Jim Hays, CEO, Principal Instigator

Jim is the Founder and CEO of the ASPIRE! Group.  Jim possesses more than two decades of experience in both Sales and Sales Management position in the advanced business communications solutions market for leading companies, including ROLM, IBM, Octel, Intecom, Geotel, and Cisco.  Jim pioneered the sale of integrated voice messaging systems for IBM/ROLM and Octel. Additionally, he has extensive background in the sale of Call Center/Customer Interaction Solutions for IBM/ROLM, Intecom, Geotel, and Cisco.   Jim is a noted writer and speaker on Unified Communications and next-generation Customer Interaction solutions and strategies.  His speaking engagements have included speaking on UC selling strategies at the Cisco Worldwide UC Partner Summit in Phoenix, AZ last fall, the recent Cisco FY08 Global Sales Meeting in Las Vegas, NV, and the Cisco Unified Communications Partner Summit in Miami Beach, FL in November.

Jim is a former Cisco employee who came to Cisco through its acquisition of Geotel Communications, a publicly-held software company focused on the Customer Interaction Solutions market.  While at Cisco, he pioneered the sale of the very first Cisco IP Contact Centers and Customer Voice Portal systems.  In addition to his work as a Cisco employee, Jim worked for key applications-focused Cisco Channel Partners, Spanlink and Vista IT.  As an independent consultant, Jim developed many of the messaging and Go-to-Market strategies for the Customer Contact Business Unit at Cisco and coined the now widely-used term, Customer Interaction Network.  His consulting work for Cisco also includes extensive work in the Go-to-Market strategies and messaging for the “QuickStart for Cisco Unified Communications” project.

Over the past four years, Jim has conducted over 150 workshops and trained more than 3,000 Cisco and Channel Partner sales professionals in over forty-seven different countries located throughout all four of Cisco’s US/Canada, Europe, Emerging Markets, and Asia Pacific Theatres.

Andrew Cadwell, Senior Partner, Principal Consultant

Andrew comes to the ASPIRE! Group from KickStart Alliance where he has been doing extensive consulting work for Cisco and a number of Cisco Channel Partners.  His most recent work involved the creation of rapid-adoption value propositions and competitive strategies for Cisco Advanced and Emerging Technologies.

Prior to launching his consulting career, Andrew was the Vice-President of Northwest Operations for INX, Inc., a Cisco Gold Partner with Masters Certifications in Advanced Technologies.  While at INX, he quickly grew the business, completed mergers and acquisitions, and accelerated Cisco Advanced Technology sales and delivery initiatives.  Andrew’s work with INX began as a result of its acquisition of Infogroup Northwest, where he served as Executive Vice President and Principal.  His Cisco ecosystem experience also includes serving as the Cisco Solutions Manager and an Enterprise Client Business Manager for AT&T Corporation.

With nearly two decades of business development, strategic marketing, sales leadership, and operational management experience in technology, Andrew has an enviable track record of profitable business growth and a demonstrated level of expertise at capturing and retaining market share within the Cisco ecosystem.  Andrew’s three day training seminars with Cisco VAR clients are designed to deliver custom strategic training in the areas of Sales Positioning, and Project Management as well as Management and Engineering training. 

Andrew’s collaboration with the ASPIRE! Group on the development of several new workshops has served as an integral part of the Transactional to Transformational Selling Framework that is being piloted around the globe within both Cisco and the Channel Partner community.

Mike Downs, Senior Partner

Mike has served in both individual contributor and sales management roles for a wide range of technology companies, including Cisco Systems, Webline Communications, Sterling Software, Secure Computing, and Seagate Technology.  While at Cisco, Mike was the Regional Manager for the team that sold and implemented the very first IP Contact Centers.  His “real world” perspective on selling to executives is a result of having served as a Vice President of Sales for nearly a third of his career. 

Mike brings more than 20 years of relevant sales and sales management background to the ASPIRE! Group and its workshop experience. Mike’s experience leading a sales team at Webline Communication, promoting the use of Web Collaboration as a tool for more effective communication, was instrumental in the eventual acquisition of Webline by Cisco Systems.  Mike has had instrumental roles in several start-up companies, including leading these start-ups in to the acquisition phase of their evolution.  Mike’s experience participating in board level meetings provides a strong foundation for relating the significance of top level IT decision-making, by non IT executives, for participants in the workshops he conducts.

