Recruiter:
Does your client's growing organization need a seasoned sales professional, experienced in selling to C-Suite executives and directors, who also has excellent leadership skills, a strong professional presence, and the ability to get things done?
Are you looking for the following?:
- Extensive client service and consultative selling experience.
- Strong leadership skills.
- Excellent verbal communication skills (esp. active listening, influencing, and dialog).
- Extensive writing experience – from marketing to data analysis.
- Strong technological and analytical skills.
- Big picture thinker yet excellent at managing the details.
- Ability to assess and respond to complex and dynamic issues and situations.
- Superior organizational skills, project management experience, and a motivated self-starter requiring minimal oversight or direction.
- Fast and committed lifelong learner.
I thrive in a rapidly changing environment and am looking for a challenging assignment that will take full advantage of the strengths listed above as well as my passion, energy and insight into people and systems.
Resume Follows. Thank you.
5 years with the same company in the following roles
2005-2007
SALES OPERATIONS MANAGER & PLANNING AND GOVERNANCE CONSULTANT
I was personally recruited as Operations Manager by the Managing Director of the newly-formed Strategic Planning and Leadership Development department in the (then) Company's Banking Practice. We began with three consultants. Our clients consisted of community bank senior executives and boards of directors.
My initial job was to build the operations and administrative side of the practice. Once the department was up and running operationally, we'd planned that I would hand off operations to my successor and move into the role of full-time strategy and governance consultant. Central to the business model was a newly-purchased online assessment tool designed to gather broad-based input from bank stakeholders. We had a standard SWOT assessment and another designed to evaluate a bank's board governance practices. I was responsible for integrating the use and output of the assessment into the Managing Director's existing consulting practices.
As Operations Manager, I accomplished the following:
MANAGED ASSESSMENT SOFTWARE:
Trained staff in its use, troubleshot problems.
Oversaw all upgrades, including a major platform conversion from PHP to .Net.
Oversaw all client assessment outputs.
Conducted webcast presentations to prospective clients showcasing the assessment.
Oversaw the development of an online customer satisfaction survey for bank's clients
DEVELOPED CLIENT DELIVERABLES:
Including planning retreat PowerPoints and all retreat materials; participant notebooks, CD's with interactive graphical representation of assessment data, and executive summaries of assessment data.
HIRED, TRAINED AND SUPERVISED OPERATIONS AND ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF:
Oversaw development of operational systems and processes to ensure timely, efficient, and accurate production of all retreat deliverables and other consulting support materials, as well as invoicing, expensing, inventory, proposals and consultant travel arrangements.
WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS
- Analyzed all Board Governance Assessments and wrote 20-25 page reports summarizing findings and making recommendations to clients.
- Wrote or oversaw the writing of all 20-25 page client SWOT Assessment reports.
- Wrote client and internal proposals and reports.
- Wrote most marketing copy for the department.
- Ghost-wrote articles on board governance, leadership development and strategic planning for trade journals under our consultant's names.
PROMOTED, WITH PAY INCREASE, TO SALES OPERATIONS MANAGER IN MID-2006
Retained the above duties, and also took on the following:
- More sales responsibility (Lead tracking and follow-up, presentations, closing)
- Coordination of all aspects of sales between our consultants and consultants/reps in other company divisions.
- Responsibility for all department-level marketing. In that role, I oversaw the creation of an email newsletter, and coordinated all aspects of our marketing, which had previously been an uncoordinated mix of approaches and styles, so that our look and message was consistent.
- Consulting activities - from the beginning of our department, I accompanied consultants on client engagements, and slowly began to take on aspects of their work. In the end I completed my own full client engagements. Had our department been retained, I would have been on track to become a full-fledged Strategy and Governance consultant for our bank clients in 2007.
From the inception of our department, I accompanied consultants on client engagements, and over time, began to take on aspects of their work. In the end I was completing my own full client engagements. Had our department been retained, I would have been on track to become a full-time Strategy and Governance consultant for our bank clients in 2007.
Shortly after the inception of the Strategy and Leadership department, the President of the Banking Practice, whose brainchild the department was, stepped down. At the same time, the larger organization underwent a significant re-structuring, and less than a year later, the company began a tender offer process, ultimately being sold to Aegon. During that time, our department was not a priority for the prior President's two successors, as we were a very small piece of a much larger organization, whose core of business was split-dollar life insurance. After the Aegon acquisition, the company decided to return to its core competency - insurance sales, and closed our department.
2002 - 2005
COMPANY HEALTHCARE GROUP
Minneapolis MN
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE - EXECUTIVE BENEFIT PLANS
The Company HealthCare Group designs and administers Executive and Physician Flexible Benefit Plans. In my role as an Account Executive (AE), I was responsible for managing the relationship with 30+ hospital system clients – including selling benefits and services to individual executives and physicians, as well as increasing the benefit plan offerings at the client’s benefit plan level. I also oversaw and coordinated all aspects of benefit plan administration for our client’s plans, including annual enrollment and regulatory compliance.
Areas of expertise required for this role:
- Various split-dollar life insurance plan designs, including SERPs.
- Non-qualified deferred compensation plans, including 407A, 457b and 457f.
- LTC and LTD Insurance.
- Investment basics.
- Compensation basics, including severance plans, and short- and long-term incentives.
- Ability to guide C-Suite level client contacts through frequent complex legislative issues
- Ability to coordinate client activities and services among several internal departments, and across client departments including hospital boards, HR departments, payroll, and sometimes trade unions.
Accomplishments in this role:
- Rescued strained client relationships worth $550,000 in revenue per year.
- Sold roughly 40% more insurance products than the average fellow AE.
