Company: Sales Partnerships, Inc., Westminster, CO
Company Description: Sales Partnerships, Inc. is an outsourced sales force company providing dedicated branded representation to companies in a number of industries across North America.
Nomination Category: Sales Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Team of the Year

Nomination Title: Sales Partnerships, Inc - Sales Outsourcing Leader

Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since January 1 2008 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Sales Partnerships, Inc (SPI) continued growth as the market leader in sales
outsourcing in 2007 and 2008.  During this span, SPI grew by more than 100% in
size and revenue, eclipsing more than 150 staff and making the Inc 500 for 2008
(Inc 5000 for 2007).  During this time frame, our clients’ profitability in
sales outsourcing to us more than doubled when compared to their prior sales
outsourcing vendors or internal programs.  SPI was responsible for more than
$500M in revenue closed for our clients with deals “stickiness”  more than
four-fold higher than our next head-to-head competitor in sales outsourcing.

When competing head to head with other sales outsourcing firms, the worst Sales
Partnerships has done in the past 11 years has been to double the competitor’s
ROI performance for the same clients.  With a program success rate of almost 90%
(measured as beating quota during the proof of concept period then sustaining
beating quota every quarter), our 2:1 out-performance of our competitors set SPI
as the standard for the market.

We continued growth in Energy sales, IT and Software sales, Advertising sales,
Aviation sales, and entered the medical sales marketplace for the first time.

2008 marked our being recognized as the Research In Motion (Rim/Blackberry) case
study for how all field sales should be done.  This combined with our advances
in inside sales helped improve our market standard position.  Our innovations in
standardization of sales recruiting process (SPRecruit), field sales management
techniques and technology (SPI Field CRM), territory management management
integrating mobile CRM with GPS technologies (SPI Field CRM), and sales training
techniques led to the highest success rate in the field of sales outsourcing by
a 2:1 margin.  The high success rates and client’s high profitability of our
work led to accolades from independent analysts looking at the sales profession
(and external sales channels an area of added focus) such as BCG and others.

List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

SPI honored as case study for how field sales should be done by Research in
Motion (Blackberry) and is awarded at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium for
advances in wireless CRM technology.
http://salespartnerships.com/index.php?pid=press&act=dt&id=10

SPI honored in Inc 500
http://www.inc500.com

2007 Top outsourced sales company Stevie awards
http://stevieawards.com/pubs/sales/awards/398_2081_14151.cfm

Client Quotes:

“SPI treats sales like a science while most people treat it like an art. Their
discipline and focus around sales is fantastic.  SPI does sales outsourcing
extremely well, they exceeded my expectations in nearly every way.”

Level 3 Communications, M. Mitton, Senior Product Manager

“SPI’s process is amazing.  Their sole focus on sales has allowed them to do
things that we can’t yet do even with our billions of dollars of resources. They
understand the sales process at the highest level we’ve seen. We’ve worked with
other sales channel partners. SPI is in a class by itself.  Beyond getting
better numbers, they sincerely care about honestly reporting what is happening
and methodically improving the numbers.  I have the greatest respect for SPI”

Dex Media (part of RH Donnelley Corp), T. Swanson – Senior Marketing Director
(SPI ran a sales program directly compared to their internal programs – the SPI
program yielded higher ROI, customer retention, and overall revenue creation).

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated team:

SPI’s CEO and Chief Sales Officer, Fred Kessler, a 20 year sales veteran,
focuses on sales implementation and business development issues for SPI.  His
prior posts included senior director and VP of sales roles in Pharmaceuticals
and Publishing.  As a senior field sales executive in the 90’s, Kessler was
among the top 10 sales personnel in pharmaceuticals globally. His
publishing-distribution teams were rated as the highest ROI teams in the industry.

SPI’s VP of Operations, Aaron Kullman, is a 10 year sales veteran with extensive
finance and operations background.  His prior posts included sales systems
development in the Fortune 500, business process outsourcing sales, and running
a software company.

SPI’s Director of Business Development, Paul Murphy, is a 30 year sales veteran
with extensive operations and process management experience.  His prior posts
included GE and Northwest Airlines serving in both senior sales and operations
roles.  His work in aviation helped redefine how aviation could be sold.

SPI’s Director of Human Resources, Chase Scott, is a 20 year sales veteran with
extensive management and recruiting experience.  His work in running one of the
top staffing organizations in the west helped prepare him for the
process-oriented recruiting SPI implements.  His work in testing and analytics
to accurately predict sales performance pre-hire has been ground-breaking.

SPI benefits from a number of other directors and managers that help provide the
company with a management team able to take on challenging programs successfully.