About the Author
Rich Nieset, author of the UpSell Blog
With out revealing my age I’ll claim to having been at marketing and selling mostly high-tech products and services; as well as managing teams of people doing the same, for about twenty-five years or so. Some of my experience includes marketing, selling and developing service and support systems for technology start ups and mid-sized companies. Most recently I was EVP of Marketing and Sales for Kickfire, a fast emerging hardware company with a really cool panted SQL co-processor chip used to dramatically increase the speed of database query processing. Before that and a brief hiatus to spend some time on the beach, I was EVP of Global Operations at KNOVA Software (KNVS), a leading provider of customer service, self-service and intelligent search applications which was taken private in 2007 by Consona Corporation.
Before joining KNOVA, I did a short stint with a start up called Apexon, Corp, which was making an entry as a Quality Management SaaS provider for the manufacturing supply chain. This followed closely on the heals of working as EVP North American Sales for Agile Software, and as Agile’s initial sales and marketing executive, where I helped develop the market penetration strategies which lead to Agile’s dominance in Product Life Cycle Management software. Agile went public in 1999 after meteoric growth in its space, and was then purchased by Oracle Corp, in the summer of 2007. I can claim early experience in the Product Life cycle Management software business as first, the Director of Global Partner Marketing , and subsequently the Director of Western US Sales for Sherpa Corp, an early Product Data Management software pioneer. And, all the way back to the days of selling hardware… I gained experience as EVP Operations for Rexcom Systems a systems integrator based in Houston, Texas, and District Sales Manager for both Perkin Elmer Data Systems, and Gould, Inc, Systems Engineering Labs, rival manufacturers of the hot hardware of the 80’s that competed with Digital Equipment Corp, Hewlett Packard, and Sun Microsystems .
I actually began my career as a circuit design engineer for Technical Associates of New Orleans, later Rexonord Defense Systems, working on design, development, and support of large scale Computer Control systems for industrial marine and terrestrial applications, but fortunately for the world, and for service reps every where, my career in design was a short one.
Other possibly interesting background information: I have remained an IEEE Member since joining in 1974; I served as President of the Mulberry School Board of San Jose for a year, and am a co-founder of The Advocates for Smart Growth, San Jose, an activist group trying to influence positive development for a vibrant, and long lasting community in the city of San Jose and its environs.
I also went to school, a long time ago, at Loyola University of the South in my home town of New Orleans. I spent a long time studying a curriculum of Physics and Computer Science, and then finanlly wound up many years later with a Degree in Business.
