Sales Awards Blog

Salesify, Inc. of Redwood City, California USA, a provider of outsourced B2B sales and marketing services, won the Stevie® Award for Sales Department of the Year - Services in the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. (Entries for the 2012 awards are now being accepted.)  Here we look at how the department’s system works.

For a company in the business of accelerating revenue for its customers, it seemed only natural to turn the talents of its sales team to its own sales efforts.

Using the same system that Salesify uses for its clients, the telesales team turned its talents to growing the company’s revenues.

The Salesify system has four tiers: 

1. Contact Discovery

The company’s research team developed its own customized B2B contact list containing current and accurate data.

2. Account Profiling

The team used a combination of online and telephone research to compile account intelligence profiling prospective accounts.

3. Lead Generation

The team leveraged creative content to nurture inquiries. They verified interest to confirm the presence of the most critical components that make up the lead: Interest and need.

4. Appointment Setting

Salesify’s experienced appointment-setting team further qualified leads and set confirmed appointments, which were then converted into highly qualified business opportunities.

High Productivity

The team’s overall productivity was high, with an average dial out—without the use of dialers—of 136 calls per day across a team of 8 sales people. With this level of activity, the team was able to generate on average 12 appointments per rep per month. In addition, the team closed an average of 18 new logo accounts per month—an average of 2.25 new deals per rep.

Quality Customers

While the range of companies that the team targeted and converted to customers included both small and large accounts, including Fortune® 500-listed companies, approximately one-fifth of closed deals included companies that were category leaders.  Revenue growth was also impacted because the team progressively increased the average deal size by almost double across all deals.

“In addition to amazing productivity, the sales team successfully built traction with new product offerings allowing for an increase of our company’s service portfolio. For example, the team successfully added event promotion services into the mix this year, which they were able to both cross sell to existing customers and sell to prospects,” said Raj Hajela, Salesify COO and head of Sales.

Retaining Customers

The Salesify sales team worked closely with Operations to integrate new back-end delivery processes and manage customer expectations of deliverability, which enabled Salesify to close 2010 with no meaningful customer attrition. Customer escalations were also reduced to 18% over the previous year.  While this speaks volumes for the Operations teams' evolution and commitment to high quality, it also reflects the sales team's effectiveness in setting the right expectations to matching the ability of the delivery teams.

In 2010, without any increase in team-size, the telesales team was able to deliver year-over-year growth for Salesify of over 50%, despite the depressed economy.

The company has made the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Fast 50 for two years running (2009 and 2010) and was named to Inc. magazine’s 2010 list of fastest-growing private companies. 

Commented Raj: “Our strong productivity combined with the team’s ability to listen to the customer and meet customer needs resulted in our strongest revenue growth to date. Salesify is honored to be a winner of a 2011 Stevie® Award. Our sales team’s unique accomplishment is testimony to Salesify’s ability to support the success of our customers and fuel their growth.”

About Raj Hajela

Raj Hajela has 20 years experience in high technology sales, sales operations,
and inside sales. As co-founder and COO of Salesify, Raj manages the company’s contact centers and internal sales team. Prior to co-founding Salesify, Raj was responsible for all direct and channel sales for Virtela in India.  He established Virtela’s first India-based B2B inside sales team to support all the company’s U.S. field sales teams. Previously, Raj had been Head of Business Development at TangibleData, had held a senior sales role at MCI, and had led a successful business consulting practice with clients such as Comdial Corporation and Innodata.

About Salesify

Salesify, a provider of outsourced B2B demand-generation services, helps its clients create pipeline and accelerate revenue by identifying, profiling, nurturing, and contacting the right decision makers within their clients’ targeted customer and prospect accounts. Salesify services include custom, targeted B2B contact lists; account profiling and competitive research; phone-based lead nurturing campaigns and content syndication; appointment setting; inbound lead generation qualification services; and CRM database cleansing. Salesify delivers high quality, cost-effective services and programs tailored to address each customer’s unique requirements. With over 300 clients, Salesify has a proven track record of helping some of the world’s largest technology companies drive revenue. For more information, visit salesify.com or call 1-888-557-2537.

Q&A with Jeffrey Max, CEO of Venda, Inc., a provider of multichannel commerce solutions, which won the Stevie Award for Best Business Service Web Site in the web awards categories of The 2011 American Business Awards. Here we talk with Jeffrey Max, CEO, about convergent commerce and the next evolution in marketing.

What three ways can retailers and brands best utilize multichannel marketing to increase sales?

Nowadays we are seeing a convergence of disparate channels into a cohesive brand and shopping experience.  The following are just three of the ways retailers and brands can take advantage of this:

1. Use social media as an engine for the whole shopping experience
Merchants and businesses used to think only in terms of running the different sales outlets for their business—brick-and-mortar stores, online channels, social media—as different and separate entities.   The Internet was only used for online sales, whereas today it is the primary channel for social media, brand projection, online engagement, or brand affinity and PR.  Companies should now consider social media as an engine for the whole shopping experience, and since people prefer to carry out this activity with friends and family, social media is a natural fit.

