Avaya
Company: Avaya, Basking Ridge, NJ
Entry Submitted By: Visualize
Company Description: Avaya is a global leader in business communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Operations Professional of the Year
Nomination Title: Allan Rubin, Area Sales Engineering Leader, Avaya Southeast
Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since the beginning of July 2010 (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 the leadership of Allan Rubin, 2011 was a year of change, growth and
accomplishments for Avaya’s Sales Engineering organization in the Southeast
Area. Allan’s critical business issue was to increase revenues and drive
contribution margin growth while at the same time elevating his team’s sales
skills and professionalism.
Allan’s team still faced challenges following the December 2009 acquisition of
Nortel when the Southeast Area Sales Engineering organization doubled in size to
fifty-five sales engineers. Not only did Allan need to now realign the two
formerly competitive teams into one tightly integrated organization in the
Southeast Area, he needed to do so with without impacting Avaya's customers, its
revenue, and without losing top talent to the competition.
Additionally, because his team didn’t understand how to effectively
differentiate Avaya’s solutions from that of the competition, his reps sold by
focusing on product features and functions. They often misquoted or sold the
wrong bill of materials to their customers, resulting in re-quoting, out of
policy returns, discounts and missed opportunity costs.
Through a variety of performance management initiatives, including a Sales
Engineering Advancement Plan that Allan launched mid-year, Allan outlined a
process to further align his team and reduce rep churn. He implemented a career
roadmap for top performers and created specialized training classes. Finally, he
made a significant personal commitment to communicate to all members of his team
- - whether newly acquired from Nortel or long-time at Avaya -- that they were
valued.
Allan also made a strategic decision to engage ValueSelling to enable his team
to uncover critical business issues and challenges faced by Avaya’s customers.
In this process, his sales engineers moved away from selling Avaya solutions
based on the latest products and feature sets, and learned how to link Avaya’s
solutions to their customer’s problems, to discover and articulate the business
and personal value of working with Avaya, and to deliver presentations that
compelled their clients to act.
Since the implementation of ValueSelling, Allan's managers no longer spend hours
putting out fires based on inefficiencies in the sales cycle. In his words, "We
blew the door off in Q4!" They had a measured increase in qualified
opportunities, streamlined their formerly protracted sales process, and
eliminated costly out-of-policy returns.
Other value that Allan’s team was able to recognize includes:
• Achieving 123.19 percent of plan for FY 2011 - -a 20 percent YOY improvement
• Meeting compensation targets by 100% of team
• Closing significant sales deals using the ValueSelling Framework® including a
$32M competitive deal at a major telecommunications company
• Reducing top talent churn from 30 percent to just 10 percent
• Increasing Overall Satisfaction with Sales Team (Sales Engineer/Account
Manager) from 3.78 to 4.09 YOY
And, Allan's team is on pace to have another amazing quarter even during this
down market!
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]:
Please see attached hyperlinks.
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the nominee:
As Director of Sales Engineering for Avaya’s Southeast Area, Allan brings over
25 years of experience in sales management, technical sales, information
technology and fiscal leadership. He’s a noted speaker and consults in
telecommunications.
Previously, Allan held a technical sales leadership role at Delta Air Lines,
where he led a team responsible for voice and data networking in Delta's
airports and global call centers. Prior to Delta, Allan held positions at GE
Capital’s Consumer Finance Division.
Based in Atlanta, Allan holds a BA in Business Administration and a Masters of
Telecommunications Management.