Mark Christie

President

With a distinguished 20-year career in Professional Services, Mark has held positions of increasing responsibility, primarily in the financial services sector, before acquiring his own sales training and consulting practice. He is a highly sought sales trainer and consultant. Known as a dynamic entrepreneur, strategic leader, and a sales effectiveness specialist, Mark is driven by developing salespeople and helping organizations achieve their sales goals.

Mark recognized, through years of attending sales courses, that all too often, while much of the content was valuable and/or interesting, precious little time and effort was spent on helping the sales people transfer the newly learned behaviors into the field. It was with the intent to change the way sales training is delivered and integrated into the client’s day-to-day processes that he developed the vision for Salesforce Training.

To that end, Mark sees the enormous possibilities of leveraging salesforce.com, not only as a sales force automation tool, but also for its application to maximize and support learning transfer. Mark brings a wide body of knowledge in the field of Transfer of Training methodologies, having conducted an intensive array of research on the subject while completing his MBA. Mark also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Statistics and a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) degree in Actuarial Mathematics.

"I recall taking numerous sales training courses and then going back to my job without any support from my manager to help me to apply the newly learned techniques. I knew that there had to be a better way to train sales people so that they would actually do the things that were taught in the classroom."

Barry Taylor

Project Leader: Reporting Systems

As the Project Leader for all Reporting Systems Implementation Projects, Barry's mandate is to ensure that all SalesForce Training clients receive a comprehensive and fully implemented reporting solution that meets their business requirements precisely. Whether it entails process design, implementation, customization, data migration, or training users, Barry's greatest asset is in supporting his clients through each stage, and in a manner that is clear, and easy to follow and act on. As a certified consultant, Barry is a master of reporting infrastructure, but is even more of a master at helping others feel comfortable using these tools.

With over 8 years of hands-on reporting experience, and over 10 years in sales, sales management and IT Management roles, Barry brings not only the requisite disciplines in understanding the technology and process side of selling, but also a keen awareness of the human side of selling, with an understanding of what drives great salespeople. An expert in project management and department integrations, his ability to work at every level of the organization as well as having a strong understanding of best practices for sales reporting make him the ideal Project Lead for our clients.

Prior to joining SalesForce Training, Barry headed up an IT environment that increased sales, customer satisfaction, employee productivity and lowered costs. Barry's business background and acumen are supported by a B.A. in Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario as well as a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Phoenix. He also has been flying longer than he has been driving and received his Pilot's License at sixteen.

"I was always amazed at the capabilities of working in the cloud, and how sales people could leverage this technology to work remotely...and that was 8 years ago. Every year, just when I think we've seen it all, something else comes out, and I see the raw possibilities of a new application. Our president Mark goes on and on about leveraging technology as a tool to help salespeople maximize their application of the sales training into revenue generating actions in the field, and sure, it does a wonderful job of that, but I just see so many more ways it can help organizations become and stay successful."

Steve White

Sales Training

As the Project Leader on all sales training initiatives, Steve is responsible for the development, delivery and follow-up support coaching for all Salesforce Training programs. The focus of all our training programs, from a 30-minute Sales Sound Bite Session to a comprehensive Value-Based Selling Skills Workshop, is sales effectiveness and behavior change. Steve has always believed that selling is all about results and effectiveness, not activity.

With over 30 years of experience in sales and senior sales management positions in the financial services and information technology industries, Steve brings a great deal of credibility to the learning environment, both in the classroom and out in the field. Steve was VP sales and marketing at NCR Canada, an information technology company, where he led the team focused on the financial services industry, NCR Canada’s largest division. He was also international marketing director at NCR's corporate offices in Dayton, Ohio where he distinguished himself as an expert in the application of banking technologies and integrated solutions.

He has personally delivered sales training to more than 8,000 participants. His impressive client list includes such impressive organizations as CGI, CIBC, ING Direct, Knightsbridge Human Capital Solutions, Mercer, Morneau Shepell, NCR, Pitney Bowes, Research in Motion, Sierra Systems Group and Teradata.

Steve is a member of the Canadian Association of Management Consultants and the Canadian Professional Sales Association, as well as a frequent guest lecturer at Queen's University in the School of Business and the Executive Development Program. He earned his undergraduate degree at Queen’s University and has an MBA from Santa Clara University in California.

"I’ve always been a big believer in the power of trust in building relationships in order to attain sales success. I live and teach by Charles Green’s definition of the Trusted Advisor, which is to be consistently credible, reliable, intimate and selfless in the eyes of the client"

Caroline Tyson

Client Experience

Caroline brings over 12 years of sales, management, and training design to the Salesforce Client Experience team. Her sales experience is in the field of information technology consulting, healthcare, manufacturing and recruiting. While in sales, Caroline was responsible for national strategic relationships with a number of Fortune 500 companies.

Caroline’s primary focus is in working with our client organizations to ensure that Salesforce Training continues to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers. She is ultimately responsible for ensuring that we help our clients in translating their business strategies into results by accurately assessing our client’s needs as they are related to performance development, implementing the right solutions for meeting those needs, and measuring those results being achieved.

Her advanced knowledge of instructional design is applied to the design and development of complex, highly customized learning programs. Being tasked with designing salesforce.com as a tool to enable the learning process is what drew her to Salesforce Training.

Caroline is a graduate of Columbia with a degree in Sociology, and is an active member of many professional associations including the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD).

"What has always intrigued me is how little attention is given to the science of running a truly effective sales department. Almost every other area of most businesses have solid systems and processes in place, hiring requirements, training and certification programs (internal or external), explicitly defined performance standards and world class technology to support it all. And yet, for some reason, so many companies rely on gut intuition and instinct to hire and run the sales team. I’m excited to be part of a team that truly believes in the power of process and supporting it with great technology like salesforce."