2. Make sure your channels are mobile-optimized
The most social tool of all is the mobile phone, which allows customers, devotees, and fans to engage with brands wherever and whenever they choose. Customers used to have to walk into a shop or sit in front of a computer to find what they were looking for. Now engagement can be all-pervasive.

3. Embrace and prepare for location-based services
Using the leverage of online shopping empowers customers to shop or purchase wherever and whenever they want. New opportunities utilizing location-based attributes of mobile technology can enable brick-and-mortar stores to engage with the customer and can allow merchants to promote specials, discounts, and new items when the customer is physically in or near the store. Overall, businesses need to think in a holistic way and embrace a range of technical tools, for example linking websites to in-store promotions. 

What item of news recently caught your eye and why?

This story is a few months old now, but I was fascinated to learn that when Larry Page returned as CEO of Google back in April, one of the first things he did was to outlaw multitasking at meetings, one of my pet peeves.

Do you have a favorite business app?

From the consumer’s perspective, I like to keep an eye out for shopping apps. One of the most useful is Catalogue by The Find (for iPhone and iPad), which delivers a very usable interface for scanning company catalogs. If you find something that interests you, simply tap on the screen and it will take you to that catalog’s website so that you can purchase it.  This app definitely expands boundaries for consumers.

If you could choose another profession, what would it be?

I started out as a professional yacht captain delivering large yachts around the world; I then went on to have a fruitful career as a commodities trader on Wall Street, which morphed into a software and services company providing risk management tools for banks and securities exchanges. While I’ve been fortunate to have already had several exotic and exciting careers, working now in eCommerce offers exposure to a wide variety of organizations—from fashion to government agencies to museums—and at the same time it’s at the forefront of  how people interact with technology and how it influences their lives every day. This provides all the intellectual stimulation that I need.

What quality or qualities do you most value in your business associates?

Integrity, enthusiasm, and execution. A good business relationship is built on trust and execution.  Both the provider and the consumer expect us to deliver, while at the same time we expect our customers to operate with integrity.

What do you think is the worst bad habit to have at work?

Multitasking.  I’ve already mentioned that Larry Page has banned it from Google meetings, but across my professional career I’ve found more and more that the attention span of individuals is dropping, along with standards of professional courtesy. I find that there are real business benefits to being fully present and engaged when meeting with clients.

As someone at the top of your profession, what keeps you inspired or makes you hit the ground running in the morning?

Every new day brings new opportunities and challenges. We are working on the creative side of new technologies that are changing the way things are done.  Right now the main growth in retail is online, and these new tools are influencing the way people live their lives.  So, other than actually saving lives like a doctor or surgeon, being a catalyst for change is highly exciting and rewarding.

About Jeffrey Max

Jeff joined Venda in 2003, and was responsible for establishing the company’s North American operation. A serial technology entrepreneur, Jeff brings the company more than 25 years of leadership and experience creating, growing, and transitioning software and services companies.

Jeff has been a leading voice of innovation in the eCommerce industry, beginning with Venda’s introduction as the first enterprise-scale, cloud-based eCommerce offering in the US, to the Company’s current vision of omni-channel Convergent Commerce.

Prior to joining Venda, Jeff was a principal at PLR Advisors, a capital market advisory firm, CEO of Whitelight Technologies (sold to SunGard in 2003), Director of International Market Development at OptiMark Technologies, and CEO of Systems Development Corporation (sold to Telkurs in 1996). He currently serves on the Boards of several cloud-computing start-ups.

About Venda

Venda is a global provider of multichannel commerce solutions. Customers embrace comprehensive online, mobile and social commerce, international expertise, end-to-end fulfillment solutions, and transparent pricing that yields superior ROI. Venda customers include industry leaders Tesco, Superdrug, JVC, Urban Outfitters, Condé Nast, and Jimmy Choo. Venda has offices in New York, London, and Bangkok.

What do you think of Jeff's advice for retailers and brands?

Bulldog Solutions, Inc. of Austin, Texas USA won the Stevie Award for Demand Generation Program of the Year in the sales awards categories of the 2011 annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's premier honors for customer service, call center, and sales professionals.  Bulldog Solutions won for their work with client Motorola on “Mobile Advantage 2010: Change the Game,” a virtual conference produced by Motorola Enterprise Solutions.  (Entries for the 2012 edition of the awards are now being accepted.)

