Phillip Rizzo
Area Vice President, Oracle Corp
I first met Phill in the 2003 sales reorganization when we picked up the enterprise accounts in the Northwest to complete the division of the Fortune 500 into five sales areas. Phill was a Sales Engineer in Seattle, supporting a group of accounts that included Amazon.com, Washington Mutual, and Starbucks.
Phill’s curiosity immediately struck me. He is interested in all aspects of the software business. A technical background helps him integrate himself into an account’s IT group, understand business problems, and apply technology solutions through their eyes. With customer-centric, help-first nature, Phill earns trust easily. He had influenced these accounts without realizing it.
Phill is also very much a people person, and when he was promoted to management, it suited him very well as it allowed him to hire, enable, and coach others to perform the role he has excelled in. Phill’s people skills also had an influence. I always enjoyed strategizing sessions with him and the insights and positive energy he brought to them.
His transition from a technical pre-sales role to a salesperson was near and dear to my heart. Phill’s success was not unexpected to me, and he was rapidly promoted to his current position of Area Vice President. Here again, his curiosity came into play as it fueled his drive to learn each role and excel in them,
As an AVP, Phill is liked and respected by his teams and is another top one-percenter in my book.
Jeff asked for us to answer three questions as a helpful guide to revealing him to you through our eyes:
1) How do I know Jeff?
2) If I were you (the personas who would read this are salesperson, sales leader, or business owner) I’d want to know this about Jeff:
3) One thing I learned from Jeff that made me better:
1.How do I know Jeff?
I supported Jeff’s Enterprise Sales team both as a Sales Engineer and Sales Engineering Manager for 10 years.
2. If I were you (the personas who would read this are salesperson, sales leader, or business owner) I’d want to know this about Jeff:
Jeff is a master at building teams that go beyond the scope of ‘sales’. His focus is on customer success. Dissecting that focus involves identifying a business challenge, creating a business case, designing / proposing the technical foundation supporting that business case, building a compelling / cost effective agreement, and ensuring timely implementation. Upon completion of this lifecycle, then and only then, will there be customer success.
Jeff is the ‘Conductor’ of this orchestra. Quite simply put, he is the master, and has taught me lessons that I use to this day in my professional and personal life.
3. One thing I learned from Jeff that made me better:
Perspective. Jeff has an innate capacity to consume large volumes of business and technical datapoints to produce a clear perspective that benefits both the customer and his extended sales / engineering / professional services teams.
He encouraged me to grow professionally, expanding my skillset past Sales Engineering, and into Sales / Sales Management. Over the years, Jeff has proactively served as a model for me as I shaped my own trajectory of building, motivating, and managing professional sales teams.
Jeff’s mastery of sales psychology and the selling processes necessary to navigate complex, enterprise customers is astounding. As stated earlier, he seamlessly traverses from architect (strategy development) to conductor (strategy execution); where he then directs the performance of his sales orchestra. It’s an incredible thing to observe and an even more incredible thing to be a part of.