Company: U S Postal Service Sales, Washington DC
Company Description: USPS is a $78B government agency financed solely from selling postal products and services. The Sales staff of 700 generates $50B. They have won customer loyalty with great customer value, trusted, reliable, affordable services to meet customer business needs. They help customers build relationships, ship goods, acquire and retain customers, and adjust to changing markets to grow their business.
Nomination Category: Sales Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Department of the Year - Public Services & Education

Nomination Title: USPS Sales Department Success

1. Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since the beginning of July last year (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:

We are a direct selling organization with the goal of understanding our
customer's business and offering solutions that will help them grow their
business with USPS as their strategic partner. Our sales strategies focused on
the key business needs of customers and simplified our account planning
activities. We developed core business strategies linked to commonalities
businesses share - the need to acquire customers, retain customers, communicate
to stakeholders, grow revenue, and fulfill products and services.

A full force sales effort was launched to show customers that direct mail was a
better way to target specific customers who were more apt to use your service
or buy your product versus blanket TV, radio, or print advertisements. Our
costs were lower and verifiable results were more immediate and could be
tracked for an ROI. We targeted forty large customers with a special sales
program to help them through major economic impacts. We were very successful
in achieving mutually agreed upon financial goals in 2008 and will expand it in
2009.

We also added a strong tactical focus with comprehensive training that gave
sales employees best practices, tips, tactics, sales tools, and collateral
material by industry segments to use with customers. With extensive Competitive
Financial Analysis Tools, a strong National Accounts Program Resource Center,
and a Channel Effectiveness Index (CEI) for measuring customer satisfaction, we
were able to grow revenue significantly. Our year over year growth has been
more than $1 billion in new revenue.

With the downturn in the economy, we helped customers control costs with sales
educational programs on "green" initiatives and how to get their customers
involved in joint ventures to help the environment. We expanded programs to
improve their address quality to ensure deliverable mail that increased their
sales and drove customer web traffic. We offered recycled packaging material
with customized business logos for package fulfillment operations. We taught
customers how to improve response rates with direct mail marketing, which could
proactively avert customer concerns about delivery of shipments with the use of
the USPS Intelligent Mail Barcode TM which links to an online system that
tracks delivery.

USPS Sales was instrumental in helping customers increase brand awareness and
buyer loyalty with "Branding through the Mailbox" sales strategies and saw
tremendous growth in direct mail for political campaign messaging this year.
New pricing flexibility targeted customers with internet presence to reach new
domestic and global clients.

Overall we sought and were successful in helping business customers to retain
and grow business as well as elevate their position as good corporate citizens
of the environment. The perception that mail was not competitive with other
media and adversely impacted the environment was erased as our sales program
reached more customers. USPS won several prestigious national industry awards
this year for increasing public awareness of how to grow your business and
maintain economic stability with environmentally conscious direct mail
marketing programs.

2. 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]:

Articles and success stories include names of Fortune 500 firms. We cannot
release their names without their permission and clearance from Postal
Counsel. Public sector privacy rules do not allow us to indicate specific data
and customer information in this way.

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated sales organization:

Jerry Whalen is vice president of USPS Sales and responsible for the
achievement of $58 billion in commercial revenue with large mailers across the
nation. He has a record of significant accomplishments from 25 years at Xerox.
Whalen advanced through a series of field and headquarters assignments to
significantly improve profit margins and top-line revenue. Throughout his
career, Whalen has been responsible for multi-channel organizations for direct
and indirect sales. Whalen has extensive experience in both federal and
commercial sectors sales where he has been a national leader in business
results, as well as customer and employee satisfaction.