Mobile Advantage 2010: Change the Game is a virtual conference (a “trade show” offered solely as an online experience) that was produced by Motorola Enterprise Solutions on October 6, 2010 and offered subsequently in an on-demand capacity. The opt-in conference featured thought leaders from Motorola and in-depth looks at devices, applications, and technologies being developed by Motorola for mobile enterprise applications including field service, field sales, retail, healthcare, utilities, manufacturing, and transportation/distribution. It was designed to re-enforce Motorola’s leadership in enterprise solutions, strengthen partner relationships, and generate sales opportunities.

Virtual conferences are generally produced by a publication or trade group, with individual sponsors across a range of solutions providing “booths” and information and receiving lead data in return.  In this case, however, Motorola and its demand-generation agency Bulldog Solutions used the event to showcase Motorola’s own expertise and cutting-edge products, including the recently introduced ES400 Enterprise Digital Assistant.

Seeing the Big Picture

The virtual conference gave Motorola partners a chance to understand the Motorola Enterprise Solutions group “big picture” as well as to take a closer look at specific services and solutions by visiting online booths and downloading briefings and other information. Using the virtual conference platform, Motorola was able to collect data on registrants’ interests and behavior—data that would drive targeted programs post-event.

“The virtual conference strategy that we created for Motorola made it possible for the organization to collect useful data on registrants’ interests that could then be used to drive more targeted lead-generation programs after the event,” said Rob Solomon, CEO and founder of Bulldog Solutions.

The virtual conference featured 10 booths, covering vertical practice areas as well as specific solutions. Four Webinars and four “scheduled chats” were offered throughout the day, highlighted by a featured speaker, former NFL Head Coach Brian Billick. Original videos were used to draw attention to key issues. In order to generate registrant activity, the Motorola team partnered with the NFL to create a series of sweepstakes, offering prize levels based on depth of participation and engagement in the event.

Exceeding Goals

Motorola far exceeded its original registration goal, securing 1,761 registrants (the goal was 1,500). Subsequent to the live viewing, the conference remains online in an “on-demand” capacity. The level of engagement and quality of the leads, combined with a targeted follow-up plan, continues to generate additional registrants.

“This campaign is a great example of the creativity that BtoB organizations can use to produce demand-generation programs that spur prospect interest and create buzz while positioning their companies as thought leaders in their respective industries,” concluded Solomon.

About Rob Solomon

Rob Solomon is the founder and chief executive officer of Bulldog Solutions. He is an experienced entrepreneur who is passionate about sales and marketing. Before establishing Bulldog Solutions, Rob was the founder, chairman and CEO of USOL Holdings, Inc. ("USOL"), a publicly traded telecommunications company with offices and operations throughout the United States.

Rob currently serves on several corporate and non-profit boards. He is the founder of the Austin Chapter of Young Entrepreneurs Organization ("YEO") and an active member in the Central Texas Chapter of Young Presidents Organization ("YPO"). Rob also recently graduated from the Birthing of Giants program, a three-year leadership program sponsored by YEO, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Kaufman Foundation and Inc. Magazine.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from The University of Texas at Austin.

About Bulldog Solutions, Inc.

Bulldog Solutions transforms BtoB marketers' ability to deliver sales-ready prospects to meet business objectives and prove marketing's impact on sales.  Bulldog Solutions is a BtoB demand-generation specialist recognized for its approach by thought leaders in the industry. Bulldog Solutions is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information go to www.bulldogsolutions.com.

MD On-Line, Inc. of Parsippany, New Jersey, USA won the Stevie Award for Telesales Team of the Year in the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Entries are now being accepted for the 2012 edition of the awards - learn more at www.stevieawards.com/sales.

Several years ago, a study conducted by independent consultants Milliman Inc. concluded that the USA’s healthcare system could save an estimated $86 billion annually by adopting one procedural change: utilizing electronic data interchange (EDI) technology to automate claim filing, status inquiries, referrals, pre-authorizations, and eligibility.  $11 billion alone would come just from converting physicians’ offices from paper to electronic claims submissions, with estimated savings of more than $42,000 per year per provider. 

These dollar savings don’t even take into account the extra benefits that would
accrue from faster payments and turnaround on claim errors, improved cash flow, and patient satisfaction.

Not surprisingly, MD On-Line (MDOL), a proven leader in healthcare information technology transactions, was able to leverage these statistics as it methodically built a customer base of over 38,000 physicians in its first 13 years of existence.  That meant that the early-adopting customers had all been converted, leaving a pool of smaller, reluctant prospects for engagement and adoption. 

Targeting Reluctant Prospects

From July 2009, six highly motivated and internally trained telesales professionals at MDOL began targeting that high-hanging fruit.  The highly successful results demonstrated their ability to build from a strong base and to find innovative ways of exploding sales with the most reluctant prospects.

