Sales Channel Strategies

Presentations

NOTE: Meeting at the Bay Colony Office Park, Waltham, MA

Meeting Overview:

Success of any startup is tightly coupled with a successful sales/channel strategy. A successful strategy develops the right channels and identifies and develops the right partnerships, impacting revenues/growth and even laying the groundwork for a company's eventual exit. The channel strategy is so intrinsic to the value proposition that frequently it has to be built into the product strategy at inception. No wonder that sales strategy is an important discussion with the investors, even in the early stages.

Every industry has a unique channel that may be a combination of many different strategies. What works in one, may not work in another. There are no schools that teach you how to craft the right one for your particular product, domain and industry. If you want to learn about crafting a successful channel strategy, come listen to the experts from several different industries. You will walk away with a background that is only derived from decades of practical experience.

Panel:

Gary Breitbord, Vice President, Sales, Sonus Networks

Steven Harper, Partner, The Brenton Group, www.brentongroup.com

Mike Slemmer, President, The Collaborative, www.the-collaborative.com

Moderator:

Arun K. Jain, Managing Partner, Bay State Documentation, www.BayStateDocs.com

Meeting Site and Cost:

5:15 PM Pre-meeting Dinner
Bertucci's Restaurant
475 Winter St., (exit 27B off Route 128), Waltham, MA ("pay-as-you-go")

7:00 - 10:00PM Meeting Presentation
Bay Colony Office Park 1100 Winter Street, Waltham, MA

There is a $20.00 fee for non ENET members.

No reservations are necessary for either the meeting or dinner

Click here for directions and a map to the dinner and meeting

Panel:

Gary Breitbord, Vice President Sales, Sonus Networks

Gary Breitbord is an accomplished Sales Executive with over 25 years of experience in the Internetworking and Information Technology industry. He has successfully built effective and motivated sales teams from scratch as well as leading and restructuring established groups. At various points in his career, he has also managed business development, marketing, and customer support organizations.

Mr. Breitbord is currently Vice President of Sales at Sonus Networks, a leading provider of VoIP switching products. Previously, he was the Vice President of Sales and Service at Spring Tide Networks - that was acquired by Lucent in October of 2000 for $1.5 billion. At Lucent, Mr. Breitbord was Vice President/General Manager, Lucent IP Services Business Unit responsible for Sales, Service, Marketing, Product Management, and Manufacturing. Prior to Spring Tide Networks, Mr. Breitbord was Vice President of Core Data Sales at Nortel Networks where he was responsible for driving sales of Nortel’s core IP routing and ATM products into the North American Service Provider market. Mr. Breitbord started his career at IBM.

He received his BA in Mathematics from Wesleyan University in Middletown , CT.

Steven Harper, Partner, The Brenton Group, www.brentongroup.com

Steven Harper is a successful sales veteran of the High Tech Industry. With 13 years in Software, Networking, Hosting and Services, he brings real world experience to training and coaching high performance sales teams. Steve’s energetic, fun, but no-nonsense approach is refreshing in the fast paced environment of a start up or an established firm.

With an emphasis on building “All-Star” teams, Steve’s experience as a Senior Executive, Manager, and Account Executive make his coaching and training both timely and extremely relevant to the challenges and selling environments of his clients. His background includes Exodus Communications, EchoMail, BBN, and IME Systems. Noted for his expertise selling complex solutions he has been a speaker at many national conferences, including at the “Opening” of the Internet in Buenos Aires , Argentina , in 1993.

Steve holds a B.A. from Cal State Fullerton, and spends any free time keeping up with his wife and twin daughters.

Mike Slemmer, Principal, The Collaborative, www.th-collaborative.com

Mike is a Principal at The Collaborative. Mike's areas of expertise include; General Management, development of future business leaders, sales and sales management, marketing, negotiations, and the effective selection and deployment of technology.

Prior to joining The Collaborative, Mike held positions as General Manager North America, General Manager, PERAscope; Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Product Management, and Director of Sales - Americas at Thomson Financial. In a sales capacity, he was one of the early pioneers for Thomson's successful PORTIA portfolio management system. Mike had a key role in driving this explosively growing business, starting with 16 people in 1987, from $2.5m to 120 people and $50m in 2001. In his PERAscope GM role he had responsibility for the development and rollout of leading-edge software products. Prior to Thomson, Mike held corporate planning and senior sales positions at RepublicBank Corporation of Texas and IDC/Chase Access Corporation, focusing on corporate treasury and cash management.

Mike earned his BA at the University of Delaware, an MBA in finance from the University of Houston, and an executive degree from the Columbia University Graduate Business School. He is a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) charter holder and a member of AIMR (the Association of Investment Management and Research) and the Boston Security Analysts Society. He is a past contributing editor and advisory board member of the Journal of Performance Measurement.

Moderator:

Arun K. Jain, Managing Partner, Bay State Documentation

Arun Jain is a Founder & Managing Partner of Bay State Documentation.

Before founding Bay State Documentation, Mr. Jain was the Vice President Marketing at Voltaire that provides High Performance Grid Interconnect solutions for the enterprise and scientific markets. At Voltaire, he conceived and developed a winning product line including advanced networking hardware and software solutions that brings in all of Voltaire’s current revenues. He put together technology and marketing partnerships with Intel, AMD, Oracle and IBM.

Prior to Voltaire, Mr. Jain was the Vice President Marketing & Chief US Executive for KereniX, an early stage company in the routing and switching space. At KereniX, he led the funding efforts with US based VC funds. These efforts resulted in 2 term sheets from 2 different funds. Arun moved to the Boston area in 1997 to join Bay Networks (now Nortel Networks). At Bay/Nortel he brought to market some of the most successful networking products ever introduced by Nortel, including switches, routers and VPN solutions. Mr. Jain has held senior marketing and sales positions at Ameritech, DSC Communications (now Alcatel) and Fujitsu.

Arun holds a BSEE from University of Delhi and an MBA from University of Illinois.