Accomplishments and abilities of Greg Holsen

1. ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND ABILITIES
BUSINESS
SALES MARKETING DEVELOPMENT
U N I F I E D S K I L L S F O R D R I V I N G R E V E N U E G R O W T H AT A L L B U S I N E S S L E V E L S
STARTUP HIGH GROWTH ENTERPRISE

2. Introduction
Section One
Development and Success Story
Cases
Section Two
Skills & Abilities

3. When all things look the same with
some slight variation, how do you
choose the standout?
Start with the foundation of
extensive training. Add to that,
significant first hand executive
experience. Throw in a recognized
sense of urgency and support of the
collective team. Then top it off with
the creativity that takes the good to
great.
Now that is a bean that rises above
the bowl.

4. marketing
business
sales
development
CONVERGENCE: Lead & Win the Market
With the holistic experience of understanding how to effectively market using sales data and sell using market-defined data,
my abilities extend beyond the traditional sales executive or marketing executive. This ability improves my close ratio and
improves our overall market message. I gain the insight that allows me to apply the findings to the sales/marketing process
and execute a plan that delivers strong and consistent results.
INSIGHT APPLICATION EXECUTION

5. Section One
Development and Success Story Cases

6. DEVELOPMENT CASE ONE
U N I F Y I N G M A R K E T I N G & S A L E S T H R O U G H D E E P D ATA
COLLECTED IN THE SALES PROCESS

7. Two Islands that needed bridging
Sales was working at the front end of the clients problem but
was not often driving deep enough into their business to gain
deep marketing knowledge. Deep marketing knowledge is
that data that resides below surface challenges. Companies
often find “work-arounds” to deal with challenges, never
Market Challenge solving them. Often marketing had no visibility to these
challenges and value in the sales data collected and it
remained on the sales island, where it died.
Sales force was not being used to
drive frontline marketing. Buyer and Meanwhile, marketing, on it’s own island was getting some
feedback from sales, but often it was distilled in to
pain data was not being effectively generalities that didn’t provide good tactical marketing data.
gathered and moved to marketing. Marketing was forced to buy expensive marketing data or
simply follow competitors or guess on what the marketing
This resulted in missing or poorly was really demanding. Marketing messaging was limited to a
perceived marketing data and sales push style methodology where it became high level and less
focused on specific certain challenges and more on overall
development processes to drive market perception.
marketing message.
The relationship between the two islands became
antagonistic. Sales threw volleys of ineffective marketing
toward that marketing island and marketing returning fire by
suggesting that messaging was not being reinforced in the
sales process. This made the messaging ineffective and often
worthless.
The result was the development of Deep Impact

8. Designated Sales force is educated in a systematic
Up Front Prospect
process to driving deep into customer pain,
Qualification challenges and intentions.
Data is collected weekly from all team assets and
Marketing Data
Distilled To amalgamated monthly to determine trends,
Potential Client
Pain and Market
Positioning to
Discovery Meeting analyze data on market conditions and
Insure Accurate
Messaging
expectations and create a gap analysis.
Marketing data is structured as go to market
messaging.
Marketing Provided
Pain Points, Key Messaging is converted into questioning format
Clients Challenges,
Information &
Analyzed Next To
Business Specific
Information
that more quickly validates data, drives deeper and
Prior Data
Gathered shortens the selling process while building client
trust.
New data is fed back continuously and questioning
is revised to drive deeper with each engagement.

9. SUCCESS CASE TWO
T R A N S L AT I N G C H A N G E T O A N E W L I N E O F B U S I N E S S

10. Market Challenge
Sales team had delivered two quarters in a row
of zero sales. The market the company was
approaching was suffering after the September
11th attacks. The company had a product for
airliner electronic flight bags (EFB’s) . Airlines
had the option of installing EFB’s but stopped
all new aircraft orders or trimmed back backlog
of orders, leaving the Astoria with minimal
market opportunity.

