With nearly 40 years of sales, marketing, and management experience at multiple Fortune 500 companies, Bud started Ascend Performance, LLC, powered by Sales Xceleration, utilizing his experience to help small to medium-sized companies obtain optimal results. He also works in talent selection, assisting companies in finding the right person for the right seat using state-of-the-art assessments. These assessments can also be used to understand skill sets as a basis for training and self-development.
I think in my bio, you talked about that I was a sales professional. I was in business for 40 years. So before I tell you what I do, I'd like to tell you why I do it. And those 40 years was really a curse and a blessing. And I worked for those two Fortune 500 companies, great organizations, I took away much. But I found myself over that time period traveling a lot. And what happened was that I traveled 80% of the time across the country and even across the world. And this caused me to miss a lot of family events, birthdays, school events, etc. And although I lived in Brookfield at the time, for over 20 years, I wasn't really part of the community. In fact, I really didn't even know my neighbors. And I'm ashamed to say that. So about a year and a half ago, I decided to make a change. And what I want to do is take that experience, knowledge and skills that I gained, while being a part of those organizations, to smaller companies in my community. And in doing so I can spend more time with my three grandchildren, enjoy our cabin up in the north woods and make a difference in the lives of small business owners, many of which now today I call my friends. So what is an outsourced VP of sales? Well, what I do is I come in to small-to-medium-sized organizations and I place a sales infrastructure within them. And what that means: it's a sales strategy, a sales process. I introduce KPIs to help drive the right sales behaviors toward company goals. I write job descriptions for sales professionals. I work out incentive plans. I focus on an outbound sales strategy, and that's the cold calls, and the prospecting, and the seven steps to selling that I implement within the organization. So once they get sales and revenue up, and that's what it's all designed to do: to help small to medium sized owners grow revenue, then I can either exit the business by hiring a replacement, or help them hire a replacement. Or I can train one of the sales professionals that they have within their organization to take over, and then periodically monitor and make sure that they're on task. It's a great job, I love every minute of it. It helps me spend a lot more time at home. And it helps me really gain fulfillment and joy in my job. And it's, it's not the old grind that sometimes we all face in a career, it's something that I really enjoy doing. And you know, sometimes I like to tell a story about how I got into it, and what the difference is, and how it kind of all works together. So I was called by a gentleman by the name of Michael Patrick Cola, and Michael ran a small food company in Elizabeth, New Jersey. And if you've ever been to Elizabeth, it's the place that you don't want to go to at night. But I remember going into Michael's manufacturing facility, and it was about a $7 million organization at the time. And I was walking up these big steps. And I looked into the office, and he had the corner office on the second floor of the manufacturing company. And I looked in there, and Michael was 52 years old at the time, and he was an Irish, Italian. And he had red hair and had these big red cheeks. And I looked at him and he says, "I need some help." He says, "I spend 12-14 hours a day in this place, I've got to run the operation, I've got to run the supply chain, I've got to buy raw materials. And then I had two...
