Todd Lewis Email & Phone Number

Orlando, Florida, Us

Once before in my career has an unexpected turn resulted in an amazing opportunity. The stars align, and a position opens up at the exact moment I am available. That's how I felt when I had the chance to interview with Conversational A.I. leader Kore.ai!Kore.ai provides an end-to-end, comprehensive AI powered “no-code” platform that serves as a secure foundation for enterprises to design, build, test, host and deploy AI-rich virtual assistants, process assistants and conversational digital apps across 30+ different digital and voice channels.The pace of innovation here is unlike anything I've ever experienced. I was familiar with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft's offerings after integrating with them, but this is something else. And the corporate strategy for adapting to new developments like Chat GPT-4o is the right one, in my mind. With these capabilities, I'm back to mentoring sales engineers and closing deals in the financial services and insurance industries!

New York, Ny, Us

I was excited to return to LivePerson, and utilize all of my skills at a company where I was already known! I long since realized that I don't need a title to be a leader.Here's a sampling: I mentored five other solutions consultants through their certification, worked with our product team to create videos of new platform capabilities, and created "building blocks" of plug-in content for other team members to quickly create custom demonstrations. I collaborated with external solution providers to create productized scheduling abilities within our AI-powered conversations.Sales-wise, I was involved in every technical win and closed opportunity in the Western Region, including deals in the retail, travel/hospitality, and legal services verticals. All of these efforts led to my receiving two separate awards in 2022: Most Innovative, and Most Impactful as decided by my peers!How was I rewarded for my stellar performance? LivePerson shut down the Western Region. So ended my second tour.

Mountain View, California, Us

As it turns out, COVID-19 was a positive catalyst for HackerRank! Companies needed to be able to interview developer candidates remotely, and the vision of HackerRank's CEO put them in a leading position to respond. After experiencing revenue recovery in 3Q20 I was sought after to return, and I was excited to rejoin my colleagues at HackerRank!There is something pure about representing the value that HackerRank brings to a company's hiring efforts. Helping to remove all bias from the hiring process was very gratifying, and I wish them all the success in their future endeavors. After helping to deliver three consecutive, record-breaking quarters, an unexpected opportunity arose for me to return to LivePerson where I had experienced the most personal success.

Mountain View, California, Us

HackerRank’s mission is to accelerate the world’s innovation, through the use of a developer skill assessment platform. Skill is more important than pedigree. Our technology hiring platform is the standard for assessing developer skills for over 1,500+ companies around the world.Coming to HackerRank provided me with an opportunity to reunite with former colleagues from LivePerson. I assisted with closing the largest deal in company history. However, the economic downturn due to COVID-19 and the resulting suspension of hiring activity (and thus the need for our software) resulted in a reduction in force to mitigate uncertainty.

New York, Ny, Us

CaféX experienced continued success with our direct sales and our partner-led efforts, which resulted in the combination of my previous two roles into one.We proved the viability of our solution, which had an unintended effect: instead of acquiring CaféX, Microsoft announced the release of their own collaboration solution within Dynamics 365 based upon their Skype platform. This decision removed the need for LiveAssist for Microsoft Dynamics 365, and our group was dissolved shortly after.

New York, Ny, Us

I had an epiphany at this point which changed how we positioned our solution with our partners. We had been trying to excite them about growing monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by selling their services along with our solution. Their responses were lukewarm at best. My epiphany was that they really wanted the large implementation contracts for Microsoft Dynamics 365, and that by including our solution in their proposals they would be more competitive in their bids. That idea lit a powder keg of interest.Working with partners is a two-way street, and touches all aspects of their business. I trained sales reps how to position our capabilities, sales engineers how to demonstrate that value, and deployment teams how to perform requirements gathering and establish best practices. I developed tiers of partners: those who could sell, those who could implement, and those who could provide outsourced support when needed.

