Our facilitator/consultants are highly successful, experienced practitioners of effective sales and sales management / leadership behaviors. We've trained over 35,000 sales managers, and many tens of thousands more salespeople, for many of the most successful sales organizations in the world.
Meet TopLine Leadership's Consultants:
Kevin Davis, President
Kevin Davis is the president of TopLine Leadership Inc., a company that provides speaking, consulting and training services that dramatically increase TopLine revenue growth. Since 1989, Kevin has delivered sales and sales management / leadership training to tens of thousands of tenured salespeople and sales managers.
Kevin is the author of GETTING INTO YOUR CUSTOMER'S HEAD: 8 Secret Roles of Selling Your Competitors Don't Know (Times Business/Random House), which was voted one of the top 30 business books by Soundview Executive Book Summaries (out of 1,500 titles considered annually).
Prior to starting his training firm, Kevin was a sales representative, account executive, sales manager, and district general manager during a distinguished career with Lanier Worldwide, a Fortune 200 company. In each of Kevin's positions he earned Lanier's Chairman's Council award, presented annually to producers ranking in the top five percent. He also earned Lanier's prestigious "District Manager of the Year" Award. As a sales manager, Kevin hired, trained and coached over 250 salespeople.
Kevin’s formal education includes a B.A. in Business Administration from the California State University at Chico, as well as extensive post-graduate work at U.C. Berkeley on the subject of instructional design. Kevin and his wife have two children, a daughter in law school and a son currently serving in the U.S. Navy.
Dennis Chopko, Consultant
Dennis Chopko is proud to be a professional salesperson. He is a passionate practitioner and perpetual student of the "Getting Into Your Customer’s Head" buy-learning process. Dennis speaks from experience. Over the past fourteen years, Dennis has successfully evolved from business-to-business sales to sales manager to sales consultant, where he has made the call, coached the call, and taught the call. Having had the opportunity to sell, manage and consult in numerous industries, Dennis has the ability to dissect the science of sales down to its simplest form.
As a sales manager for IKON Office Solutions (a TopLine Leadership client), Dennis observed first-hand with his sales team the positive impact that the "Getting Into Your Customer’s Head" program had in terms of increased sales productivity and results. Since 2003 Dennis has helped businesses and salespeople across North America successfully implement the powerful principles contained within the "Getting Into Your Customer’s Head" program.
The results for Dennis' clients have been outstanding. Client success stories include increasing wholesale business sales by 54% within five months, a sales team that previously never achieved quota that has now surpassed its fourth year of record shattering sales, improving a client’s market share from 9% to 23% in less than four months, and the list goes on. These results and many more, all spawn from Dennis’ personal motto: If we focus on the success of others, our success will naturally follow.
Dennis Chopko’s practical "street wise" experience combined with his energetic passion will continue to transform salespeople and the world of customer-focused sales for years to come.
Thomas Cooke, Consultant
Prior to starting his own firm, Tom Cooke was Director of Training and Consulting for a human resource development company for five years. His responsibilities encompassed business development, national accounts, operations, needs assessment, curriculum development, program facilitation, and speaking. The firm enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 50% per year during his tenure.
Tom also spent 13 years with Lanier Worldwide, Inc., a global provider of office equipment and document outsourcing services. As an account representative, he won the Chairman's Council Award for sales excellence. He then held positions as a Regional Sales Trainer, Branch Sales Manager, and was twice awarded Lanier's District Manager of the Year Award for assignments in Milwaukee and Chicago.
In 1990, he was awarded Lanier's prestigious Manager of the Year Award for responsibilities as Vice President, Midwest Region Manager based in Chicago. He was then promoted to Lanier's Intercontinental Division as Managing Director of Lanier Pacific Pty. Ltd. based in Sydney, Australia.
Tom has a Bachelors Degree from Ohio University in Economics and completed post graduate studies at Georgia State University.
Gary Connor, Consultant
A graduate of the University of Delaware, Gary has 25 years experience in sales training and sales management training. He has developed over 175 training programs for a wide variety of industries which include telecommunications, construction, aviation and manufacturing in both the US and the Middle East. These programs use delivery platforms ranging from classroom to e-Learning.
Gary has personally trained over 3,000 sales people and 2,000 sales managers. Gary's career spans three Fortune 500 companies with his last corporate position as Director, Sales Training for Pitney Bowes. There he pioneered one of the first applications of interactive keypad technology in a corporate training environment.
Gary, a TopLine Leadership Associate and instructional designer since 1999, is the author of Buyer's Side Selling, Instant Sales Meetings (Fenman Ltd.) and Sales Games & Activities for Trainers (McGraw Hill, 1997), now in its third printing.
Tom Gundrum, Consultant
Tom Gundrum is a dynamic workshop leader, sales coach and experienced public speaker. Since entering the speaking/consulting field in 1988, Tom has delivered more than 1000 business presentations and workshops throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan to corporate sales and sales management audiences ranging in size from 12 to 1500.
As a sales manager representing Brian Tracy public seminars, Tom recruited, hired, trained and coached over 50 salespeople (both inside and outside reps). Tom has received numerous honors for sales and sales management excellence, highlighted by the President's Award for Outstanding Performance from a division of ITT Life when his 20-person sales team improved in ranking from 26th to 3rd out of 28 national sales teams. He has experience selling both tangibles and intangibles.
Tom's unique communication skills and sales coaching abilities stem from a wealth of knowledge and experience in both the corporate and entrepreneurial sectors. Tom has had the unique opportunity of working with several of the world's foremost authorities in the areas of coaching, sales leadership and personal effectiveness including; Don Shula, Pat Riley, Lou Holtz, Ken Blanchard, Denis Waitley, and Tony Robbins. As a senior training consultant with TopLine Leadership since 1993, Tom has delivered sales and sales management training programs throughout North America.
Kim D. Ward, Consultant
Kim D. Ward has been involved in the training and consulting industry in a variety of capacities since 1990.
His expertise encompasses training needs analysis and assessment, business/process re-organization, consulting, curriculum development, video script development and video talent, keynote speaking, and training/ facilitating.
Kim has been instrumental in helping numerous organizations achieve and exceed sales growth and profitability objectives.