As Founder and CEO of Sales Engine, Craig and his team help firms build and tune their sales engine. Craig’s firm works with teams all over the world to develop their knowledge, skill and discipline, and translate those key assets into higher performance.
As a Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Craig designed, developed, and teaches the award-winning course called Entrepreneurial Selling, recently recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the “Top Ten” courses in the country. He also teaches Building the New Venture and a course on leadership called Personal Leadership Insights for the executive education program. He is the recipient of the 2012 Faculty Excellence Award for teaching. In his capacity with Booth, Craig travels the globe teaching and motivating leaders, business executives, and alumni about the nuances and core competencies of each of his classes.
Craig is also the author of What’s Your Story? a book that looks at how leaders and sales professionals use stories to connect, inspire, and overachieve. In his book, Craig demonstrates the powerful impact stories have on the three most common performance challenges – leadership, strategic selling, and motivation.
Craig has been a sales person and entrepreneur for more than 20 years. He spent his first year in sales being trained by IBM Corporation in the classical selling style and was the #2 performer in his year-long sales school class. Post-IBM, Craig covered three-quarters of the country selling to large retailers for a division of Dean Witter. After earning his MBA from Kellogg, Craig joined a midsize consulting firm called the Forum Corporation and quickly became the firm’s new product launch and client recovery specialist.
In 2000, Craig was recruited to join a start-up company called WisdomTools as its CEO. Craig ran and grew WisdomTools and then successfully sold the company to a larger firm in 2008. After founding Sales Engine, the venture backer’s of ClearGauge, an interactive marketing and web strategy firm recruited Craig to become the CEO. Craig executed a turnaround of ClearGauge by immediately building a sales engine and developing a new web presence as well as cutting significant costs. He then sold the company at a high valuation to a much larger agency.
From $250,000 computer systems to $1,500,000 consulting projects and from $20 books to entire companies, Craig has been a consistent high-performer selling products and services across the B2B and B2C spectrum.