About us / People / Bert Harkins

Bert Harkins

Fractional CRO/CSO and Revenue Operations Advisor

Expertise
Revenue Growth

Industry Teams
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Role
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Location
Charleston

Capabilities
Revenue Assessments, Revenue Operations, Sales Excellence

Services
Enablement and Training, Metrics, Processes and Methodologies

 

Bert Harkins builds, leads and optimizes Revenue generating teams for growing companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises.  He is frequently called on by executive teams, Boards, and investors to serve as interim and/or fractional CRO or CSO.  He also works extensively with sitting CROs and CSOs to build or improve their client-facing revenue generation teams.

For more than 25 years, Bert has been delivering superior revenue growth SaaS technology companies serving the corporate, fintech and social good verticals.  His specific areas of expertise include:

During his distinguished and high-impact career, Bert has served as:

VP – Sales Enablement, Blackbaud Corp. – Bert built a team to provide sales enablement services to support a sales function with 350 sales representatives. He created a global team of over 90 associates focused on Sales Training, Sales Operations, Sales Process Improvement, Sales Engineering and Sales Metrics and Planning. He created a centralized hiring process that dramatically reduced recruiting, interview, onboarding times from months to weeks, and he reduced time-to-productivity for new reps from 6.5 months to 4. He also created comprehensive list of sales productivity measures used to make actionable business decisions in real time.

SVP, Corporate Sales Support, Fiserv Corp. – He built and led a corporate-wide sales enablement function to support the sales teams across this Fortune 1000 organization. He also implemented consistent methodologies for proposal creation, lead management, solution architecture, sales program management, sales effectiveness and sales training. In addition, Bert built a Commercial Sales function to serve as a shared service for all sales teams to nurture leads, improve market coverage and close incremental new business.

As SVP of Sales and Marketing for Fiserv and earlier as VP and Divisional Chief Marketing Officer, included among Bert’s accomplishments were:

    • Led sales and marketing for a $200MM-revenue software division focused on payments and risk management solutions
    • Continually surpassed 100% of sales quotas
    • Managed the overall marketing efforts for a division of the company that generated approximately $1.5B in annual revenue
    • Led a team of 45 marketers in providing all areas of marketing support, including field marketing, creative development, event management, lead generation, and market awareness
    • Created the first divisional marketing organization in company history.

Earlier in his career, Bert served several roles for Checkfree Software, including VP of Strategic Marketing and VP/Regional Sales Manager. He began his career with Wachovia Corp.

He received both his undergraduate BA and MBA with a dual concentration in Finance and Marketing from the University of Tennessee.

Client Testimonials

"Bert worked with us to evaluate and strengthen our go-to-market function. As a result of our engagement with him and the other TechCXO resources he deployed, we reorganized our direct sales team, refined our comp plans, and bolstered our revenue operations function. As a result of that engagement, we feel confident that we have the right structure in place for rapid customer growth."

-Kevin Knight, CEO WeVideo

"Bert came to us originally on a short-term engagement but stayed on for over a year as our fractional CRO. He has also subsequently returned to us for a stint as our fractional CMO. Our work with Bert always matures our organization and helps position StudentBridge for growth. Over the years, Bert has become more than just a consultant or advisor - he has become a good friend and colleague!"

-Jonathan Clues, CEO StudentBridge

"Bert's expertise in Revenue Operations strategy has been indispensable in helping me to develop those teams at three different companies. I really value his unique blend of experience in sales, marketing, customer success and revenue operations."

-Mike Beville, CRO NoRedInk