Birth of a Salesman

Sales training seminars rarely made sense to Randy Illig back in the late 1990s, when he tried to grow his IT services business in suburban Philadelphia.

The sessions were entertaining, and rah-rah, but nothing stuck with the staff in any long-term measurable way. Illig began to think the accepted sales-improvement model — information overload with the expectation that a few choice nuggets would stick — was flawed. “People would go to a training and they would have a good time,” says Illig. “But they didn't get any better.”

Illig's solution, in conjunction with a few business partners, was to launch a company that treats sales improvement as a constant work-in-progress. Something that requires practice and diligence to a system, much like learning the violin or losing weight.