My Short Story

Born: I grew up in New York.

Undergraduate school: Penn State University (I’m a huge Nittany Lions and JoPa Fan).

My first Sales Job: IBM, where I sold a $10M project to leverage the Internet to build a network between 400 hospitals to securely share health information.  I then left IBM to run sales, marketing and product for this project.

IBM led me to Silicon Valley where I joined VeriSign as a Channel Manager – we had a name, we had ideas about products, we had a great business model, we had great relationships with Netscape and Microsoft, but we had no material customers.  We then created an extraordinary brand, a slew of partnerships, a differentiated solution and had one of the most successful IPO’s in the valley.

Now: Helping organizations develop and implement profitable channel strategies, building high-performance channel programs, selecting the right partners, optimizing channel sales operations and driving results for vendors (pre-IPO startups to market-leading corporations) and partners.

Companies:  Schweber Electronics/Arrow, IBM, HBOC/McKesson, VeriSign, Postini/Google, LogLogic, Proofpoint, Solidcore/McAfee.

The Long Story

I grew up on Long Island in New York and was fortunate enough to have parents who instilled a sense of hard work, achievement and risk-taking.

My undergraduate degree was in English, and I was lucky enough to get my first job as a Product Manager for a distributor selling National Semiconductor, where I turned around a poor performing product line from #5 to #1 in 14 months and grew the business 150% (I did that by listening, not talking).

My early career (Schweber Electronics/Arrow Electronics, HBOC/McKesson) was spent on the reseller side of the channel equation where I learned a ton about how resellers actually work, what they expect from vendors and how they allocate time and investment as I lived it.

In 1996 I realized that I needed to be in Silicon Valley and join a start-up to learn the vendor side.  I dreamed about pulling all-nighters with my teammates and working 14 hours a day with people who were tenacious, had street smarts, accepted risk and collaborated to build something of value.  I was fortunate to find that at VeriSign (venture-backed start-up).  It was at VeriSign where I became a channel bigot, not because we did everything right, but because I had walked in reseller shoes for the first 10 years of my career and really understood what it was like and what was needed from vendors to develop win:win relationships that benefit both parties and drove results.

After VeriSign, I worked at Proofpoint and lead their channel efforts.  They were in a mature category but with a superior product.  It presented me with a great opportunity to launch and then grow the channel from the ground up.

After many years of battle-tested corporate experience, I became a consultant and I’ve had a material impact on my clients.  I’ve worked a lot of really interesting projects. When I tell people what I do – design and implement effective sales channels for high tech organizations – they think I’m nuts.  It’s not an easy job, but I’ve been doing it for 15+ years and I love it.

I love consulting.  Teams I work with tell me what makes me different is – I walk the walk, I’m passionate, I take ownership and responsibility, I roll up my sleeves (no job is to small or beneath me if it adds value), I deliver what I’ve committed, I do it quickly and I do great work.  I think they’re right.   When I’m not consulting, I can be found doing anything that drives the adoption of homeless animals from shelters and rescue organizations (including adopting five rescues of my own).