Steve Savage joined his two friends, Mike Rippey and Dennis Snyder, to form Institutional Financing Services (IFS), designing and manufacturing a variety of products that schools could sell to raise money.
They started on a shoestring, working out of their garages. Their wives helped with bookkeeping and customer service. Steve, Mike and Dennis visited schools, sold the programs and recruited other salespeople.
Steve was in charge of sales. Within six years, he built the company to 250 salespeople, covering every territory in the United States. Sales doubled each year. Then Colgate Palmolive bought the company.
Steve was not interested in retiring. He had grown up in Latin America, the son of missionary parents. He stayed with Colgate for several years, opening up subsidiaries in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil.
He spoke Spanish like a native. But when he was asked to open up the market in Brazil, he took a crash course in Portuguese. Within 30 days he was making sales calls, negotiating with government officials and conducting training seminars -- all in Portuguese.
Steve can help your company grow dramatically by raising the bar for the sales force. He can also help you penetrate the Hispanic market in the US as well as the Latin American market.