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Chris Drake Promoted to Sales Training Manager

September 16, 2021

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Chris Drake joined ALKU in May of 2016 as an account manager in the ERP group. He went on to achieve great personal success, becoming a staple account manager on the Oracle team. In May of 2020, Chris transitioned his efforts and career path by joining the Talent Development team as the company’s first Sales Trainer.

As a Talent Development Sales Trainer, Chris helped to revamp the company’s entire new hire sales training. Since switching roles in 2020, Chris has worked with 16 people at the account manager desk level, providing mentorship over 6-8 weeks on average. Chris’ contributions to ALKU through his role as a Sales Trainer have been extensive, helping to grow newer employees and to take senior employees to the next level. His impact has been felt and recorded from the desk level all the way to the company level.

Chris has been doing the work of the Sales Training Manager for a while now. He has worked as a mentor to fellow Sales Trainer, Tom Parcero, and helped Tom become an excellent trainer. Sales managers speak with Chris directly and are in constant communication, showing his commitment to his role and to the growth of account managers across the company. Additionally, Chris is a big picture thinker; he takes initiative and is decisive. He is a great person to lean on for support withing the group and helps keep the team on track when management is out of office.

With this and much more, ALKU is thrilled to announce the promotion of Chris Drake to Sales Training Manager.

In his new role, Chris will be responsible for the entire Sales Training program. He will be influential in the everyday decisions for Talent Development. He will continue to mentor account managers and will be tasked with building a Sales Training team. Chris will play a pivotal role in the growth of Talent Development and work closely with sales leaders to continue to strengthen our sales program.

Congratulations, Chris! We cannot wait to see where you take this role!

“Drake! My guy!! Congrats dude – well, well deserved. Drake was the first Trainer to join Talent Development. From Day 1, he had no hesitations with sharing his ideas and putting his sales expertise on display. He brought new life to the new hire sales training program and developed a process around sales mentoring. He has been instrumental in the growth of TD, from his own success working with AMs and their successes, to paving the way for current and future Sales Trainers. Drake and his team have worked with over 20 account managers in the company since the beginning. Statistically speaking, if you go through the sales mentoring program with Chris and his team, your personal success will continue to grow over the next 20 weeks. It is no surprise that Chris is up for a promotion with an impact like that. In a relatively short time frame, Drake has put TD on the map, and I know he is determined to take this thing to the moon. Congrats, Drake!!!” -Dennis Kapsimalis, Director of Talent Development

“’Draaaaake?!?’ – Soulja Boy Voice. From the day Chris Drake started at ALKU, one thing that was fun to watch was how much time he invested in learning how to do the job correctly. He acted like a student during training, Under and Over 20Ks, Morning Workouts, and all sales meetings. He had notebook in hand, writing down everything that was said, and he was speaking up, asking questions, and really investing time in trying to be the best version of himself at work. I always saw him get so into it and thought ‘This dude really likes the training part of this job.’ When Drake took the role of Talent Development Sales Trainer, I knew he was going to do great, but what I didn’t see coming was how much his role would become an asset and true business partner to our sales teams. I’ve had the luxury of watching Drake work with over six account managers in ERP and the time and effort he puts into each person is incredible. His ability to dive in and find a person’s strengths to play off and weaknesses to work on and provide an un-bias assessment and plan of action, is exactly what we needed as a company. What impressed me most was that the same thing that made him a good account manager made him an awesome sales trainer—he put the relationships first. Every person that Drake has worked with he made sure to get to know on a personal level. He also has put so much effort into working alongside the sales managers to help them develop their account managers that I don’t know what we would do without him at this point. Congrats on your promotion, Drake-this one is so exciting. – James Cassin-Reed, Director of ERP Sales

“Drake!! Congratulations on your promotion!! This is so well deserved. I cannot imagine ALKU without the Talent Development team and without Drake’s role! His role has been so crucial to a lot of success and growth in the AM’s he’s trained in the last year. I’ve had the pleasure of working pretty closely with Drake since he started, and I really don’t think there is anyone better suited for this role. As an account nanager in Peoplesoft, Drake broke into multiple accounts, grew amazing relationships with his clients, and found personal success. Any sales manager and account manager who will have the pleasure of working with Drake and his team are lucky. As someone who has had a few account managers work with Drake, I cannot thank him enough for the help. If you haven’t had the chance to work with Drake and his team, you are missing out! No matter the tenure or spread level, any account manager can benefit from working with Drake and I can promise you, it’ll be worth it. He is someone who follows the process and embodies the ALKU culture so you know he will be translating and training your team members the ALKU way. Drake, congrats again! I cannot wait for you to take this new role and your team to the moon!!” -Erin McCormick, SAP Sales Manager