- Lead an interdisciplinary team in the development of a customer satisfaction survey designed to enable us to identify areas for improving our services
- Implemented an improved “rated offer” letter process for the team of 12 AEs to reduce the time lapse between offer and policy issue, increasing ROA.
- Engaged in a wide range of writing projects, from benefit plan manuals to analyses of how legislative issues affected plan designs and recommendations for methods of compliance.
- Developed a continual plan-audit process to increase accuracy of plan administration and reduce costly errors.
- Turned around one direct report who was highly skilled but universally considered difficult to work with (both internally and externally) – she became a role model, trainer of new staff in her position, valued team-member, and appreciated by clients.
- Turned around another direct report who was in the wrong role and made a disproportionate amount of errors. I helped her become re-engaged, improve her performance, become a leader on her team, and ultimately become an Account Executive – a role she’s much better suited to.
2000 - 2002
MERRILL LYNCH
Minneapolis, MN
FINANCIAL ADVISOR
No longer challenged in Real Estate, I chose to transfer my sales, marketing and communication skills to the financial industry.
As a Financial Advisor I achieved the following:
- Designed and implemented investment and overall financial planning strategies for clients, including retirement plans, estate planning and trusts, insurance and mortgage lending.
- Planned and implemented numerous ongoing marketing/sales strategies designed to grow my business, including public seminars in Financial Planning, Socially Responsible Investing, and Finance for Women.
2000, however, turned out to be a bad time to begin a career in finance. Merrill Lynch's sales quotas, the most aggressive in the industry, had been developed during the market boom years of the late 1990's, when assets on account were growing rapidly and investors were restless, making it an easy time to gain new clients. But in late 2000 and 2001, while accounts were shrinking due to the market downturn, investors also became afraid of making any changes.
By mid-2002, Merrill Lynch, sticking to quotas from another era, had been laying off a high percentage of newer Financial Advisors who were not able to build an adequate book of business in the new climate. While I had gained a high level of respect from my sales manager and colleagues, and had become an unofficial mentor to other new FAs, for both selling advice and product knowledge, I wasn't able to bring in assets fast enough in that climate to stay with Merrill Lynch.
1995 - 2000
COLDWELL BANKER BURNET
Minneapolis Lakes Office, Minneapolis MN
REALTOR
As a realtor, my personal production increased 20-25% each year. By the time I left Real Estate, all my business was coming from repeat and referral business. During my time as a Realtor I also accomplished the following:
- Developed and implemented more marketing approaches than roughly 95% of my colleagues, including: neighborhood invitations to open houses, writing articles in local newspapers, a neighborhood newsletter, routine annual check-in calls with all past clients, annual prospect and past-clients cards, 1-800 number approaches/”ugly yellow signs”, seminars, a routine list service for future home-buyers, and more.
- Designed a training program to help Realtors learn to use the new online Multiple Listing Service system. A high percentage of Realtors at that time had little computer experience and found the new system threatening. I was instrumental in helping our office of 150 Realtors become technically competent.
- Organized our office’s annual volunteer activity at the Uptown Art Fair beer booth. I was responsible for communications with the Art Fair organizers, recruiting, scheduling and rewarding volunteers, and organizing all elements of the booth were present at the fair.
- Developed my own team, including training two assistants and developing processes to ensure smooth delivery of client services between us.
- Assisted a number of lower-income homebuyers in finding special financing, enabling them to buy homes when they never believed that would be a possibility.
1994 - 1995
BRYANT LAKE BOWL
Minneapolis, MN
GENERAL MANAGER
I was recruited as Front-of-the-House Manager by the owners, in the early months after it transitioned from an old bowling alley to a trendy restaurant and night club, to improve the service culture. When I started, service was so bad customers would walk out the door before their food came.
In this role I:
- Changed the compensation policy which had been a disincentive to both high-performing and low-performing service staff.
- Delivered a service training program, which was more thorough and rigorous than the industry standard.
- Implemented a wine and beer training program taught by our suppliers, which created a very knowledgeable and articulate service staff.
- Fired several intransigent low performers.
- Re-worked the operating layouts to increase efficiency and reduce staff frustrations
Within 3 months of my hire, I received frequent compliments from customers on our excellent, service. The service staff's earnings had increased significantly, and they had pulled together into a mutually supportive, high-functioning team. The increase in customers was noticeable. We started having to turn people away at times because we were so full and our wait-times were so long.
Four months after hire, I was promoted to General Manager. I became responsible for three managers, all budgets, payroll, accounts payable and inventory. When I took over, the restaurant was 5-8 months behind on almost all of its accounts payables, causing frequent threats of interruption of service. When I left, all our accounts were up to date and paid on time.
I left the restaurant because I wanted to be my own boss and earn higher rewards for whatever business I was involved in.
Summers 1981, 1982, 1989
LICENSES:
NASD Series 7
State Series 66
Life and Health Insurance
EDUCATION:
Current - College of Saint Catherine - St Paul, MN -- Two thirds complete in working towards a Master's Degree in Organizational Leadership.
March 2007 - Science Museum of Minnesota - St Paul, MN -- Completed facilitator training in Restorative Justice Talking Circles.
1989 - 1995 - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis, MN -- B.A., in English with a focus on Creative Writing -- Graduated Summa Cum Laude. -- Received numerous writing grants and scholarships.
VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE
Assisted in Appreciative Inquiry engagement at Battle Creek Elementary School.
Served on Board of Directors of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center.
Past President of the Kingfield Neighborhood Association.
Served on Board of the University Student Family Housing Association.
Served as Student Liaison for U of M English Department planning commission.
Apprentice to the Artistic Director of the Guthrie II during its inaugural season.
PERSONAL
Born March 28, 1959.
Married, 1 adult son.
5'9", 145 lbs.
Submitted June 2007 |
