Premier Sales Leaders, 2021 | Sales Training | Women in Sales

WHY IS NANCY BOHANAN A PREMIER SALES LEADER?

Under Nancy Bohannan’s leadership, Red Hat’s North America Public Sector SLED team propels state, local and education agencies toward meeting their missions and maintaining existing IT assets while freeing resources for modernization efforts, like cloud-native development and hybrid cloud. As vice president of SLED, Nancy is responsible for leading business operations and driving strategic growth. Throughout 30+ years of experience in sales and delivery methodologies, she continues to utilize her knack of developing deep customer relationships to directly drive client success. Her ability to tactfully communicate product functionality helps each client find the right approach to their unique challenges.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, 15,000 employees of the city and county of Denver were forced to transition to remote work. Nancy partnered with the city and county Denver to find the fitting technologies to support these efforts. With Nancy’s guidance, Denver and Red Hat teamed up to integrate Red Hat’s Ansible Automation Platform to automate provisioning, application deployment, and configuration management for its Microsoft Teams deployment. Through this collaboration, Denver was able to launch an online emergency operations center as a resource for government leaders to quickly respond to the pandemic. The partnership also allowed Denver to scale through Red Hat Ansible and Microsoft Teams to support a 514% increase in Teams usage.

The top priority for Nancy in her role is to continue to arm state, local and education agencies like Denver with the technologies needed to maximize efficiencies and deliver innovative and exceptional citizen services.

NANCY BOHANAN’S APPROACH

As a woman in technology who is demonstrably confident and skilled, Nancy seeks to further the value of inclusion in the workplace because she believes differences are what makes organizations stronger. Her particular passion is to diversify the technology sales field by bringing more women into positions of leadership through mentoring. For Nancy, high quality mentoring practices are crucial to meeting this approach of welcoming more women into the field. In her first few months at Red Hat, Nancy was invited to the mentoring team much earlier than the typical one year = requirement. The mentoring program recognized Nancy’s potential to help new hires thrive and Nancy recognized the long-term value of investing in mentoring fellow team members. She finds that mentoring her team and diversifying talent is the most rewarding solution she uses to build a successful sales team.

MOTIVATIONAL QUOTE

“If they can do it, I can do it.”

There are always times in life when you will need to be the biggest advocate and believer in yourself. Use the success of others before you to illustrate the success you can create for yourself.

WHY IS VINCE BURRUANO A PREMIER SALES LEADER?

As Vice President of JK Moving’s Commercial Sales Division, Vince Burruano has truly showcased his skills and enthusiasm as a Premier Sales Leader in the industry by leading his team to unprecedented success, even during a global pandemic! He is a leader who promotes a culture that values trust, respect, and encourages each team member to contribute to the organization’s success.

Vince has led our team with innovative ideas and strategies in the most challenging economic year of our generation. His creative thinking not only kept our team afloat, but these efforts culminated in significant profits and growth during a pandemic. His focus on supporting and elevating his team individually and as a cohesive group, is the driver behind all the individual successes and the development of a unified sales force.

While leading a sales team with varying levels of experience and expertise, he encourages people to participate in educational programs to better themselves, and often provides the resources to do so. He is constantly suggesting books with pertinent themes and strategies to drive our team to be better. He encourages us to set aside time each day for time to read, learn and think to build our own skills. He allows us the opportunity to fail without punishment, in order to grow through each sales experience.

Vince continuously spreads his extensive knowledge, gregarious personality, and passion for sales through numerous speaking engagements and leadership environments. He can truly be considered a leader among leaders.

VINCE BURRUANO’S APPROACH

Vince Burruano’s sales leadership approach revolves around “the art of the sale”, he looks at the method as an entire customer centric process that encompasses philosophy, psychology and research. He actively encourages his team to not only think about sale itself but also the philosophy of why people buy, and how his team can become a trusted advisor that can sustain these relationships past the invoice.

Vince’s management style drives team-based selling while complimenting individual expression and his general concern for personal and professional development is second to none. He empowers his team through trust and education, while preparing them for the unexpected. He encourages his team to act as entrepreneurs and to do the smart things and the hard work that will drive them to personal success.

He inspires the entire sales team to continue their education and research and to always strive to make themselves better. He holds his sales team to an elite status that stands on being knowledgeable, trustworthy, smart, and ethical.

His key doctrine is that while sales is a profession like many others, it has the unique position of offering the individual the opportunity to operate like a franchise. It should be treated as your own business providing you the chance to focus on the fun and creative elements including sales, marketing, networking, and building strong relationships. And like any profession, you should always be learning and growing so that you can define and achieve success on your own terms. There are no short cuts to success. Success requires desire, hard work, and grit.

