Route Sales Director

Christopher J. Palazzo

New York

General Manager / Operations Executive /

Sales Director

631-***-**** **********@*****.*** chrispalazzo.workfolio.com

linkedin.com/in/palazzochristopher

Leadership / P&L / Strategic Planning & Forecasting / Sales Management / Business

Development / Cross-Functional Management / International Markets

/ Customer Relations / Compensation Planning / Business Consulting

Senior-level revenue growth executive who excels in overall business management, operational processes and corporate strategy. Offer an outstanding track record of developing strategic partnerships, sales strategies, mergers and acquisitions, research operations and service deliveries to support Fortune 1000 companies. Exceptional business leader, sales director and dynamic business manager who can contribute by:

Identifying and driving goals into gains that help fuel business development

Delivering on business plan targets to achieve and exceed revenue goals

Defining and executing day-to-day operations within budgetary and time constraints

Leading sales teams to produce outstanding results

Career History / Select Accomplishments

Bridgehampton Equities

Southampton NY

January 2022 - Present

A leading investment firm with a wide area of expertise across many verticals

Director

Key Responsibilities: Assist in evaluating all deals, building core relationships and bringing operational expertise to the overall business. Additionally build out a core competency with intent to expand overall business into other verticals.

STAR2STAR TECHNOLOGIES

Sarasota FL

Dec 2019-March 2022

A leader in Enterprise Communication and Collaboration Tools

Regional Account Director (RAD)

Key Responsibilities: Manage all aspects of pipeline mgmt, partner relationship, hosting quarterly business reviews. Breaking into a new total addressable market within the Mid Atlantic area. Actively manage 15-20 partners who are selling on Star2star behalf.

Key Accomplishments: After the first year was able to propel one of my partners to be in top 10 in sales for the year. Was able to achieve 15% YoY growth in the first year.

CA TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

(Formerly Computer Associates)

Islandia, New York

Apr 1997-Jul 2018

Global business enterprise software company with 12,000 employees in 38 countries

Senior Business Unit Analyst, CA Global System Integrators (GSI) Apr 2015-Jul 2018

Key Responsibilities: Build-out and execution of initial GSI strategy of the agile business unit for CA’s acquisition of Rally Software.

Key Accomplishments: Owned all aspects of relationship building, executing 100% year-over-year increase and quota for agile business unit.

Noteworthy Achievement:

Built Global System Integration (GSI) Route to Market. On acquisition of the agile business unit from Rally Software, company needed a focused strategy to build relationships with specific system’s integrators that wanted to go to market with the agile business unit. Stepped in and built relationships with various GSI partners in their agile practices. Was able to shape a market strategy around TCS, Cognizant and Deloitte. TCS was the leader in standardizing their agile practice with CA Agile Central. Outcome was a joint venture that resulted in $4M in pipeline and over $6M in deals for Agile Central.

Vice President, CA Global Partner Sales Mar 2013-Mar 2015

Key Responsibilities: Transformed, restructured, deployed and enabled global strategies for partner program - a $4B Fortune 500 enterprise software company. Launched and managed all global aspects of new partner program, including but not limited to business plans, development funds, deal desk, forecasting, enablement and certifications.

Key Accomplishments:

Rebuilt end-to-end incentive model for partners to drive $200M+ incremental revenues as primary route to market.

Launched company’s first complete certification and accreditation program for all partners.

Drove all aspects of enabling internal and external partner communities to harness a multi-route sales and distribution model.

Led significant transformation plan to standardize all systems, tools and related processes to optimize the partner experience.

Created best practice teams featuring agile experts, coaches and performance metrics specialists to help educate and enable partners.

Developed a balanced scorecard behavioral model to measure partner’s performances based on predictability, repeatability and scalability.

Aligned independent GSIs and XSP technology and reseller businesses into one cohesive, end-to-end channel strategy.

Devised a master data strategy that incorporated company-wide systems and processes for all direct and indirect sales to best identify, develop and define KPIs for effective measurements.

Crafted weekly, monthly and quarterly leadership communications to inside sales teams and all partners.

Noteworthy Achievement:

Helped Launch and Execute Partner Growth Capabilities Plan. Company suffered bad reputation for deal-making because of ruthless direct sales mentality. Implemented CEO initiative committing to partnerships. Started with internal marketing then revamped program to highly incentivize partners to go to market with us. In order to win loyalty, convened roundtables with partners to ensure what we approved internally was acceptable to them. Developed a consequence model to articulate to partners what would happen if direct sales stole their deal. Received overwhelming praise from partner community at initiative launch. Partner sales increased by 10% in first quarter. Developed and executed on a revamped partner skills validation program where we retrained and certified all partner enablement capabilities. Over the next three years partners continued to contribute five percent compound year-over-year growth for first time in CA's history.

Vice President, CA Global Business Operations Feb 2009-Feb 2013

Key Responsibilities: Managed worldwide staff of 140 operations specialists focused on customer software sales and services. Managed all global aspects of planning process, sales forecasting, organizational structure, sales strategy, sales enablement, sales communications, and channel strategy. Led operational excellence to ensure and grow $2.5B renewal business and $1.5B new license and services business.

Key Accomplishments:

Designed and deployed multiple analysis programs including performance metrics, balanced scorecards, risk analysis and aligned goals.

Collaborated across all business lines, closely monitoring any operational challenges and process issues.

Implemented the company’s first end-to-end cross-functional communication channels to align all systems and processes that mapped to overall business strategy.

