Nigel Burns

Nigel Burns is a 25+ year executive in enterprise sales and sales leadership, with skills honed in the crucible of competitive / new logo selling. His background in engineering and marketing gives him a unique ability to be able to forge long-term partnerships with corporations by delivering on the promise of operational excellence, trusted relationships, and enduring business value.  Throughout his career, Nigel has built winning sales and customer success teams, as well as managing inside sales and partner ecosystems.

Nigel has experience driving growth through different stages of a company lifecycle:

• Joining Genesys as their first competitive new logo salesperson, and after growing the company, selling a strategically important deal to MCI (now Verizon) which allowed the company to go public. This was followed by a successful exit to Alcatel Lucent.  

• Joining SpeechWorks and winning 90% of competitive sales opportunities to the point where the company acquired their chief competitor – Nuance.  He sold what turned out to be the precursor of Siri to T-Mobile, and finished his 11-year stint managing their global relationship with Apple.  

• In the BPO market, leading the Telco, Technology and Travel practice at [24/7].ai with growth from $58m to $102m.

• Bringing a new business model called GigCX to market, with a platform that offered people around the world a secondary income opportunity answering customer service questions on behalf of brands such as Microsoft, AT&T, eBay, HP, Dell and Samsung.

His background in sales includes competitive sales to large B2C brands including Bank of America, Verizon, Charles Schwab, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, AT&T, Avis Budget Group, SiriusXM, and T-Mobile. Leveraging a keen business acumen, Nigel has developed an Enterprise Sales methodology – a repeatable sales process for navigating the inherent complexities of selling to enterprises of all sizes.  Coupled with a Strategic Account Management framework, these are some of the tools that he brings to client engagements. 

Nigel holds a BS in Engineering Electronics from the University of Warwick and post-grad membership of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Landing in California from his native England, Nigel took up residence in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife and two teenage children.  When not working, Nigel enjoys hiking, biking, running, and skiing, as well as the Wine and Food Society of San Francisco. 

Expertise

GTM Strategy, Marketing Mix, Enterprise Sales, Sales Management,

Forecasting, Lead Generation, Deal Strategy, Contract Negotiation, Business

Development, Partnerships.

Location

San Francisco Bay Area

Roles

CRO/SVP of Sales, VP Sales & Marketing

Sectors

Technology, Telco, Travel, Healthcare & Retail Finance.

Traits

Competitor, Consensus Builder, Out-of-Box Thinker, Affable