Four of the ways they achieved this were by:

1. Identifying new strategic selling approaches and closing an average of 430 new customers every month, which grew the total MDOL customer base by more than 20% to over 45,000 in the space of a year;

   
2. Leveraging relationships with health insurers to secure their lists of
paper-submitting providers, and developing special offers to attract the most
reluctant provider offices, including offers of free electronic transactions and packages that enabled offices to file to all insurers affordably;

3. Reaching out to the largest managed Medicaid Plan in the State of New
York with a plan for non-emergency transportation providers to submit their taxi or private ambulance charges electronically, thereby totally eliminating a time-wasting and paper-laden process that had been consuming costs for decades. 

4. Engaging MDOL’s largest insurer client with a promise to convert 60,000 claims from paper-based physicians to EDI in the first year. The result:  Over 1.1 million claims were converted in the first year, and the growing claims volume has spurred a multi-year contract extension, over 3,000 new customers, and monthly revenue increases of over $20,000.

New Challenges Ahead

The telesales team is under the direction of MDOL’s Sales SVP, Nick Dannenbaum.  The team is young by almost any company’s standards, with half of them just completing their first year at MDOL.

“To be recognized in this way by The Stevie Awards bodes extremely well for the success of our company's future initiatives,” said Nick Dannenbaum on receiving the award early in 2011. He added: “If this is what the team could accomplish behind our core product that has been on the market for more than a decade, I can't wait to see what they will be able to do with our new products.”

The team’s next challenge is learning about and selling the Company’s first Practice Management Software, and enlisting customers in the company’s first Electronic Health Records.  Both products are designed to drive further cost and time efficiencies for healthcare providers and to transition MDOL’s customers into the next generation of healthcare EDI.  Based on their performance, selling new and innovative should be no problem.

About Nicholas Dannenbaum

Nicholas Dannenbaum joined MDOL in 1997 as its first Account Executive, personally securing thousands of customers and signing the Company’s 35 largest insurance/payer clients.  Today, Nick is SVP Sales and leads the Telesales, Provider/VAR Sales, and Account Management teams, while playing an integral role in the marketing of MDOL and in shaping the Company’s strategic direction.  One of the early visionaries to enter Healthcare EDI, Nick has become one of the industry’s most experienced Healthcare EDI sales and marketing professionals and is dedicated to the training and growth of his teams. 

About MD On-Line

MD On-Line Inc. is a leading provider of electronic data interchange (EDI) solutions that facilitate the critical connection between doctors and payers. Its offerings enable electronic data capture and entry, and claim and transactional data submission to payers. Co-branded and endorsed by more than 30 major insurers and increasing its presence in providers' offices of all sizes, MD On-Line is transacting the business of healthcare, helping to make the healthcare system significantly more cost-effective by eradicating inefficiencies. In addition to claims processing, MD On-Line offers real-time services for eligibility verification, referrals, claim status inquiries, and electronic remittance advice (ERAs). Its "all-payer" EDI solutions encompass a network of more than 2,000 payer organizations and are used by more than 45,000 healthcare providers nationwide. For additional information visit www.mdon-line.com.

  Tweet

Xactly Corporation of San Jose, California, has won multiple Stevie Awards in The American Business Awards over the years, including for Best New Company of the Year in 2008 and for Best Overall Company of the year (up to 100 Employees) in 2010.

For years, companies have known that how they compensate their sales teams directly impacts business performance.  To quote from Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of GE: “Show me a company’s various compensation plans, and I’ll show you how its employees behave.”  The right sales plans can motivate selling behavior to increase profits, control expenses, and drive consistent quarter-over-quarter results.

For most companies, however, the cost of traditional enterprise applications to automate this function was out of reach. According to Xactly Corporation founder and CEO Christopher Cabrera, the incentive sales process in nearly 90 percent of companies was “still managed by manual, spreadsheet-driven processes that breed errors and disputes, don't cost-effectively scale, can't easily accommodate plan changes and additions, and ultimately don't align sales behaviors with corporate goals to effectively drive profits.”

 

Early in his career, while head of operations at a large software company, Cabrera had found himself time and again forced to walk away from sales opportunities because the mid-market-sized company he was working for simply couldn’t afford the initial costs and ongoing maintenance of an enterprise sales incentive compensation application.

Around this time, an on-demand software delivery model was starting to gain
noticeable traction.  Despite Cabrera’s evangelizing this concept, his company balked at using an on-demand offering.  Cabrera left that company and went on to launch Xactly in March 2005.

A Simple Idea
Cabrera’s idea was to take a complicated and challenging function—managing sales compensation—and automate it to become a simple and cost-effective solution for the huge and underserved mid-market.  His company, Xactly, has done exactly that, and has been instrumental in radically opening up the market.

By 2007, Xactly had signed 100 customers.  The company was managing more compensation, and more compensation complexity, than any other on-demand vendor today.  Xactly software was helping its customers to manage nearly $1 billion in sales compensation annually. 
 
