Thomas Erdman

Current

Chief Marketing Officer at Vettro

Past

Vice President at AT&T Mobility
Executive Vice President at BTI
Vice President at AT&T

Senior Manager at MCI/BT/Tymnet

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Education

Thunderbird School of Global Management
Saint Lawrence University

Recommended

6 people have recommended Thomas

Connections

271 connections

Industry

Wireless

Thomas Erdman’s Summary

Executive leader with a passion for developing best in class organizations in the sales, sales engineering, and marketing disciplines. A highly competitive person who thrives on achieving superior results through an organizational culture of excellence. Focused on realizing sustainable performance by creating an environment that enables each team member to achieve success in personal development, growth, and results.

Thomas Erdman’s Experience

Chief Marketing Officer

Vettro

(Wireless industry)

2007 — Present (2 years )

Vettro was the preferred partner of the Global 2000 for enterprise mobility software. Vettro was purchased by Antenna Software, November 2008. Member of senior leadership team, accountable for all marketing functions as well as business development and sales through AT&T, reported to CEO.

Challenge: poor differentiation, inefficient lead flow, weak value proposition, poor sales effectiveness, limited results from partner engagement

Action: restructured organization, refocused lead generation, established differentiated value proposition, developed effective sales process and tools, engaged partners with results-oriented initiatives

Impact: increased year over year lead flow by 30% while reducing lead generation expense by 25%, increased partner co-sell pipeline by 1000% through targeted field campaigns
Vice President

AT&T Mobility

(Public Company; T; Telecommunications industry)

2003 — 2007 (4 years )

Part of the senior leadership team, reported to the President, ran two distinct organizations, and placed on key steering committees for wireless integration and Small Business expansion.

Vice President, Corporate Markets Group 2005 – 2007

Corporate Markets was a $1.6B, 1000+ person sales and service organization supporting mid-market enterprises.

Challenge: This nascent organization did not have a common culture, operating model, standards, governance, or productivity metrics, and was underperforming against the industry.

Action: Created a single, unified, high performance organization and operating model. Defined cultural intent, led senior team to develop supporting standards, operational M&P's, reward systems, and governance model; drove initiatives to increase solution selling competencies, vertical expertise, and productivity. .

Impact: Exceeded revenue plan (average plan objective exceeded 30% year/year growth): 2005: 102%, 2006: 106%, and 2007: 109%. Achieved industry leading ARPU at $70.01, while under-running churn and expense plan (10% under $127M budget).

Vice President, Solutions Consulting, 2003 – 2005

Challenge: Technology advances in the mobile data network reached a level that enabled enterprises to mobilize their business processes, yet the organizational competency was mired in voice and email solutions.

Action: Evolved organization to a structured, high performance team with an integrated governance model with direct sales. Led a “Line of Business” transformation through vertical solutions initiatives and the re-engineering of the sales and marketing processes. Launched a data certification program to impact broad organizational competency.

Impact: Drove the cultural and organizational shift around line of business solutions resulting in an expansion of critical marketing resources and reward metrics. Exceeded revenue plan: 2003: 139%, 2004: 116%, 2005 112% through increased volume and ARPU.
Executive Vice President

BTI

(Telecommunications industry)

2001 — 2003 (2 years )

Reported to CEO and led the sales (direct, indirect, wholesale), marketing, and product organizations for this $300M regional CLEC. Organization of 330 people was about 1/3 of company with $27M expense budget.

Challenge: Top heavy organization was under performing industry though lack of focus, discipline, standards, and governance.

Action: Restructured and re-staffed organization, eliminated many leadership positions to flatten organization, established product management structure to drive innovation and accountability, established sales operations function to establish governance model and build supporting business tools and systems to run the business, created first company value proposition with supporting sales tools and collateral, first company intranet, new hire on-boarding and training function, certification process to increase sales force competency, sales specialist organization to increase range of solution complexity, bundled offers that were easier to sell and buy, field authority pricing to accelerate sales cycle, shut down unprofitable wholesale channel and increased investment in indirect channel to leverage superior financials.

Impact: Raised sales productivity 50% while re-engineering organization and under-running expense plan (96%). Successfully sold company.
Vice President

AT&T

(Public Company; T; Telecommunications industry)

1996 — 2001 (5 years )

Vice President, Emerging Markets, AT&T Corp. 2000-2001

Reported to President of business unit and led this 550 person sales organization that supported mid-market customers for all of AT&T’s products and services. Accountable for $14M in new monthly sales production.

Challenge: Recently formed organization had been staffed with under performing resources inherited from other parts of company. No common operational structure existed across this national organization. Performance was below plan and industry norms.

Action: Rapidly assessed situation and created a new operating structure in under 30 days. Established best in class national standards, processes, and tools. Upgraded personnel by restaffing 50% of the organization while doubling average productivity per person. Launch training boot camps, sales campaigns, simplified offers, and field pricing authority to increase competency and speed of organization. Drove focus on team participation (% of team exceeding objective), SM competency, and coaching and developing to instill a cultural value that the team achieves success as a result of the success of each individual team member.

Impact: Achieved 115% of sales production plan while rebuilding organization across all facets.

AT&T 1996-2000

Held successful director, and division manager assignments in sales, technical sales, and marketing functions.
Senior Manager

MCI/BT/Tymnet

(Telecommunications industry)

1985 — 1996 (11 years )

Thomas Erdman’s Education

Thunderbird School of Global Management

Masters , International Finance GPA 3.8 , 1984 — 1985

Activities and Societies:

Diploma summa cum laude, President of the International Wine Tasting Society
Saint Lawrence University

BA , Economics, GPA 3.2 , 1978 — 1982

HS State Medalist (silver and bronze), recruited for SLU Alpine team

Activities and Societies:

Economics Honorary: Omicron Delta Epsilon, Division I Alpine Ski Racing Team, Sigma Alpha Epsilon