Mark Elkins Email & Phone Number

Belgrade, Mt, Us

Foster City, Ca, Us

Austin, Texas, Us

July 2012 – August 2017As a Senior Sales Consultant I was responsible for providing presales technical / functional support to prospective clients and customers while ensuring customer satisfaction with minimal supervision. Acted as a technical resource for less experienced Sales Consultants. Develop and deliver high quality standard Oracle presentations and demonstrations. Present and articulate advanced product features and benefits, product future direction and overall Oracle solutions. Design, validate, and present Oracle software solutions to include advanced product concepts, future direction, and 3rd party complimentary products. Develop and manage reference sites through high quality technical, professional client relationships.Designed and delivered mentoring and training to junior and new hires in the organization.I worked in every hardware vertical with the focus on Small, Medium (EMO) and greenfield customers. These included SPARC and x86 architectures with a heavy emphasis on storage and backup regimes, policies and products including disk, tape and Cloud.Job duties were varied and complex, needing me to use independent judgment.. 20 years vendor (sales and marketing) experience. Oracle Cloud Certified. Through knowledge of system and application design. I possess strong verbal and written communication skills: needs analysis, positioning, business justification, closing techniques. Demonstrated ability to solve complex technical problems with accounts in complex technical environments. Ability to travel as needed.

Provide pre-sales technical support including a wide variety of tasks in support of 6 Account Executives over Technologent's Western region. Daily tasks include customer calls both in person and over the phone, documenting customer needs and pain points and then providing solutions based architectures and quotes using the Sun Microsystems online configurator. Tasks also include extensive travel to attend customer meetings to deliver technical and sales presentations and training to meet customer needs, completing RFPs and facilitating POCs. Post sales engagement activities include account based product management to ensure that products are considered for purchases against competitive offers as well as for new applications. Demonstrated ability to build and maintain customer relationshipsProven customer service skillsExcellent presentation skillsExperienced with SalesForce.comExcellent product generalist with a specialty in storage and archive and backup solutionsExtensive use of Technologent's line card to develop, integrate and deliver complete solutions from a wide variety of partners and vendors

Manage product lifecycle of OEM tape storage products from cradle to grave. Define product requirements, build roadmaps, work with architects and developers throughout the development lifecycle, and communicate with customers and field personnel to both gather requirements and communicate current capabilities and future plans. Subject matter expert for product information, training. Sales driver for field account teams. Attend sales and technical symposiums to provide booth support and deliver technical as well as sales training.Worldwide subject matter expert for Data Management Storage products. Demonstrated ability to drive sales through the regions account teams.Developed a broad relationship with all 3rd party OEMs for Network Storage.Developed a broad relationship with all local Storage Elite Partners.Author of the Tape Desktop, Autoloader and Library Configuration Guide, a white paper detailing the technical and configuration aspects of Sun's Data Management Storage line.Co-managed the Tape Consortium. 11 OEM partners of Sun Microsystems that provided products and training to Sun's world wide field sales organization.

Provide pre-sales Open Systems/Client Server technical support to aid in the sale, installation and use of Sun Microsystems products and services. As a Senior Systems Engineer I was responsible for implementing marketing aids, documentation, answering technical questions, aiding in complex system configurations and providing technical support to Account Executives.Maintained in-depth knowledge of operating systems, programming systems, hardware systems, peripheral products (Network and storage), conversion techniques, configuration techniques, and performance methods necessary to advise potential clients on the possible use of Sun Microsystems storage products and services, existing and proposed. In addition, provide direct sales support requiring assistance in the areas of programming systems, performance, conversion and complex configuration planning. Prepared and delivered presentations, technical papers, conducts discussions for customer and prospects. Prepared evaluation reports, provides consultation and research for Sun Microsystems Group marketing management. Provides systems assurance function.Author of the Tape Desktop, Autoloader and Library Configuration Guide. This guide was created to address the unusually high number of illegal tape storage configurations delivered to sales support. The guide was then used to train and support 4500 sales employees, 2500 service professionals, partners and customers worldwide thereby reducing illegal configurations by 80%.

Provide pre-sales technical support as single point of contact between the field and product management via a help desk function. Provide detailed architectural, technical and configuration information to assist the sales teams in developing excellent solutions for the customer. Calls were placed by the field to access our team and get detailed assistance on a wide variety of storage related questions, issues and roadmap information.This technical support function was established to address detailed architectural, technical and configuration requirements. The team helped streamline the lines of communication between product management and the field reducing the sales cycle time and allowing product managers to more efficiently use their time. Help develop and maintain a custom database as an online resource center for frequently asked questions. Provided support via a dedicated phone line to worldwide users. Maintain close relationship with all product managers to stay current on all existing and future technologies, products and configurations.

Answer a dedicated 1-800 phone line to provide direct sales, configuration and technical support of Sun's software developer community. Run daily, weekly and monthly reports for management to document sales and employee effectivity.Helped develop and migrate this function from a human based role to an on line WWW based store where customers can research and purchase software packages without the direct involvement of sales staff. Saved the company $4M in the first year by offering the customer a quicker, easier and more rich experience with the company.

Provided telesales, telemarketing and outbound marketing support for clients that included Silicon Graphics and Ziff-Davis. This was done on a contract basis.

During this time I held a variety of positions