Inc. has a book-publishing division, an audio-publishing division, and the leading Website in the sales industry, www.sellingpower.com, with over 100,000 individual visitors a month. Gschwandtner’s wife, Laura, is the editor of Selling Power, and two of their three daughters also work for the magazine. He has created 14 books on selling and management and two books on photography.

As vice president of UPS customer relationship management, Dale Hayes is responsible for the positioning of UPS products and services to the marketplace. Hayes’ group uses product marketing, US segment marketing, and global systems development strategies, to create solutions for UPS customers.

Working with sales, marketing and customer service, Hayes’ team has developed a long range systems strategy for the UPS small package business. This solutions focused approach has created segment based programs, enabling the synchronized movement of goods, funds and information, for many different business models.

In prior roles as vice president of brand and customer communications, Hayes was responsible for all brand communications including advertising, direct marketing, customer and interactive communications. In addition, Hayes oversaw sports and event marketing and the alignment of brand presence and identity.

As vice president of electronic commerce and technology marketing, Hayes helped to develop segment-based marketing strategies using database management and new technologies across the enterprise to drive consistent, coordinated customer communications.

During his tenure with UPS, Hayes has also held positions in international marketing and the U.S. products and pricing group. Prior to joining UPS, Hayes held management positions at British-owned The BOC Group, CIBA Geigy and FMC Corporation.

Interviews with Hayes have been published in magazines such as CIO, Sales and Marketing and Traffic World. Advertising Age named him one of its Top 100 Marketers in 2001. He is also an active speaker, presenting at conferences that include The Fortune Communications & Marketing Forum, Supply Chain World North America Conference & Expo, Internet World, The Stanford Global Supply Chain Forum, Northern Virginia Technology Council and The Association for Service Management International.

Hayes received a bachelor of science degree in textile chemistry from North Carolina State University and a master of business administration degree from The Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. He is a past chairman of The NC State Foundation.

Ron Hubsher is managing director of the Sales Optimization Group, an international sales consulting organization. The company assists clients in technology, financial services, professional services, and manufacturing. It accelerates sales by putting discipline and best practices into clients? sales organizations.

Hubsher has over 20 years of experience in sales, sales management, and business development. Prior to joining the Sales Optimization Group, Hubsher was in sales management at a leading CRM provider, UpShot (acquired by Siebel). A former management consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Hubsher has worked with, and helped provide thought leadership for, Fortune 500 companies on their sales, marketing, and business strategies.

Hubsher holds an MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a BS degree in operations research from Columbia University.

Bob Schmonsees is a leading authority on marketing and sales alignment and effectiveness. He has over 30 years experience as a successful high-tech marketing and sales executive and CEO, and he has been featured in several national publications periodicals, including the Wall Street Journal, Selling Power, B-to-B, and Sales & Marketing Management.

In the mid 1980s Schmonsees was one of the early visionaries of the CRM movement as CEO of one of the first commercially available contact management systems, and in 1995 he created the world?s first just-in-time sales coaching system for companies that sold complex business solutions. He has also been named to KM World?s annual list of the 100 people that matter in Knowledge Management, is one of the only people ever to have been granted a patent on a marketing and sales effectiveness process.

In the summer of 2005 Schmonsees? provocative new book Escaping The Black Hole: Minimizing the Damage from the Marketing / Sales Disconnect was published by Thomson Publishing and the AMA. In addition to rave reviews has quickly become the definitive work on B-to-B marketing and sales alignment and effectiveness.

Schmonsees was ranked the number one wheel chair tennis player in the world over 40 in the late 1980?s. In recent years he helped design and develop a specialized golf cart with a mechanical swivel seat that enables disabled golfers to play from a seated position. He currently shoots in the high 80?s, and last summer got his first hole-in-one!

Rick Snyder heads TANDBERG’s largest theatre of operation, which includes Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central and South America. Rick joined TANDBERG in April 2005. Most recently, Rick has been CEO of ReView Video, a value-added distributor of conferencing products and services. He brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in the technology industry. Previously, he was president of RG Strategy Associates LLC and also had held executive positions at Williams/NextiraOne, Claricom/Executone, Octel Communications and Bell Atlantic. Rick graduated from Loyola College with a degree in business administration.

