My experience in building Sales Strategies, Sales Plans, optimizing Sales Processes – and what I consider the most important – building and growing high achieving Sales Teams spans over 20 years of my truly international career in some of the most successful global Groups.

The corporate world taught and gave me a lot. It had been a truly HYPERLOOP journey to me and my family – which is an incredible blessing… and, as we have realized after some years – a curse at the same time….

My wife Joanna and our children Susan and Frank have moved multiple times. If I look back, I travelled, mostly internationally, more than 130 days a year, which as you can feel, caused me to miss out on many family events, birthdays, school plays, sport events and even graduations…

Although I have lived and worked in Poland, Sweden or here in the US for number of years, I really haven’t felt I am a member of those great local communities. At some point you come to conclusion, you want to put an end to that “virtual” lifestyle and be once and for good “really” present in my family’s life and my community.

When the opportunity came, I decided to make a bold step – building on the experience I gained, working with the toolbox I have created throughout all of those years and working daily with multiple business owners, delivering them their sales success – many of them were longing for, in far too many years…It is unbelievably rewarding and fulfilling to me, especially when I can see that sight of relief on those faces of the people, I have a privilege to work with and work for.

In doing so, I am home every night, I get to spend time with my wife and finally! I am able to support my son in his tennis tournaments! And at the same time, I am so blessed in making a difference not only in businesses but in the lives of all the business owners who finally see their businesses thrive, while they can regain control over their family lives.

Let me give you an example of how I do change the world for real people.

I had a colleague – “Chris” – years back – great person, very lively, full of energy and funny. We haven’t been in touch for many years – as I lost my social life due to my corporate jobs….

One day I got a call from our joint friend from the past who knew what I did in Sales, asking me if I can help out Chris with his business. I decided to meet Chris and I have to admit, I have barely recognized the guy as the pain and frustration had been written so clearly on his tired face.

His company is “his baby” – the thing he established, had been developing putting all his passion, knowledge and … time into it. As his true passion lies in engineering and technology – he spent most of his time on perfecting their products and after sales services. However, he overlooked completely gradually arousing problem with la ack of growth, worsening margins, unstable sales teams, leaving customers.

He tried to do his best though, investing many extra hours to move the sales needle (which had never been his nature) whilst driving product development and professional services at a normal pace at the same time.

As a result of that – not only, he didn’t improve his top line – worse than that – he started to lose control over his operational excellence side…sadly – typical vicious cycle….

I rolled up my sleeves and jumped straight into the sales-firefighting…. by doing what I know and what I am good at:

• Looking at their opportunity pipeline
• Following up on ready to close – generating the quick wins
• Changing sales territories and setting up clear sales quota
• Following up and through with every individual on the team
• Optimizing the comp plans – driving both order intake as well as desired behaviours
• Identifying the good, the bad and the ugly
• Firing the bad fit team member and recruiting for the right attitude
• Hiring their new Sales Manager (so the momentum and results created would sustain)

To make the story short – with my experience and tools I have – I knew what I had to do. The revenue had been gradually improving, sales productivity got to a new level, margins improved, we were able to attract new customers and made salespeople clearly more accountable…

You should have seen Chris’ face – he wasn’t looking any more Zombie-like – when you walked into his office, he would have greeted you with a smile and a joke. But the best was to hear how thankful his wife was – not only for helping their business but for returning her husband to their family.

Such stories are priceless! And this is why I founded and run RECHARGE Consulting!

Robert Jablonski