PAUL SULEWSKI **********@*********.***
**** ******** ***** ***** ************, MO 63005 815-***-****
VICE PRESIDENT SALES
Consultative Sales / Value Added Sales / P&L / Business Development / B2B / B2C / Pricing Branch Network Operations / CRM / Strategic Alliances / Turnarounds / Performance Metrics
By blending sales expertise and operational know-how, Mr. Sulewski drives increased sales, profits, and market share and shareholder value. He has a proven record of selling highly commoditized products in hyper competitive environments. Some of his key customers include Wal-Mart, GM, and international governments.
An insightful executive, he is known for increasing sales by implementing consultative, value-added approaches to customers. He has been successful building and training high performance teams and managing sales operations for multi-million dollar international corporations. Throughout his career, he consistently improved margins by dramatically increasing sales while simultaneously reducing costs. Embracing a variety of tools and processes, he implements CRM systems to provide outstanding customer service and support.
Mr. Sulewski’s exceptional record of improving sales is enhanced by strong finance experience in the purchasing, renting and leasing of capital equipment. He has managed over 100 branch locations and has been successful internationally. His industry experience includes selling electronics, material handling, industrial, and construction, agricultural, industrial and transportation equipment.
As Senior Vice President at XTRA Lease, Mr. Sulewski increased overall utilization and revenue for the company by 7%, or $30M, in just one year. In addition, he grew national accounts by 7%, or $3M. He revamped the national account program, utilizing a CRM system to communicate customer needs throughout the organization. The system enabled the company to connect key customers to high-level VP National Account contacts as well as exceptional field service agents. The CRM system gave the company a global view of all customer locations, precisely monitoring sales activity, and revealing the customers’ real time product needs. This also improved the company’s ability to react to customer concerns and issues.
Another growth initiative resulted in a 25% increase in sales region-wide. When Mr. Sulewski was Regional Sales Manager at XTRA Lease, he was assigned to a region that lacked a uniform sales culture and where policies and procedures were only loosely enforced. He developed a culture of value added and consultative selling that differentiated the company from the competition. He trained the sales force on the technique, increasing long term leases by 2200 units, dramatically improving branch P&L’s.
Enhancing the product mix resulted in additional regional growth. At one point, Mr. Sulewski’s region had the largest number of rental and lease units in the company with only average overall utilization. He developed a report to measure utilization by unit type and trained branch mangers to monitor the fleet mix. Reacting to the report findings, managers stocked up on assets with the best utilization and moved out under-utilized assets, saving on overhead. The corrected fleet mix increased overall utilization by as much as 30%.
Early in his career at XTRA, Mr. Sulewski took over a branch that had been under performing for the last five years. Top line revenue was very low, EBIT was below plan, maintenance costs were high and employee morale was low. The facility was in danger of closing due to this poor performance. Mr. Sulewski implemented a uniform sales process including stellar post sale customer support and effective internal communication. As a result of his efforts, the branch turned around from over $200K in annual losses to over $350K in profit. After five years of losses, he achieved the turnaround in just seven months.
Mr. Sulewski’s vast experience includes complex international sales. In one instance, he won a contract, based not on being the lowest bid, but on the consultative, value add approach he took. The country of Kuwait needed cranes to cap its oil wells. Mr. Sulewski played a key role in the very long sales cycle, including meeting with Bechtel Petroleum and customers from the Kuwaiti government. He performed a comprehensive customer needs assessment and assisted in writing product specifications, ensuing the potential customer’s needs were met.
CAREER HISTORY
United Excel Corporation, Vice President of Business Development, 2010 to present.
Currently a Vice President of Business Development, Mr. Sulewski develops innovative sales and marketing strategies to drive business and profit growth. His services include developing sales force training programs and overall marketing programs. Some of his premier clients include major hospital systems around the country.
XTRA Lease, a $500M Berkshire Hathaway transportation leasing company
Senior Vice President, 2005 to 2008.
As Senior Vice President, Mr. Sulewski held P&L responsibility for a $100M budget while directing sales, marketing and operations in this decentralized branch based organization. He managed four Regional Vice Presidents, 20 Regional Managers, and 175 sales people. In addition, he developed comprehensive business plans and budgets.
Throughout his tenure, Mr. Sulewski established programs that improved performance. At one point, he studied buying patterns uncovering a pattern of poor timing for sales calls, including instances of salespeople spending 70% of their time calling on a segment that provided just 30% of the business, sometimes with the lowest margin. He redirected the sales force, putting salespeople in the right place at the right time with the most high margin customers. As a result of this targeted effort, first quarter product utilization increased as much as 15% in some branches.
Mr. Sulewski also promoted a culture of training. He ensured performance reviews were timely and reflected the true productivity of an employee. Under his leadership, average was not good enough. He encouraged employees to excel in the important areas of customer service, cost containment and branch teamwork. He implemented comprehensive training programs with much of the training conducted inexpensively through webinars, conference calls and collateral materials.
The results were great. Productivity increased, customer satisfaction surveys proved that the company’s level of service and value added was increasing. Salespeople became more successful in a shorter amount of time. Mr. Sulewski incentivized the sales team with awards in all areas for improvement in productivity and customer satisfaction. Employees under this system were the most promoted employees in the company.
Regional Vice President, 1994 to 2005.
In this role, Mr. Sulewski managed the sales and operations of a decentralized region including a $100M budget and 80 employees. Among his accomplishments, he improved sales force productivity and sales while reducing costs. He achieved this by issuing the sales force Microsoft streets and maps software and training them on logistically mapping out sales calls. In addition to improved productivity, overall car allowance expenses declined.
By introducing value added selling to the region, he grew the percentage of national account share by 20%. The company provided GPS systems to customers at no cost, however sales people were not utilizing this free and useful service to enhance their sales. Mr. Sulewski trained the sales team on ways to demonstrate the service, which when used properly, would improve the customer’s productivity, thus adding value to the sale.
Regional Sales Manager, 1993 to 1994.
Promoted from Branch manager, Mr. Sulewski improved the sales productivity of the east coast region and Canada. He personally managed 10 large national accounts and the region’s top line revenue performance. He trained and managed a 30 member sales force in 22 branches and conducted branch visits and branch profitability evaluations. Mr. Sulewski started with XTRA as Branch Manager of a Milwaukee Branch.
Earlier:
Mr. Sulewski began his successful career as a Sales Manager at Giuffre Brothers Cranes.
PERSONAL BACKGROUND
He and his family currently reside in Chesterfield, Missouri. In his free time, Mr. Sulewski enjoys playing golf and donating his time to local food banks.