Today’s business leaders face challenging and ever-changing environments. However, great leaders are flexible and adapt to what the business and their team need. They are encouraging and empathetic with their employees, and they are committed to the vision and mission of the business.
Sam Levy, Senior Vice President of Sales, Oracle NetSuite, is an encouraging, motivating, and true leaderwho helps his team grow and learn from their failures so they can develop despite challenges.
A Remarkable Career
Sam earned his bachelor’s degree in Marketing from San Diego State University and started his career in sales for technology companies. His 28-year sales career started with a typical entry-level job as a business development representative where he sold ERP and business software across small and large companies. He gained experience by building sales and service organizations, developing product strategies, and executing sales enablement programs.
While working for an enterprise technology company, Sam met a mentor who became crucial to his career. She helped him envision his career path while motivating and guiding him to achieve his goals.
Sam joined NetSuite nine years ago to help the company reach its next stage of growth. For the past four years, he has led the global sales organization. Prior to his current role as senior vice president of Sales, he led sales for manufacturing and wholesale distribution in North America. While serving at NetSuite, Sam’s team has built a strong winning culture that is committed to customers and professional development.
Inception in the Cloud Business
NetSuite was founded in 1998 as the first cloud computing software company in the world by Evan Goldberg, Co-founder and EVP, with Larry Ellison. The company was working in the cloud sector before cloud computing technology became a common way technology is delivered. NetSuite was founded with a mission to help entrepreneurs unlock business growth. Today, the company is helping organizations adapt and thrive.
Unified Cloud Solutions
NetSuite provides a unified cloud business system that helps organizations run their most critical business operations. NetSuite’s offerings include:
- Accounting
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Professional Services Automation (PSA)
- Human Capital Management (HCM)
- Inventory Management
- Warehouse Management
- Ecommerce
- Analytics and Reporting
Additionally, NetSuite offers a proven customer engagement model called SuiteSuccess, which aims to help customers solve industry challenges that have hindered the company’s ability to grow and adapt to change. Currently, more than 29,000 customers are using NetSuite to get the visibility, control, and agility they need to build and run successful businesses.
Strategic Leadership
Being at the helm of the sales organization, Sam wears many hats and shoulders many key responsibilities. He leads North America sales for the company, manages channel and alliance organizations, and is responsible for growing NetSuite’s customer base. After being acquired by Oracle, the company has doubled its customer count and it continues to grow every year.
Sam appreciates all the work achieved by the company’s sales and business development teams. The team has helped several business leaders realize the value of an integrated business system to help them adapt to challenges and prepare for uncertainty.
Healthy Work Environment
NetSuite has been working in the cloud industry for more than 24 years and develops technology with which organizations can work from anywhere at any time, including NetSuite itself. The company’s offices have reopened, and the company offers employees a flexible approach.
Sales requires constant and meaningful interactions and dialogue that builds trust over time. With that said, NetSuite trusts its teams, whether it’s virtual or in person, and focuses on fostering a dynamic team. The company believes in its staff and helps them develop their individual skills and strengths. By highlighting team success stories, NetSuite tries to reinforce good habits and team dynamics to inspire others to model the behavior of successful teams.
NetSuite has worked tirelessly in the last two years to support its employees amid a virtual working environment. To maintain team morale and communication, and to keep company culture alive, NetSuite plans virtual events, including happy hours with top executives and has dedicated team Slack Channels to celebrate new achievements.
Valuable Client Response
On top of maintaining a healthy working environment, Sam also takes great care of customer relationships. He emphasizes how important customer feedback is. He also believes implementing customer suggestions is crucial. It ensures the business, the product, and its strategies are working for customers.
Building a close relationship with customers is the number one priority for the sales organization. Sam encourages ongoing and honest conversations between his teams and customers. Meaningful interactions are required to build close relationships and are an important factor that ensure customer satisfaction and retention.
With that said, NetSuite is one of the major players in the industry. Along with its current efforts for customer satisfaction, the company continually strives to create new solutions. NetSuite is consistently innovating and adapting its products and services. Currently, NetSuite is the #1 cloud ERP provider.
Empowering Tomorrow’s Leaders
As an experienced leader, Sam imparts valuable knowledge to budding leaders within the organization. He believes that employees are the best asset of a strong company and his main job as a leader is to advocate for them and empower them. Sam leads by example and emphasizes that leaders should motivate their team to work toward a common goal, advocate for them, and be engaged in meetings and brainstorms.
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