Anita Gryska

Experience

• Anita has over 25 years of sales and marketing experience both in the high tech and healthcare industries. She has provided professional sales consulting to companies including Altiris, Aruba Wireless Networks, Align Technology, Adaptec, CAW Networks, Branders, Facetime, PlaceWare (Live Meeting), Veritas, BioForm Medical, Tablus, Syneron and others since 1999.
• Previously Anita held senior management positions with Kaiser Permanente including Managing Director of Business Development for Kaiser Permanente International, an entrepreneurial start up subsidiary of Kaiser Permanente and Director of Sales and Marketing for Northern California. In that role she had responsibility for National and Strategic Accounts, Small and Medium Business sales and in force business.

Skills

Anita is adept at identifying new business opportunities and turning around poorly performing business units. Her approach is pragmatic, customer centric, metrics based with a focus on processes that are repeatable and scalable. She uses common sense and her years of sales experience to obtain results, build cross functional teams and drive revenue. While a strong strategic thinker she does not shy away from rolling up her sleeves and delving into tactics to ensure success. Additionally, she is a skilled negotiator with the ability to discuss multi-million dollar contracts with senior level executives.

Accomplishments

• Opened new markets in Latin America for Kaiser Permanente by developing strategic alliances in Chile, Argentina and Panama. Won $8 million in contracts within 1 year.
• Developed and implemented a business plan for Sizwe IHS, the first Black Physician owned South African healthcare technology company.
• Led $1.3 billion unit with a sales and marketing staff of 42. Developed and implemented comprehensive sales plans that included, inside sales, S&M account management, national and strategic account management processes.
• Directed work for a $150 million dollar enterprise-wide technology project, which included a Sales Force Automation system for 300 remote field sales staff and centralized telesales unit.
• Led a regional telesales and service unit that managed 23,000 small employer accounts. Performance improvements included process changes that produced a 70% increase in outbound calls with a 95% customer retention rate.
• At Syneron Medical Anita conducted an operational review, implemented a Sales Development pilot and an Inside Sales pilot. One pilot successfully demonstrated that the products could be sold over the phone lowering the overall cost of sale. The second pilot resulted in an increase in the number qualified leads being sent to the field. Both functions were fully staffed and continue today as part of Syneron's new sales model.
• At Placeware, (Live Meeting) Anita implemented an Inside Sales plan that reorganized Inside Sales into three functional areas, Sales Development, New Business and Account Management (existing in force business). As a result of those efforts new sales quotas were consistently met, slipped sales decreased by 50% and retention of in force business increased by 40% over a three month period. Another outcome of her engagement was the development of a predictable sales model that was repeatable and scalable.
• At Biz360, after an operational review, a plan was implemented that eliminated the Inside Sales function and created a metrics based Sales Development capability that passed fewer but more qualified leads to the field. As a result, close ratios increased, customer retention increased and there was less of a burden on operations when new business was acquired.
• Anita has been particularly successful at designing new sales processes that include both Inside Sales, Field Sales and other cross functional teams when needed. Her ability to work across organizational issues has seen successful implantation of the processes developed.
• Anita has a BA in Liberal Arts from Pepperdine University, an MBA from Monterey Institute of International Studies. In addition, Anita has an RN degree from St. Vincent's College, a language certificate from the University of Madrid, Spain and is working toward her MPH at the University of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Anita is fluent in Spanish.