Sales Manager

Pat Ward

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QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY

Proven professional with over fifteen years’ progressive, in-depth management participation in new

business development involving pre-sales/proposal operations, marketing to entities within the

healthcare, commercial and government sectors. Successfully set up and managed departments,

guiding, mentoring, and inspiring team members, constantly load balancing team efforts to support

increasing work load resulting from mergers and multiple acquisitions. Excels at building effective

working relationships across the company to drive efficiencies, affect changes, and ensure best

practice guidelines are consistently followed.

EXPERIENCE

CIGNA Heathcare Dallas, TX

Presale Manager – Central Region (10 States)

August 2007–February 2010

Successfully restructured Central’s Presale Proposal teams from an office-based to regional-based

model process to more efficiently and effectively administer large RFP volumes while ensuring both

quality and timeliness of proposal responses within stringent deadlines. The new “centralized” model

process achieved over $2.2M in personnel cost savings and 300% increase in RFPs completed

when compared to the other 3 regions’ results.

Effectively managed 20 Presale Specialists to support region’s wins resulting in an “extraordinary”

overachievement of sales plans/objectives despite economy, migration to new sales IT application

and new enterprise-wide process steps with capacity impacts. Balanced case assignment workloads

to effectively utilize skills and capabilities of the teams. Drove best results around quote submissions,

leveraging knowledge and relationships to facilitate timelier, quality quote deliverables and reduce

wasted effort on non-viable opportunities. Reviewed and addressed all contractual language to

ensure terms and conditions complied with company directives and policies.

Diversified Corporate Resources, Inc. Dallas, TX

(Subsidiaries: Datatek Consulting Group, MAGIC, & Texcel Services)

Director - Corporate Contracts & Proposal Services

April 2003–July 2007

Established the Corporate Contract & Proposal Services function. Managed all company activities for

new business pre-sales/proposal activities, negotiations, and contracts for this parent corporation

and its engineering, IT, biotechnical/pharmaceutical, and healthcare services subsidiaries selling to

all types of commercial and government entities. Directed the total process working across the

companies with sales and matrix partners to efficiently drive efforts to meet all deadlines and win the

business. Continuously evaluated process and procedures to affect and implement improvements to

drive efficiencies and compliance to the highest quality and performance standards, and company’s

overall goals and objectives. Created and maintained proposal databases, contracts files, and

ongoing progress reports to status all activities.

Worked closely with company management to provide high-level new business development

services, auditing for data integrity and best positioning of company message to differentiate

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Pat Ward

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company and services from its competitors. Also, ensured thorough, timely review of all types of

contractual documents, negotiating terms favorable to company and generating various contracts

required to support the business. Analyzed cost and compliance risks, communicating these to

internal groups. Resolved complex matters by drafting, negotiating, monitoring, invoicing, and

termination of contracts.

MedPact Carrollton, TX

Contract Position as Corporate Contracts & Proposal Manager

October 2002–March 2003

Set up and performed all company activities for all business proposals and contracting for this new IT

software and services’ company marketing to healthcare entities. Identified competitive strategies,

generated cost and pricing analyses, wrote proposals and formulated terms and conditions.

Participated in negotiations with third party software and services’ firms and clients to achieve

company profitability objectives. Developed and maintained the corporate information data bank.

Quovadx, Inc. Addison, TX

Director of Proposal Services

(Promoted from Sales Support Manager to

Proposal Manager to Director)

1995–September 2002

Headed up company’s new business development through pre-sales support and generation of

multi-faceted proposal and other sales documents for Total Business Integration, eCommerce,

Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise-wide Software, and IT Outsourcing solutions

targeting primarily healthcare, financial, and government entities worldwide. Position also

encompassed support of company’s global business partners’ marketing efforts and sales proposals.

• Managed all operations, establishing process and control standards. Evaluated, identified and

implemented changes to achieve workflow efficiency and assure consistent compliance of the

department to the highest quality, integrity, and performance standards, and also company’s

overall goals and objectives. As the company and solutions evolved through numerous

acquisitions and mergers from a small private company selling limited offerings within the U. S. to

a public multi-divisional entity with numerous solutions being sold globally, continually grew and

restructured the team to effectively support company and partners’ sales efforts. Mentored and

guided the team, successfully forecast planning and scheduling the team’s workload, deploying

appropriate resources and facilitating efforts across functional departments to ensure that all

activities were completed on time despite the high volume of company customers and proposals.

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EDUCATION

University of North Texas BBA, minor in Marketing, cum laude

Member of Beta Gamma Sigma, national business honor society

PC Application Proficiency including Microsoft Office

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