JOHN HARRISON
John Harrison recently retired after a 40-year career in technology and in communication consulting. This unique background gives him broad skills in using technology to solve business problems, selling products and services at scale, and to communicate effectively using the latest in neuroscience research.
Over his career, he held leadership positions in strategy, sales, sales operations, maintenance, channels, and sales education. The wide range of his roles across large and small companies included leading a startup for IBM in the healthcare industry, integrating the Softek acquisition into IBM, and implementing sales processes to improve consistency and accuracy. He led businesses as large as $5 billion in annual global revenue.
John served as the Chief Strategy Officer and Managing Director of Client Success at Oratium, a boutique communication consulting firm that specializes in helping Fortune 500 companies improve their sales messages. In this position he charted a path to rapid growth by exploring multiple potential revenue-producing options for the market-leading sales messaging company. He implemented a licensing model for the company’s core intellectual property, guided the launch of two new products, and personally worked with several clients to help ensure sales success.
Prior to joining Oratium, he was the Senior Vice President of Business Development for First Orion, where he grew the sales force, established reseller channels, and collaborated on corporate strategy, to capture the $8 billion market opportunity for Branded Calls.
Previous to First Orion, he was a Global Business Development and Alliance Director in the IBM Services for Managed Application Services (Managed Apps) organization. His team had a dual mission: first, to support IBM’s field sales force in moving customers’ most critical applications to a cloud environment; second, the team grew IBM’s alliance with Akamai.
In prior positions at IBM, he was the VP of Managed Applications for Europe, where he helped to stabilize the team during a period of significant organizational and portfolio change. The team responded by growing their sales every quarter while the portfolio was reduced by 60%, with SAP sales growing four-fold in 12 months.
He has also served as the Chief Global Enablement and Programs Executive in the IBM Managed Apps organization, where his team built and deployed sales programs and training to enable IBM to grow its $1.5 billion Managed Apps business. Net Promoter Score for the strategic training platform his team created was 100, and the platform his team created is the standard used globally in IBM Global Technology Services.
He is passionate about developing talent through coaching and mentoring, and has been recognized as an IBM Certified Manager, an IBM Blue Core Coach, and an Advanced Sales Coach. He currently mentors businesses through The Venture Center and serves as a business advisor for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program.
He served as the partnership executive for Baptist Health and Pangu Beijing Investment Corp., and as the executive sponsor for several European accounts.
John holds US patent #7363509 for the processes and methods that enable IBM to obtain customer contract signatures electronically.