Sales Performance Management
In 2008, Xactly moved into a much larger emerging-market category called Sales Performance Management (SPM).  In 2006, Gartner had predicted that “a sales performance management market will coalesce around best-of-breed vendors largely originating from the sales incentive compensation management market.” 

Xactly’s compelling value proposition for potential customers, said Cabrera, was that “the convergence of SPM and on-demand SaaS delivery has created a new, affordable way to improve sales effectiveness. We let companies automate and integrate strategic sales and finance business processes, and let individuals, from sales reps to top management, make better, more informed and timely decisions.

“In the on-demand world, the customer holds all the cards and can kick an on-demand vendor out of the game at any time. Hence we're driven by the notion that each customer's business must be earned anew every day. Xactly's over 90 percent customer-renewal rate is, we think, testament to our culture.”

Building upon its leadership in on-demand Sales Compensation Management (SCM) software, Xactly was the first vendor to deliver in this market.
 
Stellar Results in Uncertain Times
In spite of the downturn, Xactly continued to deliver stellar business results in both 2009 and 2010.  At the same time, the company increased year-over-year revenues by more than 50 percent , and grew its customer base by more than 60 percent—including a sharp increase in international customers.

The company’s success is due in part to its strong customer-centric culture and ability to help customers turn sales into a strategic competitive weapon. With both excellence in service and solutions—Xactly Incent™ and Xactly Express™—Xactly has maintained a renewal rate of more than 90 percent over the past three years. In addition, more than a third of the company’s customers added additional subscribers or modules.

According to Cabrera: “Incenting the right sales behavior has never been more important. The value of automating compensation and incenting right in order to improve sales results was evident throughout our customer base, as our projects consistently made it to the top of the ROI stack.”

Customer Joe Dawe, Senior Director of Business Operations at Akamai, also added, “Xactly Incent delivers incredibly rich information for making strategic and tactical decisions around our global sales compensation and performance. It has removed a significant distraction for finance and sales, lets us focus on
other business challenges, and enables us to more effectively address our market.”

On the partner front, Xactly has a close association with salesforce.com, which recently made a strategic investment in Xactly. In addition, Xactly continued its strong relationship with Oracle as a member of its CRM On Demand Inner Circle, an elite group of key partners forming an integrated ecosystem of complimentary solutions offering extended value to Oracle CRM On Demand customers.

The Workforce Behind the Success
Cabrera is justifiably proud of his company, but is most proud of the workforce behind its success. Xactly remains committed to providing a positive work environment and giving back to local communities, under the umbrella of the Xactly One™ program.  Xactly employees have participated in building houses for a local Habitat for Humanity, orchestrated a food drive for Feeding America, partaken in the American Cancer Society's Daffodil Days Campaign, and much more.

About Christopher Cabrera
Christopher Cabrera has more than two decades of senior management experience at both early-stage and public companies. At these companies, he managed sales, operations, and business development. Cabrera is a noted expert in issues relating to sales performance management and enterprise and SaaS delivery models. Prior to founding Xactly, Cabrera was SVP of operations for Callidus Software and served as director of North American channel sales at Silicon Graphics.

About Xactly
Xactly Corporation is the market leader in on-demand sales performance management. The company’s SPM Suite of products enables sales and finance executives to design, implement, manage, audit, and optimize sales compensation management programs easily and affordably. Xactly’s solutions automate the process of aggregating data from disparate systems into a secure, hosted repository and enable companies to leverage this business data, which is the lifeblood of sales performance management. Xactly helps companies improve operational performance, optimize sales effectiveness, proactively manage risk and compliance, and maximize profits. The Xactly family of products is used by sales and finance executives, compensation analysts, sales operations, and sales professionals across a variety of industries ranging from SMBs to large enterprises. For more information go to www.xactlycorp.com.

Tweet

On Monday, February 21, more than 200 customer service, call center, and sales executives from the U.S.A. and several other countries will gather at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida for the presentation of the 5th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.  Tickets are still on sale.

This is the world's premier sales awards and customer service awards competition. More than 800 entries were submitted this year, and 35% of them were recognized as Finalists through the scores of more than 50 preliminary judges. This year's Finalists are listed here - what do do you think of them as a group?

Can't get to Miami on Monday? Look for the announcement of the final results on the awards' web site on Tuesday morning.

Here are the organizations that have already booked their tickets for Monday's banquet.