Howard Stevens is chairman and CEO of The HR Chally Group, a sales performance consulting corporation providing personnel assessment and research services to more than 2,500 customers in 35 countries. Clients include such major international corporations as General Motors, Siemens, Global Imaging, Monster Worldwide, CareerBuilder.com, and Charles Schwab, as well as many mid- and smaller-size companies. Stevens specializes in sales benchmarking and is the creator of the original sales product lifecycle classifications. Chally created the largest statistical database and validation research for the evaluation of requirements for sales and executive positions, and in market and customer analyses. With diversified interests, Stevens is the author of several books on sales and management, including The Quadrant Solution (AMACOM Books, 1991), Selling the Wheel (Touchstone, 2001), and Achieve Sales Excellence (Adams Media, 2007). Stevens serves on the Sales Advisory Board for Ohio University and the Foundation Board of Wright State University.

Patrick Sweeney is a partner in Caliper, where he oversees marketing of the firm’s assessment and consulting practices. Throughout the past four decades, Caliper has assessed the potential of nearly 2 million applicants and employees for Avis, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, and some of the fastest growing smaller companies around the world. It has also helped professional sports teams, including the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Eagles, with their draft choices. Sweeney is the coauthor of How to Hire & Develop Your Next Top Performer (McGraw-Hill, 2000) and Succeeding on Your Own Terms (McGraw-Hill, 2006). Sweeney co-hosts a nationally syndicated, weekly radio show, Winning in Business, which features in-depth conversations with successful executives. A former speechwriter for New Jersey’s Governor Brendan Byrne, Sweeney has also been the editor of a city magazine and a writer for a public television program and has written feature articles for The New York Times.

Julie Thomas is president and CEO of ValueVision Associates. She has over 19 years of executive sales, sales management, and customer service experience. She has personally consulted and trained in a wide variety of industries and corporations, including Medical Present Value, Kadiri, Inc., Electric Lightwave, LLC, and Consul Risk Management, Inc.

Previous to ValueVision Associates, Thomas worked for Gartner, Inc. for 16 years, holding positions such as regional sales VP, sales training VP, national account manager, area sales manager, and director of client services. Thomas has extensive experience in both building sales teams and turning around under-performing sales teams. At Gartner, Thomas was recognized as a top performer in both sales and sales management. As VP, training for the Americas at Gartner, she was responsible for deploying ValueSelling to over 500 sales associates. She has customized and delivered the program to both inside and outside sales teams. While at Gartner she worked closely with ValueVision Associates to co-develop the account management program, which has now developed into the Executive ValueSelling program.

Thomas pioneered eValueSelling©, blended classroom and e-learning training programs to provide more cost effective, time sensitive and learner centric solutions. Thomas was also involved in deploying training programs on product knowledge, management process, interpersonal skills, personal development, negotiation skills, and presentation skills. Thomas is a noted public speaker, author, and consultant.

Donna Walker is an 18-year veteran of corporate sales management, training, process change reengineering and organizational design. Ms. Walker’s experience in large, complex organizations and her powerful combination of business process and information systems knowledge has resulted in her ability to successfully lead, develop and implement programs that consistently deliver outstanding business results.

Ms. Walker is currently the VP, Sales Operations & Training for Corporate Express, one of the world’s largest business-to-business suppliers of essential office, facilities, furniture and computer products and services, with sales of more than $5 billion in North America. During her 10 years at Corporate Express, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, her strong track record as a leader and ability to affect positive change have been rewarded with increasingly senior positions.

In her current role, she has successfully reengineered the sales training, incentive and compensation programs for a direct sales force of more than 1,600. The success of these complex and sensitive change management programs is directly influenced by her experience in organizational design, business processes, territory design and staffing models, as well as her natural ability as an organizational change agent. Ms. Walker also designed and implemented an inside sales program throughout North America that generates a significant sales lift.

Prior to Corporate Express, Ms. Walker gained valuable business consulting experience at Andersen Consulting where she led clients and internal teams to excellence in process improvement, leadership development and training for large manufacturing, pharmaceutical and electronics companies. The first seven years of her career were spent gaining valuable hands-on experience as a sales rep for Lewan and Associates.