Mike’s experience at Cisco coupled with significant executive-level experience enables him to bring greater relevancy to ASPIRE!’s consultative sales strategies and its workshops.  As a result of this experience, he has the unique ability to help clients cross the chasm from what Unified Communications products “are” to what they “do” and then shape this differentiation into language that effectively creates demand for Unified Communications with executives.

Over the past year, Mike has conducted nearly 30 workshops and trained more than 500 Cisco and Channel Partner Sales professionals in 13 countries located throughout all four of Cisco’s US/Canada, Europe, Emerging Markets, and Asia Pacific Theatres.

Janet Gregory, Senior Consultant

Janet Gregory is a senior consultant and workshop leader who brings extensive expertise in sales and marketing consultancy and sales force development to the ASPIRE! Group.

 Janet has more than twenty-five years of experience in sales and sales management for leading companies within the Unified Communications industry, including ROLM, IBM, Octel, Latitude Communications, and ShoreTel.  Her career began with sales and sales management roles for digital PBX/ACD and voice messaging pioneer, IBM/ROLM.  Her responsibilities expanded at voice messaging leader, Octel Communications.  Janet was on the founding executive team at Latitude Communications, which was later acquired by Cisco.  As VP Sales at Latitude, she lead the company to a successful IPO.  Following Latitude, Janet served as the VP of Sales at ShoreTel, a Cisco competitor in IP Telephony.  She helped ShoreTel become profitable and was responsible for developing effective Go-to-Market strategy, sales messaging and sales process.  Her most recent experience prior to teaming with the ASPIRE! Group was as Founder and Principal of KickStart Alliance, a sales and marketing consulting firm.

She helped establish a technology partnership between Cisco and Latitude prior to Latitude’s acquisition by Cisco.  Her current knowledge of Cisco UC products was derived from the extensive competitive analysis that she conducted while formulating ShoreTel competitive strategy against Cisco and more recently in her work collaborating with current Cisco projects and sales teams.  

Janet has trained, coached, and mentored hundreds of highly-successful sales professionals.  Janet has prior certification as a trainer for Xerox Professional Selling Skills and SPIN® Selling.  Recent experience with KickStart Alliance has involved sales development, custom workshop development and delivery.

Fred Hodgson, Associate
 
Fred Hodgson’s association with The ASPIRE! Group brings a unique expertise in the area of CustomerCentric Selling®.  Fred’s expertise includes a combination of top-level management skills, and an outstanding record of success in building sales and opening new markets.  Fred has been responsible for the sales and marketing at several multinational corporations including the North American division of the FELA microelectronics group, the manufacturing software developer METALSOFT, and a U.S. business unit of Degussa AG, the worldwide chemical enterprise.  He has served in high level sales and management positions both in the United States and Europe.  He developed and implemented sales and marketing plans in North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim.

Prior to joining CustomerCentric Selling®, Fred established customer bases with sales to Fortune 1000 companies, managed and trained both direct sales and technical service staff, and hired and supervised value-added resellers.  He has instructed workshops in sales training including Solution Selling®, product marketing, Total Quality Management, and information technology.

David Stelzl, Associate

David Stelzl’s association with the ASPIRE! Group adds another dynamic element to our array of consulting and workshop talent.  David is a preeminent expert on digital asset protection strategies and is a dynamic speaker and information security professional who inspires audiences in demonstrating how to look at security and digital assets in the protection of mission critical data.  David has a passion for helping organizations find lasting answers which he shares through his writing, speaking, and consulting.   Dave is a highly acclaimed thought leader, author, and speaker on Security and Digital Asset Protection Strategies and is President of Stelzl Visionary Learning Concepts.

Over the past twenty years, David has worked for companies such as Bank of America (Formally NationsBank), McNeil Consumer Products, and a number of regional and global consulting firms. Most recently David developed and managed the Security Practice for Dimension Data, North America PLC. Serving as Director of Security, he developed security assessment methodologies, solutions marketing programs, and served on the Global Security council as a strategist, keeping up with security trends, global threats, and regulatory compliance issues in the areas of GLBA, HIPAA, and SOX. He has also served as Vice President of Piedmont Technology Group.  David has worked on global initiatives to develop managed services programs, wide-area connectivity communications, and distributed systems architectures.

Dave’s previous experience at top global Cisco Channel Partner, Dimension Data, gave him a broad, in-depth understanding of Cisco products, messaging, and Go-to-Market strategies around Security. 

David has developed and systematized products and trained sales specialists internationally to sell advanced technology solutions. David is CISSP certified and has presented topics on security to audiences in the US, Canada, Europe, and Africa.