New York, Ny, Us

CaféX is about making together happen. We help companies accelerate business results by engaging customers, partners and employees in new and delightful ways. I came here to explore the power of combining omnichannel engagement with a world-class CRM system. The result is Live Assist for Microsoft Dynamics 365.I was asked to build out an effective Sales Engineering team, and also an experienced Customer Success team to deliver our solutions after the sale. My primary focus was to leverage partners as much as possible in order to create an ecosystem capable of scaling revenue without scaling internal headcount. We successfully sold and launched our solution to Fortune 100 companies in the Technology, Automotive, and Retail industries.

New York, Ny, Us

I was asked to lead all of our Deployment Engineers and Solution Architects, 45 extremely talented people worldwide. I implemented two initiatives which enabled the team to beat its performance targets for Time to Live, Percentage Resource Utilization, and Customer Satisfaction.The first was to reduce cost of delivery by moving routine tasks to an offshore partner. This enabled the engineers to focus on deployments, reducing our time to live. The second was improving time management, which gave us greater insight into people utilization. Faster deployments and increased transparency resulted in higher CSAT with our brands.In 2016 the decision was made to reorganize sales and delivery into "consultancies:" multi-functional teams that would focus on their own books of business. I recognized that this change would remove the need for my position. In August, I went to my manager and said that I would make this transition as easy and efficient as I could. She appreciated my objectivity. After transitioning my team to the new structure, I left with my head held high.

New York, Ny, Us

Labs was a special place where we got to trial innovation. New ideas were explored, value propositions were generated, and proofs of concepts were evaluated. Labs worked closely with our customers to keep us and them on the leading edge. We explored solutions like chat integrated with search engines (Google and Yahoo!|Bing), and asynchronous chat -- what would later be called "messaging."I also had the chance to manage a development team in Ramallah to create exciting off site engagement capabilities. Seeing a working collaboration between Israelis and Palestinians still gives me hope to this day, and is one of my proudest achievements.

New York, Ny, Us

The CEO performed a company-wide search to find someone to join the Head of Chat to bring radical change to our solutions. I was selected.I worked with our incredible base of enterprise customers and our R&D department to translate market needs into exciting product capabilities. These included increased collaboration facilities which improved customer delight. Supporting a partner ecosystem on our new application platform. Improving our data access services, allowing for strategic integrations with systems like CRM and WFM.In 2013, the decision was made to remake our platform to be more self-serviceable, and a new Head of Chat was hired. She brought her own team with her, so I found a new way to contribute: Labs.

New York, Ny, Us

My team and my responsibilities continued to grow. I came up with this effective, out of the box job description that I still use to this day:For the right person, being a Pre-Sales Engineer for LivePerson is a dream job. The requirements for the position are simply stated as follows:1. Be passionate about Internet technologies.The ideal candidate is naturally interested in, and excited about how the Internet works. She stays current with new developments, and would do so in her spare time even if this research was unrelated to her job. Examples include experience with (list of web technologies).2. Be dedicated to helping other people at all times.Being a sales engineer is to be a technological evangelist, teacher, and facilitator, both internally and externally. Strive to add value to every interaction you have. The desire to help others at all times is in your DNA; it is not merely an aspect of your professional life that can be turned on and off.3. Be a consummate communicator.Effective communication is at the heart of the sales engineering role. You must be able to take difficult subjects, and make them easy to comprehend. From written correspondence (including any submitted résumés), email, phone, webinars, to in-person meetings, you must convey trustworthiness, confidence, knowledge, and integrity.4. Consistently develop good judgment.The ideal candidate knows his own limits, but is willing to step outside of his comfort zone to tackle new challenges. Mistakes can be made; the important thing is to learn from them. The ideal candidate has a college degree (or equivalent work experience), and a minimum of three years’ worth of experience in sales engineering and/or service delivery roles. He is able to candidly discuss lessons which have been learned along the way.If all that describes you, then I look forward to our being introduced.

