Careerbuilder.com
Company: CareerBuilder.com, Chicago, Illinois
Company Description: CareerBuilder.com is the nation’s largest online job site with more than 20 million unique visitors and over 1 million jobs. CareerBuilder.com powers the career centers for more than 800 partners that reach national, local, industry and niche audiences. These include more than 170 newspapers and leading portals such as America Online and MSN.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Sales Executive
Nomination Title: Mary Delaney, Chief Sales Officer
1. Tell the story about what this nominee achieved in the past 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:
Under Mary Delaney’s sales leadership, CareerBuilder.com continues to out pace all its competitors and the industry. As Chief Sales Officer, Delaney is charged with developing sales strategies and programs to drive profitability and maximize market share. In 2005, Delaney grew CareerBuilder.com’s sales force by more than 50 percent, ending 2005 with close to 1100 salespeople, up sharply from just 525 in 2004. The sales force wasn’t the only thing up sharply. CareerBuilder.com’s revenue ended 2005 at $495M up 75 percent from 2004. The industry’s revenue grew by only 37 percent over the same time.
In 2005, CareerBuilder.com’s traffic grew 20 percent over 2004. CareerBuilder.com also averaged 6.1 million more unique visitors a month than its nearest competitor, as compared to an average lead of 2.9 million unique visitors during 2004. CareerBuilder.com maintained its job listing market share lead in 2005 as well. According to Corzen, CareerBuilder.com’s average monthly postings made up 43 percent of the market share, a slight increase from 42 percent the year before, making them the industry leader.
The biggest hurdle facing Delaney was scaling up a sales force in a short amount of time. She believes that the sales function can not be successful if you don’t recruit passionate sales people from the beginning. She believes that in order to reduce turnover rates you must recruit people who are “sales forever.” She understands that only recruiting the best will allow some good candidates to get away, but it is a risk that all companies have to take to be successful. Delaney also allows her sales force to have discipline freedom. In doing so, the sales force takes ownership and is also encouraged to look at their jobs as running their own businesses; as a result more than 80 percent of the sales force received a promotion in 2005.
Delaney also strongly believes in continued education and requires salespeople to read the latest books written by industry leaders as well as attend internal and external training seminars. Salespeople must also watch the Economy very closely and know the client’s business and be able to look at both today and tomorrow.
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]:
3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the nominee:
Mary Delaney is the Chief Sales Officer for CareerBuilder.com. In this position, Delaney is charged with developing sales strategies and programs to drive profitability and maximize market share. Leading a sales force of over 900, Delaney is one of the key contributors to a company that continually outpaces its industry in revenue growth, growing over 80 percent annually compared to the industry’s 20 percent. Prior to joining CareerBuilder.com, Delaney managed the merger of Headhunter.net and CareerBuilder.com. In this capacity, she oversaw two acquisitions, designed a new sales compensation plan, launched new vertical markets, and redesigned sales processes and training programs.