11. Solution
As the director of business development, I worked closely with a
seasoned product manager in the company to determine what else
our software might be capable of doing in an industry we could
immediately approach. It was determined there was some initial,
incomplete work on a localization product. Immediately assessing Market change delivered the
the ability to complete development and launch a product, we
repackaged the product as the perfect product for localization.
Creating specific marketing and getting into trade shows with the company from two zero sales
new messaging and innovative approaches, we had very rapid
adoption by all the industries' top providers in under three months
– a monumental feat.
quarters to doing business
Result with the top three global
The rapid market adoption of the software for localization and he
resulting press and PR helped us position the company in front of a
large merger partner. The merger partner was specifically
providers of localization in
interested in the company because of the rapid growth and prestige
we had gained through the corporate repositioning in localization.
Dissolution of a major partnership in the airline market would have less than three months.
left the company highly exposed, however, the rapid positioning of
the company toward localization allowed the company to grow and
thrive through a very turbulent time.

12. THREE

13. Market Challenge
Company leaders are tasked with managing
more with less. Sales teams often report to the
company President or CEO who has very little
time to manage these assets and assure sales
team health and productivity. This being so,
even though the sales team is the revenue
“portal” of every company. The officer of the
company was often unaware of individual sales
challenges, close percentages, sales
methodology or trends. This left the company
open to catastrophic sales results or recurring
personnel changes.

14. The Solution Solved an Internal Growth
Problem For Achievex
Beyond the challenge we solves for clients, we were also solving a
challenge we had at the time. Because of bad economic conditions,
more corporations saw our core offering of sales training as a non-
essential spend, opting to hold onto cash for slowing revenue. The
problem of low producing sales teams that had little to no oversight
was a concern. The loss of sales managers due to down sizing had
caused the sales team to become unmanaged and unmotivated
resulting in losses of sales team talent and salespeople that were
becoming less effective when sales needed to increase.
Developing this product helped us access more revenue from a
different perspective than our core business alone would have
delivered.

15. Solution Result
I interviewed senior sales managers and corporate officers to Our conversations netted far greater interest
understand their challenges, expectations and deliverables for their and our engagement quality and quantity
sales assets. We then crafted a solution that assessed the skills increased significantly . We closed our first
inventory of every sales asset, and analyzed and reported the results. client under the new program which gained
After determining if the salesperson asset had the characteristics of us our largest customer in over 12 months.
top performers, we wrote a prescription plan for the salesperson and
provided management with a plan we would use to fill the undesirable The solution solved a problem that
gaps. concerned them for some time, allowed the
CEO to focus less on sales and more on
Afterward, we entered each salesperson into a system developed to strategic oversight of the company.
manage their activity, behavior and assess their attitudes weekly.
Additionally, we entered the salesperson and their teammates into an
advanced level selling course to get all team assets selling on the same
system. Managing the team closely and giving management and the
board an insightful view of their sales team’s progress, weekly,
provided a much better platform to predict results.

16. SUCCESS CASE Four
The Whale the size of a Minnow

17. Market Challenge
A new company in a fast growing space with
only one employee, eShipServices needed to
look like a high-powered fulfillment operation
in a world of big warehouses and even bigger
expectations. The perception of the company
needed to be that we were moving substantial
product and were skilled artisans at what we
provided in the ecommerce space.

18. Solution Results
I worked immediately to start building brand and We discovered the industry perception was that
messaging. Went to key industry trade shows, got on eShipServices was large and capable. This helped us
panels and got trade press, including two cover stories gain quick credibility and allowed us to focus less on
on the state of the ecommerce fulfillment industry. proving our ability to service their needs, instead
As the only employee engaged in building the brand focusing more on whether their product was the
from marketing to sales and strategic development, it right for us. Through well placed branding, strategic
was critical to constantly resonate a bigger feel. We visibility and placing ourselves in front of hundreds
immediately developed new branding for the services of buyers as an expert, we became the whale in the
of our sister company and created a sense through all eyes of our marketplace.
communications, activities, seminars and other
outward development, that our organization was well
positioned to handle any sized customer operation.

