VP Sales Leadership

Know your people ...and your business

Know your costs, competitors and customers

Insist on realism

Set clear goals & priorities

Follow through

Reward the doers

Expand peoples capabilities

Know yourself

Benchmark and strive for constant improvement in process and lower sales cost
Planning & Performance Go Hand in Hand: In most industries the COGS is the largest expense item for business followed by cost-of-sales, typically the second largest expense item on a company's income statement. Generating the best possible return on your sales costs is key to the profitability and sustainability of a company. Sales organizations that miss their numbers cost the company profitability, market share, earnings and ultimately a company's market value and shareholder return. Benchmarking: It is critical to understand what drives the economic engine and at what a company can (and cannot) be the best at in the world. I firmly believe in benchmarking sales processes, methodologies, sales planning - every aspect of sales, resulting in best-in-class sales organizations that exceed objectives with profitable sales and growth, executing a clear sales strategy and methodology with the correct channel mix. Benchmarking and improving sales force effectiveness should be a constant objective of sales leadership.
The Result: Dan benchmarks all areas of sales to deliver profitable sales with constant performance improvement and lower sales costs.
Team performance: I have built and led high performance sales teams achieving top quota performance consistently. My references say “Dan...motivates his sales teams and produces results and Dan can be counted on to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
The result: Dan consistently won sales team and leadership achievement awards at Sequent, NCR, and Telesym.
Individual performance: Prior to moving into management at Sequent and building successful teams, I was one of the top performers at Sequent and prior to Sequent at NCR and Xerox.
General Management, Operations and Turn-Around
As a VP / Executive at Lumera, I led company strategy definition, market definition, product positioning, opportunities and business model.
I reorganized the company from matrix organizations to functional profit center business operating units with full P&L responsibility to the business unit heads, establishing clear priorities for the organization linking “strategy” and “operations”.
The result was a clearer delineation of responsibility as well as accounting clarity. The benefit to Lumera was the elimination of unprofitable product groups and positioning Lumera for purchase by GigOptix.
Strategic Investor Relations
Built comprehensive pro forma’s and managed budgets and P&L’s. Experienced lead presenter to VC’s, institutional investors, presenting to over 450 angel investors and public company Board of Directors. Held a key role in the funding of two companies: TeleSym and Lumera. The result: we raised $10 million in venture funding at Telesym and $41 million in an IPO at Lumera. The benefit to you: An accomplished and polished representative and speaker who can professionally represent your company to the financial community, industry conferences and investor relations.
Marketing and Product Development
At Lumera Dan led an innovative marketing group and leveraged social media innovations before they were popular. The result was web-site design awards for this early-stage company that beat out giants like Boeing, Microsoft and others. The benefit to you is an innovative thinker and marketeer.
Companies everywhere are engaged in product innovation warfare. Lumera was no different. Prior to joining Lumera, the organization had a plethora of products under development, just hoping one or two would be a success. I instituted the Stage-Gate Product Development process at Lumera to improve focus of limited resources and time to deployment. The result was the elimination of unprofitable products. The benefit was having resources properly focussed on profitable products, reducing development costs and accelerating time to market.
Time-to-market is a critical measure of any company. At Lumera I instituted the Pragmatic Marketing Framework (see MARKETING page). The result was an objective analysis of a potential market opportunity, quantifying the risk and building a financial model which provided a basis for investment. The benefit was faster time to market by putting in place the building blocks of the market, strategy, business, market planning and programs, readiness and support.