MOTIVATIONAL QUOTE

While Vince sends his entire team a motivational quote every day at 6:15AM, it is difficult to narrow down his inspirational sayings to just one. But after much consultation with the sales team, we believe his key quote is:
“There’s what you know.
There’s what you don’t know.
There’s what you don’t know you don’t know; and that’s the one that gets you in trouble.”

WHY IS MIKE BYRD A PREMIER SALES LEADER?

When Mike started working at Red Hat in 2005, he was tasked with building the company’s government channel from the ground up. In this role, Mike worked to establish partnerships with resellers, systems integrators (SI), distributors, OEMs, ISVs, and eventually hyperscalers to make Red Hat more easily accessible to the government customer. As a result, Red Hat’s government channel business doubled year-over-year for the first three years. This growth continues to remain strong under Mike’s leadership, with the regional SI business more than doubling in the past year and his team maintaining the top renewal rate in the company for several years running.

However, the impact of Mike’s leadership can be seen beyond the sales metrics:

Internally, Mike has developed several key programs for Red Hat’s public sector channel business that have since been implemented company-wide. Two noteworthy examples include the Red Bull program, an initiative centered around driving multi-partner community collaboration; and the regional SI program, , which has now been rolled out across the company globally.

At the team level, Mike has helped foster an environment for long-term growth and career development. This has not only resulted in impressive growth and retention – for example, every employee from the 2017 recruiting class is now a field sales representative, a position which used to be supplemented by outside support – but also provides a path for up-and-coming leaders to flourish, including Veronica Poissant, director of public sector inside sales at Red Hat, and recent recipient of IES’ Rising Sales Star Award.

MIKE BYRD’S APPROACH

Mike’s leadership and management style are built on the open source principles of Red Hat: a balance of freedom, courage, commitment and accountability. These principles, used in a balance, have helped him build a high-performing team of self-starters. In addition, transparency is also central to Mike’s sales approach, both with his internal team and partners. Sales is much more than just a transaction – it continues throughout the entire customer lifecycle, and transparency is key for ensuring customer experience continued satisfaction and success.

Mike also has a few key tenants for individual contributors: 1) always lead conversation with noble intent 2) don’t be afraid to make aggressive mistakes in pursuit of solving problems for the customer and partner, reward partner investments, 3) don’t sit on the sidelines watching a problem unfold, and 4) make decisions with the eye towards rewarding partner investment. This proactive, fail-fast, and customer-centric approach is a large reason why Mike has been able to expand Red Hat’s public sector partner portfolio and maintain its impressive year-over-year growth.

MOTIVATIONAL QUOTE

“Give people more opportunities than their resume calls for.”
Most of the time, people just need an opportunity and if you give them that and show that you believe in them, the cream will rise to the top. They need to know that you’re willing to take a chance on them.

WHY IS CLINT CROSIER A PREMIER SALES LEADER?

Clint brings a deep understanding of space operations from his 33 years of experience in the US Air Force/Space Force to lead AWS’s new Aerospace and Satellite business.

While exceptionally impressive, Clint’s experience does not naturally lend itself to sales leadership. Upon his retirement, Clint dived in to understand how best to integrate solutions to meet customer requirements, hired a team of experts to deliver for customers, and mastered the sales process.

Now, Clint’s global, tailored AWS team is comprised of a unique blend of space experts and cloud experts is dedicated to accelerating innovation in the global aerospace and satellite industry. With the rapid and dynamic pace of change in the space industry, Clint’s team is working closely alongside its customers to merge space and cloud, innovating new ways forging a new space/cloud enterprise to fill the mission needs of customers to support their long-term growth and success and provide them asymmetric advantages. Clint and his team are continuing AWS’s long history of supporting customers in the space industry by helping commercial and government customers build satellites, conduct space and launch operations, and reimagine space exploration through the use of innovative cloud technology.

Clint’s team has driven adoption in some of the industry’s most innovative customers including Boom Supersonic, reinventing supersonic travel, and Capella Space, rapidly scaling data transfer of satellite imagery to vastly improve decision-making for companies on earth.

CLINT CROSIER’S APPROACH

Clint is committed to understanding his customers and their missions. His experience and expertise combined with a personal passion for aerospace helps him to work effectively with customers. Since joining the company in 2020, he has thoughtfully built a sales, business development, and technical team whose experience spans the industry spectrum, from satellite design and launch through on-orbit operations and everything in between. Clint encourages the team to work closely and collaboratively with customers because he believes it will lead to better results. His approach is to provide each customer with a tailored, secure, and cost-effective cloud solution that will best suit the customer’s specific space mission.

MOTIVATIONAL QUOTE

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” Sir Winston Churchill.

One reason we see space customers embracing cloud solutions more than ever before is because of our dedication to turning our customers’ challenges to into opportunities. We believe that by working to invent and innovate, together we can remove the limits of what we once believed was possible in space, and reach for the stars.

WHY IS RUSS WALKER A PREMIER SALES LEADER?

