Julie Mantis - 1993. 30 years, 30 top business influencers.

1993: Julie Mantis

America's Return Inc. turns 30 in 2017.  In the first 30 weeks I'll recognize each of the 30 most influential people in the history of my business.

When Julie Mantis invited me to help with a sales process for GTSI, I didn’t realize I was about to work with the finest blend of entrepreneurism and operations leadership that I’ve ever met in a Sales VP. GTSI in those days was HP’s top government reseller, a position largely achieved by Julie who, as employee #7, built the Sales team from the ground up. Her impact on the S.A.L.E.S. methodology was to help take my instructor-led training program and turn it into a sales management technology. Julie had a vision of what automation could do for her organization and the human skills to guide IT in creating the sales tools she needed. Her astounding Sales Directors, Leo Blackwell and Chris Keirnan, shaped the government agency selling strategies, and captured them in S.A.L.E.S. verbiage. The words, actions and opportunities by over 100 inside and outside reps were tied to performance measures built into her system. The model she helped me shape is at the core of every enterprise S.A.L.E.S. process I’ve built to date. What she did sounds like CRM, right? But remember: in 1993 there was no Salesforce, no digital marketing, in fact, except for GTSI’s defense customers, few had even heard of an “internet”. 

So imagine what she could do with the internet. A few years later, Julie was recruited to the start-up, EarthLink. She asked me to help train the sales organization for what became one of the leading national internet service providers. Her vision went far beyond the popular dial-up consumer focus. She applied her blend of business innovation and IT leadership to a model of high-bandwidth business services and an extensive channel program based on alliances with some of the country’s biggest names in technology. People weren't speaking of the "cloud" yet, but Julie was on the ground helping to create its market.

She is still doing what she loves: being a strategic advisor and process consultant interfacing between high profile leaders and the IT organizations that enable their business goals. What I was so fortunate to experience in her early days – the time she invests to create success for IT and users; her blend of the process with the people; and above all her caring to get the right results – has risen to a level of professional mastery shared by few.

The list so far.