Carol Olona
Experience
- Carol has more than 20 years of success in managing sales operations and cultivating new business for an array of high-growth technology organizations.
- She has held positions varying from Founder/President and Director of Sales & Operations to District Sales Manager. She has sold technologies ranging from Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence to Accounting Solutions.
- Carol has provided sales, business development and sales operations services to companies such as Microsoft, NetManage, OpenLogic, NetPlexus, AppsCo, Decisionism and FRONTLINE Selling.
Skills
Carol is an effective team builder and motivator. Her extensive experience with start-ups and venture funded technology companies has led her to be extremely adept at building practical sales processes that positively impact the bottom line. She has built and designed custom CRM systems and implemented a variety of sales support systems and technology in order to support best practices.
Her technical sales background has helped her teams generate valuable prospects and leads through her high-impact scripts, marketing activities and materials, product strategies and presentations, and marketing programs.
Accomplishments
- Carol's career began in the mid 1980's as an Inside Salesperson for a leading accounting software firm where she rapidly excelled to Regional Sales Director building her territory from the #8 region to the #1 region. Her target market was working with a reseller channel primarily made up of large accounting firms.
- While Director of Sales at Digital Memory, a startup computer components company, Carol grew sales from $0 to $10M in the first two years with her Inside Sales staff of 14. She built a custom system to manage and track clients and leads, do forecasting and inventory and order management.
- At FRONTLINE Selling, Carol managed a team of both virtual and co-located "Inside" Sales staff. By designing and implementing a career development program at FRONTLINE Selling, Carol improved retention by 35% and sales results by 28%. She also developed and delivered training on sales techniques, objection handling, utilizing technology to improve workflow, goal setting and time management.
- At AppsCo, a Scottish based company, Carol helped to establish the first US office. She set up all of the US Operations and built both direct and channel partner programs that encompassed pricing, marketing collateral, training and sales support materials. Here she delivered $1.5 million in contracts in the first six months by securing 12 new independent software vendors.
As an individual contributor, Carol has won multiple Sales and President's Club awards by being adept at navigating the C-Suite. She has uncovered and negotiated opportunities in excess of $10M that resulted in securing strategic clients such as Microsoft, Amazon.com, Avenue A Media (now Razorfish), Nordstrom, Qwest and Boeing.