Accenture BPO Services of BC  Vancouver BC Canada     
American Support  Chapel Hill NC
Archipelago Learning  Dallas  TX                 
Assurant Solutions  Atlanta  GA                
Assurant Solutions, Lawton, OK
Bronto Software Durham NC                        
Bulldog Solutions, Inc., Austin, TX
Capital One Financial Corporation  McLean  VA       
Carnival Cruise Lines  Miami  FL                  
Catapult Technology  Bethesda  MD                 
Ceridian Corporation  Minneapolis  MN                
ChannelAdvisor  Morrisville  NC               
CIGNA Government Services  Nashville  TN              
Comcast, Philadelphia, PA
Competence Call Center AG  Headquarters  Vienna Austria                               
Constant Contact, Waltham, MA
CustomInk.com  McLean  VA                
Cvent, McLean, VA
Daxko, Birmingham, AL
DeVry  Inc.  Oakbrook  IL
DiCentral Corporation  Houston  TX     
DYMO Endicia  Palo Alto  CA
eCornell  Ithaca  NY
EMKAY, Itasca, IL
Epicor Software Corporation, Irvine, CA
Everything Everywhere - Customer Operations (T-Mobile and Orange), United Kingdom               
Family Heritage Life Insurance Company of America  Cleveland  OH                               
Force3, Crofton, MD
Gazelle, Boston, MA
GlassHouse Technologies, Framingham MA       
IHG Salt Lake City UT
Infogroup  Omaha NE
Informatica Corporation Redwood City CA        
Information Builders, New York, NY      
iolo technologies  Los Angeles  CA       
Kraton Polymers, Houston, TX     
L-com Inc.  North Andover  MA
Litle & Co, Lowell, MA    
LiveOps, Santa Clara, CA
LivePerson, New York, NY
Marriott International  Bethesda  MD
Marriott Vacation Club International  Orlando  FL          
Marsh U.S. Consumer, Urbandale, IA
Mayo Medical Laboratories  Rochester  MN             
MD On-Line, Inc., Parsippany, NJ
Merchant Warehouse  Boston  MA                 
Métier  Ltd.  Santa Rosa  CA                      
Model Metrics, Chicago, IL
Mondial Assistance  Richmond  VA                 
Oakwood Temporary Housing  Los Angeles  CA           
Office Depot  Inc. Boca Raton  FL                 
OnStar, Detroit, MI
Overstock.com, Salt Lake City, UT
PAETEC Holding Corp.  Fairport  NY                 
Paycom Payroll LLC, Oklahoma City, OK
Paycor  Cincinnati  OH                    
Paylocity  Arlington Heights  IL                    
PetRays Veterinary Telemedicine Consultants, The Woodlands, TX        
PHH Arval  Sparks  MD                      
Portugal Telecom, Lisbon, Portugal        
Prescription Solutions/UnitedHealth Group, Irvine, CA
PSAV Presentation Services  Long Beach  CA          
Rosetta Stone, Arlington, VA
Safelite Solutions  Columbus OH
Sales Management Association  Atlanta GA            
SilkRoad technology, Winston-Salem, NC
Sundance Vacations  Wilkes Barre  PA              
SurePayroll  Glenview  IL                    
Tahitian Noni International  Provo  UT              
TATA Motors Ltd  India                
Telecom Italia SPA  Rome Italy               
Teva Neuroscience  Inc. Kansas City  MO             
The Brooks Group, Greensboro, NC
Toshiba America Business Solutions Inc., Irvine, CA     
TRUMPF Inc.  Farmington  CT            
TRX, Inc., Atlanta, GA               
US Postal Service Business Alliances, Southeastern, PA                           
USANA Health Sciences  Inc . West Valley  UT          
ValueSelling Associates, San Diego, CA      
Walker Advertising Inc, San Pedro, CA
Wheels  Inc.  Des Plaines  IL

Tweet

John Cushman is a member of the final judging committee for the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. His eSales & Services team at AT&T has won multiple Stevie Awards in the sales awards categories of the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

What item of news recently caught your eye and why?
While the tragedy in Tucson captured everyone’s attention, I found myself truly inspired by the various acts of heroism demonstrated by people from all walks of life.

What New Year’s resolution have you made and why?
I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions and instead prefer to build a 12-month roadmap for my top three professional and/or personal objectives.  I review my progress each quarter, and make any necessary adjustments during the course of the year. (After all, it is MY list!)

What book are you currently reading?
I am reading E$caping Oz: Protecting your wealth during the financial crisis.  It’s a book written by one of my “mentees” at AT&T, Jim Mosquera, and provides an easy-to-understand game plan for one to follow in order to build and sustain financial security.

What was the last movie you saw, and would you recommend it?
My wife and I recently went to see The Little Fockers, with Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro.  It was a hilarious family comedy, and well worth the price of a ticket.  The kid that plays Ben Stiller’s son in the movie is a riot!

What is your favorite sport or hobby?
My favorite sport is professional baseball—not just the major leagues but at all levels of play.  I recently started collecting baseball cards as a hobby, and sure wish my Mom hadn’t thrown mine away.  You would be amazed at how much a little piece of cardboard can appreciate in value over the years.

Who is your favorite historical figure?
I have many, but my all-time favorite is Gandhi, a fascinating man who was able to overcome oppressive tyranny with passive resistance.  I believe we all could learn much from this inspiring leader.

