MICHAEL WOLF
Director

Mike’s expertise is in the areas of executive level selling and sales management, including negotiating large, complex deals, integrating new sales organizations coming from M&A activity and building effective global sales organizations in rapidly growing companies. He has been a VP Worldwide Sales in the semiconductor equipment and materials industry for 20 years, spending a significant amount of time dealing with Asian and European customers.

Mike is also one of the best Deal Coaches in the business. His ability to work with a team, as well as directly with customers to structure, negotiate and close large, complex deals is truly impressive.

Successfully negotiating large complex deals can add tens of millions, or more, to a company’s top and bottom line. The ability to create a win-win agreement requires special talent. In one case, while working for a supplier of a leading-technology wafers to the semiconductor industry, Mike negotiated a deal with a major chip maker worth $375 Million  to his company. He was also able to negotiate a contract that could be modified as business conditions changed – which in fact they did!

Mike has led global sales organizations of all sizes, from a small group of 10 direct sales people with a network of distribution partners, to a group of 160 dedicated sales people. He has worked at start-ups as well as medium size and billion dollar technology companies in the US, Europe and Asia. This broad experience, combined with his ability to focus on the details and his strong will to win provides a powerful combination for driving sales performance.

Challenge: Negotiate an agreement with one of the top 5 global semiconductor companies to supply advanced technology wafers,  and support their forecasted ramp up in volume. The semiconductor customer's volume requirement was expected to grow to levels beyond the current worldwide installed wafer capacity in just over two years. Therefore the 'win-win' agreement would need to secure capacity to meet the forecasted future requirements of the customer, while minimizing the risk that the supplier would be stuck with excess capacity if the forecasted volume failed to materialize.

Approach: Negotiate a solution that required the Customer to share the investment in added capacity as well as the risk of the actual  volumes falling short of forecast. Highlights of the agreement included:

1. Co-investment by the customer and supplier to expand the capacity of an existing European factory;
2. Co-investment to build a new factory in Singapore, which would also be partially subsidized by the local government.
3. Collaborative teams that addressed technical problems where either the customer or supplier had greater expertise. Collaborative R&D groups were also formed to address industry related problems of mutual interest.

Results: Supplier secured a non-cancellable order worth $375M, with nearly exclusive customer share. The Customer agreed to fund the expansion of the European factory as well as a portion of the costs incurred for the new factory in Singapore.

Industries:

• Semiconductor Equipment and Materials
• Hardware Security
• Nuclear Power
• Wind Power

Regions:

• Southeast Asia
• Japan
• Europe

Blog: Deal Coach

Articles:

Selling and Account Management in the New Global Economy

Now Is the Time to Invest In Sales Training

What Companies Need to Do to Recover From the Economic Crisis

LinkedIn: Michael Wolf