Andy Baysinger Email & Phone Number

Hiram, Ohio, United States

State College, Pennsylvania

◼ 2019 to March 2023 ◼As this role evolved, I received additional responsibilities and influence within Pennsylvania. The challenges that I faced revolved around training, mentoring, and directing new teams across the state and empowering them to build relationships and grow the business with speed and efficiency. Along the way, my personal team has grown to 10 and the number of accounts that we are responsible for has grown by 35%. Early on, I realized that a key opportunity for strengthening our relationships with key customers. I subsequently sought to build our business by working to gain vertical alignment with the key decision makers in our core accounts. In addition, we worked hard to develop plans that were fully aligned with the goals and objectives of our customers. As our business relationships strengthened, we were able to leverage this deep level of partnership to gain strong support for our Vapor product line and generate a 38% increase in sales year over year. Being based in central Pennsylvania allowed me to pursue a personal development goal. I was able to earn a Master’s degree in Organizational Development and Change from Penn State (Go Lions!). And, I established relationships with outplacement personnel both at Penn State and other local business schools. This effort has resulted in gaining 3 really sharp interns for our company’s internship program. As my career has developed, I have come to realize that my passion centers on developing teams and driving business results at a high level. I have gotten a great sense of fulfillment from mentoring 12 new managers and watching these colleagues become more productive and mature while growing into positions with greater responsibility and authority. I take great pride in supporting the company’s strategic focus on developing the future leaders of our company.

State College, Pa

◼ 2015 to 2019 ◼ This four-year period saw lots of rapid change in the tobacco business. New federal and state regulations impacted almost all aspects of our business. Reynolds acquired Lorillard which expanded our portfolio dramatically, and the vapor category was growing very rapidly. This fast-paced and dynamic environment required flexible planning and the ability to understand the ever-changing needs of the marketplace and the needs of our retail customers.To address these challenges, build on opportunities, and build flexibility and fast decision-making capabilities into my team, I moved the team into a new direction. I used situational leadership methods to build a cohesive team that merged the strengths, experience, and knowledge of my seasoned veterans with new, high-potential, high energy team members. This merger of talent, experience, energy, and aggressiveness created a strong team that recognized opportunities and problems and was able to move quickly to address both. During this period, we successfully developed and activated targeted strategies to improve inventory levels on our oral tobacco products which resulted in a share gain of over 3 points in 1 year. In year 2, this strategy was rolled out statewide and similar results were achieved. Following Reynolds’ acquisition of the #1 menthol brand in the industry (Newport), I developed effective display and merchandising strategies which leveraged the brand’s strong position in the market and created new energy and drove new growth from this new, and critical brand in our portfolio. These 4 years have taught me new methods of effectively leading teams into new directions. Faced with trying circumstances and uncertainty, I’ve developed and coached up my team infusing them with new skills and a winning attitude. We fearlessly tried new things, sometimes we failed, but mostly we succeeded and, along the way, we learned and helped all the other teams in the state benefit from our efforts.

State College, Pennsylvania, United States

◼ 2011 to 2014 ◼ These three years were a very dynamic period for both Reynolds American and me. The company acquired a number of brands and with its acquisition of the American Snuff Company, Reynolds entered the Oral Tobacco category with an industry leading brand. To deal with these newly acquired brands and continue to grow sales and profits in my territory, I had to quickly develop strategies to effectively allocate manpower and resources towards building the entire, newly expanded portfolio. One of the most successful initiatives that I undertook was to quickly reach out to and partner with our newly acquired team members. They shared their extensive knowledge and expertise in the, new to Reynolds, Oral category. I packaged this information into educational programs to quickly teach my existing team and ramp up their productivity rapidly. In order to bring our new team members up to speed on the traditional tobacco segments, I developed a 30-60-90 Day Plan to advance the knowledge and expertise levels of these team mates. Within about a 4-month period, my entire team was productive and focused on initiatives to strengthen the whole portfolio. These team building efforts along with developing specialized merchandising tools, unique seasonal program and aggressive execution tactics helped my team beat their Grizzly goals by 3x and rank #1 among our peers in Pennsylvania. During this 3-year period, I feel like I grew the most as a manager and leader of people. I learned how to coach, delegate, and empower my team to succeed. In the 8 years following this period, I’ve continued to embrace and cultivate a “Coaching Culture” for all of my teams.

State College, Pennsylvania, United States

◼ 2007 to 2010 ◼ At this point in my career, I was tasked with taking over a veteran team of 16 people in a unique and challenging marketplace across Pennsylvania. The situation from a personnel perspective was that this veteran team was comfortable with their current management style, territorial and not collaborative in the ways in which they approached their work load and mutual goals and objectives. Given our team’s strategic goals, I felt that this team dynamic was not going to be able to manage the challenges that we faced. I reached out to colleagues in other markets that had faced similar situation and benefited greatly from the mentoring and counsel that I gained. The program that I put in place to gain trust as the team leader and to counter this environment of minimal communication and cooperation, was to work very closely with each team member, over-communicate in terms of clarifying my directions and expectations. I then held my team closely accountable. These moves quickly broke down the silos and a more open team environment slowly developed. This effort resulted in much more open collaboration that was fun and productive. Selling techniques and best practice success stories began to take shape and a truly cohesive, high-functioning team was established. During this time, we launched an innovative tobacco product (Camel Snus) which has grown to become a segment with Camel Snus occupying the #1 sales spot. The challenge that we had to overcome was centered around consumer perceptions and lack of understanding of the product’s proposition. To overcome these hurdles, I developed a strategy to penetrate meetings of middle managers in the strategic account in order to education the front-line personnel. This strategy drove staff knowledge and because we were the creators of the segment, we were identified as category experts which built credibility and strengthened rapport.

Lubbock, Texas

Accountable for 8 regional accounts across west Texas from Amarillo to San Antonio and across to Roswell, New Mexico. Achieved my goals by building partnerships and establishing strong, strategic, business relationships. Partnered with internal and external stakeholders to drive strategic plans and leveraged the company's platform to deliver against targeted goals for growth and profitability.

Montgomery, Alabama

This was my first exposure to managing sales and merchandising teams. I oversaw a high-performing team of 8 retail personnel covering a territory that stretched from Tuscaloosa to Mobile, Alabama and Columbus, Georgia. I focused the team on delivering against targeted executional activities which included outlet level selling, merchandising, and promotion activation.

Bakersfield, California

Responsible for driving change through innovation and speed-to-market to transform tobacco faster than competitors across the Bakersfield, North Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles markets. Delivered against company goals by developing unique business plans for local markets by identifying retailer needs, developing programming to meet those needs and building partnerships across strategic and local accounts.

Master'S Degree, Organizational Development

Bachelor'S Degree, Psychology And Political Science