Who (apart from close family) is your favorite living person?
Nelson Mandela.  Here is a man of greatness who used reconciliation to cure a nation from apartheid atrocities.

If you could choose another profession, what would it be?
I would love to be the general manager of the New York Yankees for one full season, and then retire.  By the way, the current GM’s name is Cashman, so Cushman might not be such a stretch …

What quality or qualities do you most value in your business associates?
#1 – Business Ethics; #2 – Honesty; #3 - Loyalty

What do you think is the worst bad habit to have at work?
Sometimes, an individual who is intensely driven to success can lose sight of the bigger picture, or the ramifications that a single action can bring.  The ends do not always justify the means .

As someone at the top of your profession, what keeps you inspired or makes you hit the ground running in the morning?
Very strong espresso with lots of sugar gets me started!  Seriously, I really enjoy my work and the people associated with it.  I have had the benefit of working for one of America’s top corporations for a number of years, during an evolutionary period where change is occurring at an extremely rapid pace.  Challenge is there for the taking, every day.

What do you consider has been your greatest achievement in business?
Husband—Dad—Son, these are where my greatest achievements lie.  In business, I am fortunate to have had several opportunities to achieve success, but those achievements pale in comparison to those that have come in my personal life. [

What advice or useful tip would you give to someone who is just starting out in business?
The same advice I give to my own adult daughter and son:  Be professional; have perseverance; and be patient!

About John M. Cushman
John Cushman has an extensive background in product management, marketing, and operations leadership. His career spans a number of major defining points in the telecommunications industry, including 800 number portability, the expansion to new toll-free area codes such as 888, payphone compensation legislation, and the explosive growth in use of the World Wide Web for everyday business and information needs.  For the past three years, Cushman has been leading the vision, execution strategy, and day-to-day field operations for electronic sales and service, an online channel that has grown to represent more than $4 billion in annual revenue and $750 million in productivity savings for his corporation.  As Vice-President of eSales & Service, he is responsible for all aspects of B2B eCommerce for AT&T. With an operating budget of over $90 million, he leads a global team of almost 2,000 associates.

About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates—AT&T operating companies—are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high-speed Internet and voice services.  AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse® and AT&T | DIRECTV brands. The company’s suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world. In domestic markets, AT&T Advertising Solutions and AT&T Interactive are known for their leadership in local search and advertising. In 2010 AT&T again ranked among the 50 Most Admired Companies by FORTUNE® magazine.  Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com.

The following professionals participated in preliminary-round judging of the 5th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service from November 2010 to January 2011.  Their average scores determined the Finalists in the sales awards, call center awards, and customer service awards categories.  We can't thank them enough for their work this year.  Entries were up more than 60% over last year, so they had their work cut out for them!  Special thanks to Frank Powell of PetRays and Shannon Russell of Seattle Pacific Industries, the two judges who scored the most entries and are thus the winners of two free tickets to the February 21 awards banquet in Miami Beach.

