Friday, April 14, 2006

On Passion and Kurt VandeMotter

I'm easily lured to Starbucks - it's leaving that's difficult; especially when I get the opportunity to sit and talk to somebody like Kurt VandeMotter.

I had the privilege of working with Kurt during my time at AT&T Wireless. When it came time to add to his staff, Kurt was one of those hiring managers that did it right. Thorough interviews followed by panel debriefs with his staff and his recruiter. Probe - dig - query - poke - investigate- question...pull the trigger. Kurt's staff admired his leadership and they rewarded him with results. Make no mistake, when Kurt left to assume a VP role at Webley Systems, his staff was disappointed - so was everybody else that had the privilege of working with him and learning from him.

Considering Kurt one of the finest sales leaders I know, I've been fortunate to keep him in my network. Over a Latte' at Starbucks this morning, I learned that Kurt has decided to pursue new opportunities due to a restructuring in his current organization. My first thought was: somebody's about to get lucky.

I asked Kurt to give me some thoughts that summarize his experience and work history - this describes him perfectly:

"Over the course of my career, I have developed a synergistic leadership style that focuses on sales execution, sales empowerment, relationship building, and results-oriented decision making. My career is built on a solid foundation with sixteen years of retail experience at Pepsi-Co and Dr Pepper/7UP in a variety of sales, management, brand marketing and field operations. Then directing consumer sales / retail operations with AT&T Wireless found me overseeing $135M in annual revenues from four separate consumer markets, while simultaneously gaining an 80% reduction in shrink. As the Vice President of Sales at a start-up communications company, I secured market penetration and initiated the release of new technologies to numerous major wireless and Internet service providers, regional bell operating companies and CLEC clients. My current role selling software to the cable industry has again provided me with a new set of skills and a complete new set of senior C+ contacts in all the major MSO’s.

Executing a real PASSION for life with extreme focus on executional excellence my extensive experience in consumer sales and retail management combined with my most recent experience in technology offers a well rounded executive that is creative, innovative and has the vision to maintain long term sustaining growth! My hands on approach combined with a unique ability to manage multiple people in a variety of disciplines and, projects while achieving accelerated growth and revenue will ensure the team executes against the defined strategies."

The caps are his, but Kurt capitalized the one word I would use to describe him: passion.

He didn't ask for space on the blog, believe me, he doesn't need my endorsement. I'm also not his personal recruiting agent; just one who can talk easily about why an organization would want Kurt VandeMotter on their team.
If you have an interest in connecting with Kurt, let me know. I'd be glad to assist with the connection.

My fee? Oh, give me a Grande' Nonfat Latte' and we'll call ourselves even. But I promise, it'll be the best ROI you've seen in a long time.
T-Mobile

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've heard some great things about Kurt as well ;) I now work with him over at Jobster (and my google search of his name pointed back over to one of my favortie blogs... here)