New York, Ny, Us

As our sales team grew, I was able to start building out my team. I enjoyed finding people with complementary skills and perspectives. I also pushed myself to find new ways of providing value to the company. One way was to analyze our competitors' products, as they tried to imitate our proactive chat. Since these solutions are deployed on websites, the code is readily available.I discovered a flaw: one competitor downloaded their engagement rules and their agent availability when the page was loaded. Then the consumer's browser did all the work. That meant a visitor who spent enough time on a page (satisfied the rule) might not be put in touch with an agent if an agent became available after the page loaded; that was a missed opportunity. Conversely, a visitor might be invited to a chat because an agent was available when the page loaded, but now the agent was occupied; the visitor would be invited to wait in queue. That was a bad customer experience. I verified this behavior of our competitor's solution.LivePerson's solution constantly polled for agent availability, so we could prove that we did a better job of maximizing ROI and CSAT. Our sales team adopted this value proposition, and we were successful with it: $75M in 2008, and $87M in 2009.

New York, Ny, Us

Luckily I was looking for a job when a recruiter introduced me to LivePerson. I was the first Sales Engineer hired into the company, and I was looking forward to having my responsibilities grow as the team grew.We led the way in digital engagement with proactive chat: if a customer spent enough time on a product page, if they backed out of the checkout process, or if they had made multiple support searches and were about to leave the site unsatisfied then we could put them in touch with a live agent. LivePerson was a $33M company in 2006. By the end of 2007 we were at $52M, and I was involved with most of that new business.

Bloomington, Minnesota, Us

If you're reading this section then I commend you for your perseverance; it's definitely "below the fold." And if one of your standard interview questions is "Tell me about a point in your career that went wrong," then this role is the answer.Spanlink was a premier value added reseller for Cisco. Beyond implementing Cisco VOIP products like Cisco CallManager and Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE), we had our own software solutions for quality monitoring (call recording), centralized management of UCCE, and the Calabrio Workforce Management product. I was successful: I helped close deals with Molina Healthcare, Mortgage One, Keystone Automotive, First American Bank, and Tribune Company. The contributions of these customers helped the Western Region exceed its quota for 2006.My mistake was that I had rested on my laurels. I didn't pursue any of Cisco's certifications because I was a software guy. When Cisco released competing software solutions for call recording and centralized management in early 2007, Spanlink decided to retire their own. And I wasn't knowledgeable enough to support Spanlink's implementation business. I was let go. It hurt, and I only had myself to blame. I had not done everything I could to bring value to the company. I would not make that mistake again.

Phoenix, Az, Us

Another acquisition. Syntellect acquired Apropos Technology in 2006. Being assigned to a new region and seeing my sales reps' pipelines be redistributed made me concerned about my earning potential in 2006. I got greedy and chased a bigger paycheck.That would turn out to be a mistake.

Us

Apropos' product suite provided multichannel interaction management to contact centers. I was already familiar with CTI integration from my time at Clarify, and this opportunity enabled me to learn many of the intricacies of the telephony environment including port approximations (Erlang calculations), and IVR integrations.I was the lead SC on successful deals with Southern California Edison, eBay, Juniper Networks, Remedy, Metlife Investors, Jacobs Engineering, Wonderware Software, Greenpoint Mortgage, Philips Oral, and several credit unions. I was the highest achieving SC in 2005.

Irvine, California, Us

Through my network, I learned of an opening for a Field Applications Engineer at Lantronix. Both the CEO and the VP of Sales were Western Digital veterans. When I sat down with the VP, I told him that he didn't need an FAE for existing customers. He needed a Systems Engineer that would work alongside of his sales team to help close new business. He was excited by the idea.In the newly-created role I managed pre-sales technical responsibilities such as RFI/RFP completion, demonstrations, and VAR training. My new customers included Avaya, Cox Communications, Verizon, Motorola, SBC, IBM Global Services, American Express, CSC, and Sun Microsystems. I developed and presented VAR training materials to Ingram Micro, Tech Data, and Arrow/MOCA. These customers were instrumental in Lantronix’ posting its first quarter “in the black” in five years.My success in this role led to the hiring of two additional people in this capacity. I was still a software guy at heart, and Lantronix was another hardware company. After establishing this role I sought an opportunity to return to the software industry.