Russ serves as Datasite’s SVP of Sales Operations and Enablement. He leads a team of 40 employees, who focus on inside sales; training and onboarding; sales communications and events; incentives and benefits; project management; operations and a deal desk. Russ’s team provides the sales organization, which is comprised of 200 sellers globally, with the right data and tools to sell effectively.
Under Russ’s leadership, Sales Operations & Enablement plays an important role in seller success, which directly impacts Datasite’s growth. The Sales Operations & Enablement team is responsible for on-boarding and preparing new sales hires to win in the field, and the team contributes to shaping Datasite’s sales culture. These are important because, in 2020, Datasite’s new units rose 4% YoY, while sales headcount has increased over 15% year-to-date. Datasite was also recently named a Premier Sales Employer by the Institute for Excellence in Sales (IES).
Russ is the ultimate champion for his team. He looks for ways to develop and elevate talent to help each team member unlock their potential and grow their careers. As evidence, in the last 12 months, six members of Russ’s team were promoted to new or expanded roles. Russ also fosters a culture of collaboration through recognition – whether it’s his own team, or a business partner, Russ celebrates everyone’s success.
Russ is an experienced sales leader with 18 years of direct contributor sales experience. Before joining Datasite in 2016, he held several positions with companies such as Appirio/Wipro, Ultimate Software, Workday and ADP.

RUSS WALKER’S APPROACH

Russ prioritizes four key themes to his sales leadership approach:
Selling is a Team Sport: Collaboration is key to success. Russ and his team ensure all Datasite sales professionals provide an optimal client buying experience that aligns to their business requirements by seeking out and embracing support from Datasite sales leaders, sales engineers and customer service teams.

Simplicity is Key: Sales professionals receive a high volume of communications and tasks they must keep up with each day, including email, calls, trainings, customer administration, back-office tasks and, of course, prospecting and selling. Russ and his team collaborate with business partners to ensure Datasite sellers get the right information at the right time so they can focus on the tasks that matter most.

Character and Culture Win Every Time: Hire, train and retain talent that fits the team dynamics and culture because character, work ethic and core value alignment are essential for success. It’s also important to have a broad range of backgrounds and skill sets on the team. This diversity in experience offers fresh perspective and new ideas.

Develop and Recognize Talent: Provide team members with the tools, resources and defined outcomes they need to focus on, coach where needed, and then let them run their processes. Be present as a sounding board and share direct yet relevant feedback when needed, and then recognize their successes, both big and small. There is no greater feeling of reward than seeing a team grow in ways that bring them personal and professional fulfillment.

MOTIVATIONAL QUOTE

“Define your goals, provide the necessary tools, resources and guidance and get out of the way… and then celebrate success!”

WHY IS REBECCA WETHERLY A PREMIER SALES LEADER?

Rebecca Wetherly is the Director of Systems Integrator Partners for the AWS Worldwide Public Sector business. Rebecca’s success stems from her constant focus developing trusted relationships, establishing a vision for desired outcomes, executing that strategy and helping our SI partners grow their business. As a business leader, Rebecca dives strategy to win key deals, and also to build new and innovative partnerships. She stood up our new Aerospace and Satellite Solutions (A&S) business unit creating disruptive paths to acquire space and satellite commercial and government customers who build satellites, conduct space and launch operations, and re-imagine space exploration. Rebecca’s passion for her work and relentless pursuit of exceeding her clients and AWS leadership expectations is unmatched. Her super powers are described by others as grit, relentless customer obsession, the tenacity to accomplish big, difficult goals as a gifted “synergizer.” She networks with the resources required to meet customer needs, quickly earns trust, and operates with distinct credibility with partners, customers and colleagues. During her eight and a half years with AWS, she has won numerous awards for her work, including Partner Development Leader of the year and the AWS Channel and Alliances Award in addition to a prized Strategic Discretionary Award presented by her Vice President, Teresa Carlson. In 2020 Rebecca was a Bronze Stevie Maverick of the Year award winner, this industry recognition was for her achievements affecting positive change on our company. Rebecca always exceeds her sales targets and is a leader we count on to deliver results.

JENNIFER FISHER’S APPROACH

At AWS we have our own way of doing things. We’re obsessed with customers, we see beauty in simplifying the complex, and we’re comfortable with being misunderstood. Our unusual approach and our culture – focused on removing obstacles so builders can build – are ingrained in our culture. Our Leadership Principles drive how we work. Rebecca raises the bar in several areas, as represented by feedback from her peers, customers and direct reports including:

Customer Obsession: Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Ownership: Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.”

Are Right, A Lot: Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

Bias for Action: Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.

Lastly, Rebecca’s super power is her sales prowess. She listens so closely to what customers say so that they always feel they’ve been heard. Listening to her customers and partners also means that she’s able to see where AWS can add the most value.