Speakers

Dr. Eli Jones is associate professor of marketing and executive director of the Sales Excellence Institute and the Program for Excellence in Selling at the University of Houston, Bauer College of Business. He serves on the editorial review boards of professional selling journals, and is an ad hoc reviewer for the Journal of Business Research and the Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice, the American Marketing Association, Academy of Marketing Science, and the National Conference in Sales Management. He is also a co-author of the textbook, Selling ASAP: Art, Science, Agility, and Performance and a new professional book, Strategic Sales Leadership: BREAKthrough Thinking for BREAKthrough Results. Jones has won service excellence awards from the Bauer College of Business. He serves on the academic advisory committee for the Direct Selling Education Foundation in Washington, D.C., and is a past National Vice-Chair for the American Marketing Association’s Sales and Sales Management Special Interest Group. Before becoming a professor, Jones worked in sales and sales management for three Fortune 100 companies: Quaker Oats, Nabisco, and Frito-Lay. He has held significant leadership positions throughout his career, including being directly responsible for a team of 144 salespeople and a $44 million annual budget.

Monica Messer is the chief operations officer for infoUSA. Her leadership in a variety of positions at infoUSA over the last 25 years has helped infoUSA grow from a small $3 million direct-marketing list company to a $640 million leading provider of sales and marketing solutions. Over the last 15 years, Messer has led infoUSA’s successful integration of 32 companies acquired. Leveraging the company’s assets and talent pool made these acquisitions great contributors to infoUSA’s growth. Messer is on the board of Girls, Inc., and provides opportunities for young teenage girls to gain work experience at infoUSA in the summer. This past summer she organized, sponsored, and led a group of 40 Girls, Inc. girls on a community service trip to New Orleans to assist in Hurricane Katrina clean-up. Messer earned her business degree from Bellevue University in Omaha, NE, and did graduate studies in strategy and organization at Stanford University.

Jack Rhodes serves as both a lecturer of marketing and the director of the Sales Program at the University of Washington. Prior to serving at UW, Rhodes had over 25 years of industry experience, working as sales manager for Xerox Corporation, director of marketing for a division of Avery Products Corporation, vice president of two Times Mirror subsidiaries, and president of Rhodes & Co. Joining UW in 1999, Rhodes began serving as the faculty advisor for the university sales club in 2000. While still serving the university in that capacity, Rhodes also serves on the board of advisors for the Smith/Western Corporation. Rhodes’ professional affiliations include NAMTA (National Art Materials Trade Association), OPRA (Office Products Representatives Association), and SME (Sales and Marketing Executives of Seattle). Rhodes’ dedication has been demonstrated through his service on the boards of directors for all three organizations, his chairing of the NAMTA International Trade Show and Commission, and his founding of the NAMTA Scholarship Fund. Rhodes earned election to the NAMTA Hall of Fame in 1991.

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.

Daniel Strunk is a business professional with over 30 years of experience in developing sales, marketing, and customer relationship management programs. As a line manager, he has been instrumental in the success of many of America’s leading companies, including Procter & Gamble, Spalding, Ocean Spray Cranberries, and The Quaker Oats Company. As a consultant and President of BitterSweet Consulting Partnership, Dan has directed customer centric relationship management successes for high profile clients such as RJR Nabisco, Bausch & Lomb, NBC Television, the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, and ConAgra Foods. Strunk is a currently a full-time faculty member of DePaul University, where he serves as an Executive in Residence and serves as the Director of Partnership Development for the Sales Leadership Program at DePaul, a program developed to produce the next generation of sales professionals. He is coauthoring a text on customer relationship management titled CRM Principles for Contemporary Sales & Marketing. Strunk earned a BSBA at Boston College, magna cum laude, in 1973 and an MBA, with distinction, from the Boston University School of Management in 1975.

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.

Known as The Wingman, Rob "Waldo" Waldman is a professional speaker who teaches organizations how to build trusting, revenue producing relationships with their employees, partners, and customers while relaying his personal experiences as a combat decorated fighter F-16 pilot and businessman. After leaving active duty, Waldo began his civilian business career as the Director of U.S. Business Development for an international high-tech aviation simulation software company. He helped create and execute the sales strategy for the entire U.S. market and was a key facilitator in the company’s first partnership. Waldo then served as VP of a major tax consulting firm, increasing annual sales by over 15 percent after his first year with the company. As The Wingman, Waldo’s message is simple: Whether achieving greatness as a fighter pilot or in business, the same qualities that drive success apply: disciplined training, dedicated teamwork, impassioned leadership, and most of all…unwavering trust. More important, in business and life, you should never fly solo. His clients include UPS, Honeywell, Panasonic, Juniper Networks, NY Life, and Honda.

Jerry Whalen was named VP sales of the United States Postal Service in June 2003. In this role as an officer, Whalen is responsible for the achievement of $56 billion in commercial revenue with mailers, both large and small. He manages a large national organization, and in his brief tenure he has delivered unprecedented results in commercial revenue performance and has built a national platform for success. He comes to the Postal Service with a record of significant accomplishments at Xerox, where he spent 25 years in sales leadership positions. Throughout his career, Whalen has been responsible for multichannel organizations, which include direct and indirect sales and telemarketing. As manager of Customer Satisfaction and Sales Management Processes for Xerox, Whalen was responsible for developing systems for effectively managing the business, including forecasting, customer satisfaction, customer retention, and account planning. Whalen has extensive experience in both federal and commercial sectors. In all of his endeavors, he has been a national leader in business results, as well as customer and employee satisfaction

Mike Williams is a professor of marketing and director of The Professional Sales Institute at Illinois State University. Williams brings over 25 years of marketing and management experience to the role. He is an active member of the editorial review board for the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, and the Journal of Selling and Major Account Management. Williams also served over 10 years in top leadership roles for the National Conference in Sales Management. Williams has coauthored six textbooks, including Professional Selling: A Trust-Based Approach (South-Western College Publishers, 2005) and Sales Management: Analysis and Decision Making (South-Western College Publishers, 2003). Prior to his career in academia, Williams accumulated an extensive background in marketing management, research, and sales. Williams is also a research associate with the Competitive Intelligence and Strategy Center and the Market Assessment and Strategy Group. Williams takes an active role in several industry associations and has been recognized with numerous education and research awards, including the AACSB’s (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) Leadership in Innovative Business Education Award.