Who is Russ Emrick?

Emrick Defined (em-rick) n.   1. Force of Nature  2. Earthquake  3. Contrarian salesperson known for getting results, even if that means rocking the boat  4. Realist, Change Agent, Coach  5. Sales Manager  See Also: salesman.

AUTHOR  Russ Emrick has published several books, SalesQuake–Double Your Sales in 90 Days, Lead Making, and Driving Your SalesForce. In addition Russ is a regular contributor to many sales blogs and creates business content for many of the thought leaders in Sales and Marketing.

BIG CORPORATE CUSTOMERS  While Russ is focused now on owner based businesses or small to mid-size enterprises, his experience includes working with Shimadzu, Konica Minolta, Canon, and GE. Many of the large company best practices – like thinking strategically and being driven by metrics can be applied to smaller businesses with great impact.

SALES VP FOR HIRE  Having a high paid VP of Sales is often not practical. However, as CSO Insights points out (the major sales thought leader in management) nothing impacts the top-line number more than an effective Sales Manager. Russ is an accomplished VP of Sales that either mentors and trains up a Sales Manager for a firm or contracts to be the company’s Sales Manager. In the past 5 years Russ has doubled the sales and made profitable over a dozen companies.

SALES  COACHING & TRAINING  Sales can’t be taught but it can be learned. The majority of what Russ Emrick does is the coaching and training of salespeople in the field with customers. Russ likes to be called the “shoe leather sales coach” because it is only in doing that salespeople improve. Russ does over 100 presentations per year, including week long intensives to get salespeople hired, trained, and making quota.

Russ Emrick specializes in turning around money losing sales teams, divisions, and companies. In over a dozen situations Russ has taken companies from literately loosing millions a year to making money – all within one or two quarters. After getting out of the service in 1980 Russ has worked for some of the world’s foremost companies, including GE.

In Russ’ words:

Early on one of my peers gave me a tag line that stuck “from the Outhouse to the Penthouse.” I became known for turning around bad situations, from disgruntled clients to sales divisions. After a while that moniker just stuck. Getting results and fixing what wasn’t working proved to be what I was really good at.

 

Last year a client gave me a different take on what I had done for his business. Roger told me I was a force of nature, an earthquake. He said when I enter a situation it was going to bend because I wasn’t. Lou Pritchett, the guy who did the deal between Walmart and Johnson & Johnson summed this idea in his book “Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.”

 

That’s been good and bad. Bad because I’ve gotten fired for doing to well. In one company, after increasing sales over 300% and making a profit in a division that for a decade of under-performance (last place-6 out of 6) and loosing money I was let go. The reason, well they told me they wanted change just “not that much change.” Really?

 

Good because it drove me out of the corporate world and into consulting. Now I can help resellers, sales forces and business owners  go from the “outhouse to the penthouse.” That is if they want change. The only qualifier is that the business and the owner want to make money are are willing to do what it takes. Then I can guarantee to exponentially increase their sales – and quickly, regardless of the economy.