Steven Dean - Calgary

I wanted to have owned 5 businesses by the time I was 35

After seeing my father’s farm grow as a small business, and following summer college jobs for a home builder and grocery shop, I set my early goal of owning five businesses by the time I was thirty five.

I finished college and got an engineering design job in Edmonton. I quickly releazied that I had strong problem solving ability, a desire to improve processes, and that I was not destined to sit at a computer for 8+ hours a day.   I started consulting on automation of engineer design drafting and after a few projects had my first real venture into sales as a pre-sale engineer demostrating software, preparing demonstration and supporting the account representatives.  I quickly realize the dough was with the sales representative, so I decided to learn sales methodogy: my first year of UofS (University of Sales) got started with value based selling.

From there came business #1 as I had an opportunity to acquire a small VAR (Value Added Reseller) business. I doubled sales in the first 2 years, completed the buyout and paid off my start up financing.  It was then I learned the value of hiring top performers as I hired a rising star and he quickly became top performer and closed new business that I even thought was untouchable business due to its size.

Business #2 was investment in a specialized manufacturing business building hockey rinks board systems which  still operates as a hobby based business (young Canadian kids dream of professional hockey  – now building outdoor boards – “build it and they will come”).

After completion of a buyout period for my VAR business, I divested to a public north american company and was asked to join the north american executive team, aid the merger, and manage western Canada.  It was a great  learning experience  to join the executive team,  manage sales in a public company, and to lead and grow a larger sales team. My team had grown revenues and net earning and was the leading region in North America.  It was great experience to fine tune forecasting skills, regional P&L, continue business development of professional services, and built a strong team to 14. 

(Side Note: Reflecting back it was  this time I could have really used a professional services of finding top sales performers as we had limited window into workforce, and very limited bandwidth to spend time finding exceptional people) 

It was great experience in middle management, but I am a sales guy and wanted to get back into a direct sale role. I had a desire to refine my sales negoiation skills and spent the next few years as direct  account representive for Autodesk,  targeting the largest Engineering firms/accounts in Canada.  It was a great expereince to be surrounded by highly trained top performing sales professionals. I learned a lot!

Today I start venture #3: helping develop a new business territory for Sales Talent Agency in Calgary. My passion for sales and my expereince as a manager has given me an excellent insight into the value a really good sales recruiter can provide when a company is looking to meet its revenue goals and build a first rate sales team.

I did not quite meet my goal of starting 5 businesses by the time I was 35, but I love working with Jamie and Sonya and am excited to see where this new adventure takes me. win/wins=results

For the love of sales.