Suggestions
Brian Hicks
Sr. Sales Executive at Belkins
Professional Background
With a commendable 14 years of experience in the realms of sales and management, Brian Hicks has carved out a niche for himself as a dynamic professional with a reputation for excellence. His extensive career trajectory includes pivotal roles in some of the most recognized companies, showcasing a broad range of expertise that encompasses sales recruitment, training, and management. He has adeptly executed solutions integration with esteemed partners while collaborating with Fortune 100, 500, and 1000 firms across diverse industries such as Finance, Retail, Public Sector, SLED, Food Services, Service Provider, and Aerospace. Brian leverages a robust skill set that includes proficient use of advanced tools like Salesforce.com and Oracle to efficiently manage opportunities and drive impressive sales outcomes.
Brian's journey has seen him transition through a variety of significant roles, each contributing to his growth as a sales expert and leader. His current position as a Senior Sales Executive at Belkins illustrates his commitment to nurturing client relationships and driving revenue growth. Previously, he held key positions at CIENCE as a Sales Executive, where he honed his approach to business development in a fast-paced environment. His tenure at SYNNEX as a Business Development Manager further solidified his capabilities in strategic sales initiatives, focusing on the integration of partner solutions.
Education and Achievements
Brian Hicks pursued his educational journey at Colorado State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) with a concentration in Business Management. This academic foundation provided him with essential insights into the backbone of successful business practices and sales strategies. Prior to this, he completed a Diploma in General Studies at Elkhart Memorial, which laid the groundwork for his critical thinking and analytical skills.
His educational achievements combined with real-world experience offer a strong synergy that has empowered Brian to excel in high-stakes sales environments and navigate the challenges of leadership in sales management.
Achievements
Brian's professional achievements are a testament to his dedication and strategic approach to sales and management. Over the years, he has successfully recruited, trained, and enabled numerous sales teams, ensuring they are well-equipped to meet the demands of their roles in a competitive landscape. His proficiency in managing enterprise-level sales partnerships is exemplified through his work with Fortune-listed companies across various sectors, showcasing not only his versatility but also his ability to derive meaningful insights into client needs and market trends.
His extensive experience within Arrow Electronics highlights his contributions to the advancement of technology and channel development, where he served as a Channel Development Manager as well as an Account Executive. This exposure has afforded him a comprehensive understanding of the intricate relationship between business strategies and technological innovations.
Brian also made significant contributions while serving as a Diamond Consultant and Store Manager at Shane Co., which provided him with valuable insights into retail sales dynamics and customer relationship management. His early career experience as an Inside Account Representative at Arrow Electronics and Assistant Manager at Sterling Jewelers laid the groundwork for his advanced sales tactics and management skills.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Brian Hicks stands out as a seasoned sales professional with extensive experience in recruitment, training, and partner integration within top-tier companies. His commitment to empowering sales teams, optimizing operational strategies, and driving business growth across multiple sectors positions him as a valuable asset in the competitive landscape of sales management. With a solid educational foundation and a wealth of practical experience in various high-impact roles, Brian continually embodies the qualities of a successful leader in sales who is poised to make substantial contributions in any business environment.
Highlights
There's no way better to summarize 2022 than "The year of relationships".
On top of building our team and hiring FOUR new SEs (who are going to do some serious damage in Q1), I was able to sit down with clients and partners who have inspiring stories and hold remarkable visions for their businesses.
Each of them has given me something unique that I will apply in the coming year at Belkins. While each episode is packed with a ton of value, I decided to take the BIGGEST takeaway from each conversation and share it with you below:
Stephen Skeel & Michael Ayjian with 7 Wonders Cinema- Proving yourself by cutting your teeth in order to get to the next level-Plan the work and work the plan! Continue to push the next milestone out even further once you have achieved success with the last one!
Bill Butler with JourneyDXP - Process matters more than anything else in successful sales. Incredible salespeople will never realize their full potential without systematized processes that encourage and support their success!
Lucky Lance Gobindram with CemtrexLabs & Cemtrex XR - Forgetting the "service package" and just serving your customer's needs directly. Focus on solving problems. The "box" that is created by a specific offering can limit your ability to properly serve your clients! What is their problem and are you the best suited to fix it?
Jamie Elgie with CITCON - Staying ahead in rapidly growing industries in so paramount. If you are in a fast-moving industry...you need to make decisions fast and don't be scared to do something new to stay ahead!
Sepehr S with Koridor Inc. - Skills and/or education won't cut it anymore! Your ability to apply technical skills with critical thinking skills to develop thoughtful and intuitive solutions will put you a step ahead in your field! A code writer is good but a code writer that can anticipate needs, adapt, and think about it from all angles is what companies want!
Cristina Alvarez Barrett with Mona Payment Solutions - Taking a "look under the hood" approach to every partnership. Relationships are built through the exchange of information. Don't be afraid to let your prospects/clients peek behind the curtain a bit to build trust in you, your company, and your processes.
⚓Adam Bowen with Anchor - Creating a purple ocean strategy and business moat to separate yourself from the competition.
Henrik Ledgaard Ibsen with OTH.IO, passion above everything else in business
Peter Sher with Driveline Retail Merchandising - Secret sauce can be in your people despite having a winning software
In 2023, we’re going to dig even further, uncover more, serve clients better, and seek higher ground with experts in their craft. So my only question for you…
Will you join us? (P.S. be on the lookout for new episodes coming soon!) #b2b #growthmindset #2022wrapped
People also viewed
Related People
Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.