19. Section Two
Skills & Abilities

20. SOCIAL MEDIA
E X P E RT I S E & S T R AT E GY
• Knowledge Sharing and Evangelism
• Have given four speaking events on social media. First
to engineer the use of participants in the explanation of
Social Media.
• Early adopter
• One of the first to advertise employment
services on MySpace.
• Early days of blogging. Had one of the first
blogs on sales and marketing integration.
• First Sandler Group on LinkedIn
• Creation and current manager of San Jose
Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce Group
on LinkedIn
• Strong familiarity with Tools
• Facebook – have created groups, done
promotion and advertising on Facebook
• LinkedIn – use many of the tools LinkedIn
has offered.
• Twitter – user of many third party
optimization applications.

22. BLOGGING
While the ability to transfer relevant knowledge to
engaging writing is critical in blogging, it is the technical
ability to get it in front of people that makes the
successful blogger. Having been a blogger since 2006, I am
keenly aware of the importance of mastering the
technical while leveraging my skill as an engaging writer.

23. Early Adopter
• Very first wave of users on Google – early advertiser during
PPV advertising. Days Expert at Google AdWords system,
Overture etc. Very familiar with PPC model that most search
engines operate on currently.
• Used keywords, active media and links very effectively early
on to drive traffic.
• Gained top positions on Google, MSN and Yahoo
• Over 92% First page categorization
Expert Level user
• Deep understanding of inputs/outputs of system
• Aware of providers and vendors who can assist in the
process.

24. Press & Media
Capabilities

25. Trade Show Capabilities
• Booked, produced and attended over 45 trade shows
• Experience in design producing and setting- up booth
• Created engaging booth messaging and attraction
• Obtain optimum location for booth
• Obtain speaker positions
• Staff booth
• Drive booth staff to book appointments on the floor
• Quick and effective follow-up contact and marketing of attendees

26. Greg has personally created over three quarters of a billion
dollars in revenue volume in his sales career.
He has been professionally trained by top programs including
expert level training in Sandler Sales Institute, Integrity Selling,
Dale Carnegie, Ken Blanchard and various other programs. Over
500 hours of completed courseware in the concept, theory and
practice of sales and management. Greg has also facilitated
extensive training of Sandler and Integrity Selling.
Selling is a key element in successful marketing. Getting to the
root of why clients buy, the pain they are trying to cure and
the validation of what solving the problem will do to their
career, has helped me to look at marketing more successfully
than many other marketers or sales professionals.

27. Mastery of a sales process is like the
f u n c t i o n a l op erat in g syst e m o f t e c h n o l o g y.
Mastery of a Best Practice Sales Process When done in process, the results are
consistent, measurable and reliable.

28. • Transportation for Entertainment • Third Party Logistics
Industry and High Profile Clients • B2B Networking Groups
• College Campus Transportation Company • Executive Best Practices Groups
• College Campus Consumer Goods • Employment and HR Service Company
• Executive Consulting • Sales Management Consulting
• Sales and Marketing Consulting

30. SUCCESSFULLY

31. K N O W Y O U R O U T C O M E
P R E D I C T Y O U R R E S U L T S
The average bad sales hire costs a company between $300,000 and
$1,000,000 due to lost wages, benefits, opportunity and future relationships.

32. For the Start-Up For the High For the Enterprise
Greg simply can do Growth Company Company
more with less Greg drives the Team contributor
business to the next committed to
level competitive
success.
Do things 180° from the competition and find a better market success developing
stronger revenue.
Ask the question “how do I sound different and how do I become trusted”. Crowd
sourcing and building a community of buyers is a skill of creativity and execution.

33. Greg Holsen
C o n t a c t
• 408-685-1008
• Greg.Holsen@gmail.com
• www.gregholsen.com
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/holsen
• Twitter: TheSalesSensei
• Blog: http://nottheotherguy.com