I used this time to try independent consulting. I sold and delivered solutions using HTML, JavaScript, ASP, and SQL Server. I learned that it was very difficult to sell new projects while working on existing ones. I was experiencing a roller coaster of income: feast while delivering, and famine while selling. I developed a sincere appreciation for how difficult the sales role really is.To mitigate this volatility, I used my experience with supporting partners to establish relationships with local, outsourced IT shops. They could sell the projects for me, and I could focus on billable activities. One of these projects earned an award for the best use of technology by a non-profit organization: tracking food being delivered to the homeless in Orange County.My wife and I had two young children at this time. We decided it would be better for me to return to a corporate environment with less risk and company-provided benefits.

Ca

Nortel Networks acquired Clarify. My tenure with the company ended when they closed the Western Region office as part of Nortel's collapse.

San Jose, Ca, Us

Now that I was familiar with the SE role, I was asked to join the Western Region and support direct sales. I carried a personal quota of assisting with $3M in sales. Working closely with my fantastic sales reps, I smashed that goal and achieved 230% of that number. We sold into the healthcare, automotive, financial services, and technology verticals. Customers included Quest Software, PacifiCare, Kia Motors, Pacific Life, Newgen Results, Experian, and Western Digital. I was the Top Sales Engineer in North America for 2000.Part of my comp plan was based on a North American number. I thought about how I could help SE's in other regions be more successful. Clarify had a client-server architecture with an installed client, and was developing new methods of being accessible via a web browser. On my own initiative and leveraging my project manager experience from Western Digital, I created a "WebJedi" alias and published white papers to better equip the SE organization to talk about this new capability.

San Jose, Ca, Us

My first job as a Sales Engineer was for Clarify, the company who made the CRM software I used at Western Digital. I supported the big consulting firms (KPMG, Andersen Consulting, Price Waterhouse Coopers, IBM Global Services, and CGEY) as we attempted to convince them to start Clarify practices. I learned that you had to bring them more business than they brought you in order to start that process. We were successful: the Channel Sales group achieved 140% of quota for 1999.

San Jose, Ca, Us

My experience with the intranet and extranet projects resulted in my being asked to lead the development of an internet site to sell hard drives directly to consumers. I designed and assisted in the building of this site, including real-time inventory integration with our warehouse. This project was delivered on time and under budget! Sell-through was never what we had hoped for due to MAP pricing: WD did not want to create channel conflict with big box stores like CompUSA or Best Buy by offering our drives at lower prices.After the successful launch of this project, I had become a software specialist at a hardware company.

San Jose, Ca, Us

Wanting to leave Tech Support, I developed a relationship with the Director of Field Applications. This led to a job opportunity as a Field Quality Technician. I maintained relationships with key OEM customers like IBM, Compaq, and Gateway, traveling to their facilities to deal with integration issues, and to perform line fallout testing. As a side project I developed an extranet site on Netscape Application Server for these customers, so that they could retrieve their results securely.I was also responsible for maintaining our resources like laptops, and for shipping them as needed. I created an intranet site using IIS, SQL Server, and ASP for our Field Applications Engineers to log their requests and see their status.

San Jose, Ca, Us

After logging calls for ten months, I raised my hand and asked "What are we doing with all of this data in Clarify?" We were getting plenty of call stats from the PBX, but not a lot of information from our CRM system. A new position was created, "Quality Analyst." I learned SQL and BusinessObjects in order to create reports for the VP of Technical Support. These reports showed top reasons for calls, call trends, reasons for returns, and an estimate on how much those returns were costing the company. These reports ended up being included in weekly presentations made to the CEO, and led to changes in how the company managed troubleshooting drives before accepting returns.

San Jose, Ca, Us

My first job after leaving the Navy. My love and knowledge of computers enabled me to ace the skills test, and I was hired to answer the phones, helping our customers for eight hours a day and logging the details of these calls into Clarify CRM.One example of how my efforts benefitted the entire team had to do with the way returns were being processed. We had to use a terminal emulator to connect to an AS-400 mainframe to set up the return. I discovered there was a macro ability in our emulator, and I wrote one that turned the process from taking 2-3 minutes into a macro that ran in ten seconds. This automation reduced the handle time of all of the TSP's.

Systems Engineering

Education record