Developed and facilitated global processes to standardize common sales methodology practices based on business outcome objectives.

Actively reviewed systems and processes to streamline sales motions and dialogue levels within CRM tool workflows.

Evangelized monthly and quarterly sales and services reporting communications, featuring scorecards from CFO, COO and EVP of Sales to first-line sales managers that socialized the health of the business and related KPIs.

Deployed the company’s first yield forecast methodology, leveraging predictive analytics that helped frame forecasting accuracy.

Ran risk mitigation processes by facilitating business-wide program that identified, prioritized and escalated cross-functional dependencies, uncovering 100+ issues such as commissions, OPEX underperformers, hiring and retention challenges.

Led an international team that established consistent global sales, contracts, services and workflow procedures, increasing the speed of contract completion time by 60%.

Established new communication strategies, such as town hall meetings, satisfaction survey and action plans, that improved employee engagement across finance and operational business lines.

Improved business transparencies through the design of operational integration between Finance and Operations systems.

Vice President / Director, Sales Operations, North America and Europe Middle East Africa (EMEA)

Jan 2006-Jan 2009

Key Responsibilities: Transformed the North American operations model to the EMEA region, coordinated assessments and redeployments of all coverage and metrics-based measures that encompassed a budget of $800M. Managed 56 employees.

Key Accomplishments:

Directed end-to-end delivery and customer experience protocol for CA’s customer base, leading teams with multiple cross-business stakeholders to develop internal processes to minimize customer impact during transitional phase.

Implemented global sales performance standards to stack, rank and extend from quota performance metrics only to overall performance and activity-based metrics throughout the region.

Noteworthy Achievement:

Helped Solve Compensation Chaos. New management team from CEO down all replaced existing team with executives primarily from IBM who wanted to restructure sales compensation. Existing sales team doubted new structure would work and expressed concern. New management told team not to worry. Management hired Deloitte to work with sales team on new structure with me as lead point of contact. New compensation structure created issue and resulted in missed payments to entire sales force of over $70M in commissions. Prompted NY Times full-page article highlighting organization as “most dysfunctional company in America.” Entire management team from IBM fired. From this point forward sales team closely partnered with finance on a company-wide process, implemented a new system, increased compensation payouts to within 99% accuracy and increased commission payouts by 60 days. Also implemented a commission’s exception process to alleviate all commission issues raised by sales team members. Additionally, lowered overall commission rate from 19-21% down to 14%.

Executed Realignment of EMEA. For many years the international offices (EMEA) were their own entities; never integrated with any other territories except at the head of sales level. These offices were a costly P&L, extremely unprofitable and were always last to receive the latest information from headquarters. Sat on a task force that included operations, HR, sales and marketing leaders. Consolidated EMEA functions under the North America heads and went country to country performing business assessments/reviews to collaborate and consolidate each country’s operations. Task force listened to what EMEA leaders needed and educated them on what they were missing. Soon had EMEA running as optimally as possibly. Laid off over 50% legacy employees who were not productive. Invested in new management and provided training and support that led to most effective EMEA operation ever.

Director of Service Operations, CA Global Sales Operations Apr 2001-Apr 2004

Key Responsibilities: Managed all aspects of sales systems, forecasted compensation planning, coordinated with

Finance department on building company budgets, targets and HR.

Key Accomplishments: Invited to sales leaders’ club trip three straight years.

Noteworthy Achievement:

Organized Service Utilization/Operations Process. Consolidated and managed all operational activities for services division. Having a services division as a part of a product-centric business always offered up the debate on what the company wanted/expected of its services division. Streamlined the entire operation to eliminate heavy P&L, yet still be able to deliver service on products and impact revenue stream without incurring the heavy payroll of a service business. Allowed business to obtain greater focus, greatly reduce its operating costs and, more importantly, streamline services offerings.

Business Development Management Advisor, CA Mergers and Acquisitions Apr 1999-Apr 2001

Key Responsibilities: Managed all third party consulting contracts for company, worked closely with legal to craft contracts, and handled all contracts administration. Point of contact for all aspects of merger and acquisitions administration.

Key Accomplishments: Became single point of contract for any new CEO and key management members coming into the company.

Noteworthy Achievement:

Oversaw Acquisition Paperwork. Was asked to manage the Department of Justice filing process when company acquired one of their largest industry competitors. Worked closely with legal and executive management team to handle all aspects of a 24/7 operation for a three week period. Dealt with massive amount of company paperwork and tasks to complete the $3.5B merger. As a result, was asked to manage the next acquisition in the same manner, which was completed in a record week and a half.

Development Center Manager, CA Global Technology Apr 1997-Mar 1999

Key Responsibilities: Managed pool of admin assistants. Provided all administration functions for development team reporting to the CTO.

Key Accomplishments: Streamlined and implemented new administrative procedures and enhanced the admin role to be part of the software development process.

Noteworthy Achievement:

Taking the Business Management out of Sales. New CEO arrived and wanted to see better business cadence and predictability out of sales. Consolidated all operations teams globally under me. Built a better Center of Excellence (COE) concept that helped to drive business reviews, implemented metrics on pipeline yields from a central business intelligence team. Educated the field sales team on a completely new way to look at THEIR business, which resulted in increased sales overall.

Education

Bachelors of Science (BS), Business Administration – Dowling College, Oakdale, NY

Certified iPED Channel Masters Member

Married, Father of three children

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