Cheryl Alaniz, Director, Member Services, Topco Associates LLC, Skokie, IL
John D. Allen, President/CEO, Allen Worldwide Solutions Ltd, St. Thomas, ON Canada
Jane Blackwell, Community Outreach Manager, High Point Bank & Trust, High, Point, NC
Jeffrey Brooks, Senior Manager, Support Services, Peak 10, Charlotte, NC
Dawn Collier, Customer Service Manager, Sunco Carriers, Lakeland, FL
Patricia Cotter, VP Worldwide Operations, Netezza Corporation, Marlborough, MA
Derek Cunningham, VP-Sales, DAXKO, Birmingham, AL
Jan Delory, President, Sales Vantage Point, Raleigh, NC
James Donovan, VP/General Manager, National Inside Sales, Cbeyond, Atlanta, GA
Carolyn K Edwards, Communications Consultant, London, United Kingdom
David Figueroa, Adoption Analyst, eSales & Service, AT&T, Bothell, WA
Heisha Freeman, VP, Client Development, Quantum Relocation Services, Dallas, TX
Michael Gerard, VP, Sales Advisory Practice, IDC, Framingham, MA
Steve Gershik, Chief Marketing Officer, The Brand, Art & Technology Studio, Beachwood, OH
Jaki Glenn, Regional Senior Sales Representative, Taleo Learn, Taleo, Belton, SC
Bob Gooderl, Associate VP - Client Services, Symetra Financial, Bellevue, WA
Shane Hallen, Regional Vice President, Sales, PAETEC, Plymouth Meeting, PA
Joshua Harris, Senior Director, Program Sales, Direct Alliance Corporation, Tempe, AZ
Bill Hicks, Director of Business Development, The Sales Management Association, Atlanta, GA
Marie Holliday, EFT-ADV, MAAMET, President, EFT Spain, Murcia, Spain
Dustin Johnson, Vice President of Sales Operations, Market Force Information, Norcross, GA
Amanda Kendall, VP of Customer Exeprience, Unionbay Sportswear, Kent, WA
Patti LaChapelle, Manager, Training and Development, Marriott International, Bethesda, MD
Rebecca Lane, President, Epitome Health and Beauty Ltd, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
Seleste Lunsford, Executive Consultant, Sales Performance, AchieveGlobal, Tampa, FL
Robyn McNeely, Continuous Improvement Coordinator, CIGNA Government Services, Nashville, TN
Sharon Metzung, Publications & Graphics Manager, Lake Metroparks, Concord Township, OH
Jay Mitchell, Managing Director, Motum, LLC, Irving, TX
Alan Moak, VP & COO, Assurant Solutions, Atlanta, GA
Sean Murphy, Executive VP - eCommerce, CustomInk, McLean, VA
Reghunath Nair, Training Manager, Oman Insurance Company (PSC), Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Adam Patenaude, General Manager, Aloft Hotels, San Antonio, TX
Summer Poletti, Director of Client Relations, Payroll Tax Management, Inc., Santa Ana, CA
Matt Popinski, Director of Support Services, DAXKO, Birmingham, AL
Frank Powell, Marketing Director, PetRays, The Woodlands, TX
Bridgette Ridgeway, President & CEO, TaylorField, Brown Deer, WI
Peter Rifkind, Director of Client Service, UltraLinq Healthcare Solutions, Inc., New York, NY
Shannon Russell, Compliance Manager, Seattle Pacific Industries/Unionbay Sportswear, Kent, WA
Scott Sachs, Senior Director, Call Center Operations, Assurant, Wayne, PA
Stu Schlackman, Owner, Competitive Excellence, Richardson, TX
Kristina Schwende, Owner/Program Developer, Sabre Business Skills, Richmond, BC Canada
Ansa Sekharan, Senior VP, Global Customer Support, Informatica Corp., Redwood City, CA
Randy Selleck, Senior Director, Call Center Operations, Assurant Solutions, Atlanta, GA
Paula Sellergren, Director of Marketing, Mather LifeWays, Evanston, IL
Donnovan Simon, Director, Sales Support, SMART Technologies, Calgary, AB Canada
Alexsis Stephens, Human Resources Manager, Assurant Solutions, Lawton, OK
Ralph Stewart, Marketing Director, Maintenance Connection Inc., Davis, CA
David Stuart, Customer Support Manager, Halogen Software, Ottawa, ON Canada
Janice Sutherland, Head of UK Sales Contact Centres, Bank of Ireland, Bristol, United Kingdom
Christopher Tepas, Chief Marketing Officer, EMKAY, Itasca, IL
Linda Varrell, President, Broadreach Public Relations, Yarmouth, ME
Sundy Visbal, Director of Digital Strategy, Womenetics, LLC, Decatur, GA
Julia Zamorska, VP of Corporate Communications, iolo technologies, Los Angeles, CA

Tweet

We've just published a new tipsheet called 5 Tips for Winning Sales Awards in the 2011 Stevie Awards.  Get it here.

It summarizes the 5 best ways that sales and business development professionals can be recognized in the four Stevie Awards competitions in 2011 (which include the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, and the Stevie Awards for Women in Business).  For the most part it recommends the sales awards, management awards, and other categories that sales folks should focus on, and outlines the general submission requirements for those categories.

The following professionals have joined the sales awards final judging committee for the 2011 (5th annual) Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's leading competition for sales awards, contact center awards, and customer service awards.

The final entry deadline for the 5th annual competition is December 31.  Get your entry kit here.

Johnny Anderson, VP-Sales, Bulldog Solutions
Damian Artt, Senior VP-Worldwide Sales and Services, Wind River
Kieran Callaghan, VP-Direct Sales, Dish Network
Bob Conlin, VP-Marketing & Business Development, Accero
John Cushman, VP eSales & Service, AT&T
Dan Dapper, VP of Worldwide Sales & Operations, Right Hemisphere
Brent Dierking, Director of Business Development, NorthStar EMS
Jessica Eker, VP, Global Life Sciences Practice, TransPerfect
Chris Harrington, VP Americas Enterprise & Omniture Channel Sales, Adobe Systems
Michael Haske, VP-Sales & Marketing, Paylocity
Paul Hoffman, President of Worldwide Field Operations, Informatica Corporation
Suzanne King, Director of Sales Operations, XO Communications
Shane Lewis, Assistant VP - Sales, Sundance Vacations
Chino Nakagome, CEO, Moon Cake Limited
Mitch Sobocinski, National Account Manager, DHL Express
Jeff York, Chief Sales Officer, Paycom

These distinguished sales professionals join the Board of Distinguished Judges & Advisors that will perform the final judging in late January to determine the 2011 Stevie Award winners, who will be announced at a banquet in Miami Beach, Florida on Monday, February 21.