About Upgrade Performance
Bob Coakley - President
Bob Coakley has been a leader and consultant for sales organizations for over 24 years. Bob works with companies to take their sales and service teams to the next level; Bob has worked with Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, PIMCO, Bank of America, AAA, Enterprise Rent A Car, Travelocity, United Healthcare, and Allergan.
Bob has developed a practice and expertise in the financial services, healthcare and travel and call center industries. He is accomplished at business consulting, instructional design, mentoring, coaching, and training where his knowledge, enthusiasm, and personal style motivate and inspire improved performance. Bob has facilitated hundreds of programs transferring best practices to over 20,000 sales executives, sales managers, salespeople and customer service representatives. Bob has also personally mentored and coached over one thousand people to help them develop skills, habits, and techniques that make them top performers in their field.
Bob also served as the Division Director of Sales at Alamo Rent A Car. Bob led Alamo's sales efforts in the western United States and was a top performer for over 6 years. In 2000, his sales team captured four of the five slots in Alamo's Presidents Club recognition program. His management and sales results earned him several awards and commendations from the company. Bob's previous sales and consulting experience combined with Upgrade Performance’s coaching techniques make him an effective consultant, trainer and coach that produce better performance results for his clients.
Bob is originally from Boston and now resides in Laguna Niguel, California with his wife Jennine and daughter Abigail.
Adam Shaivitz
Adam Shaivitz has been working with sales and service organizations since 1998. Adam is the co-author of the Amazon.com best-seller, Selling is Everyone’s Business. He has developed and delivered sales, service, and leadership coaching programs for clients including: PIMCO, Morgan Stanley, UBS Financial Services, Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Google, and Johnson and Johnson. He has also facilitated sales development programs for Harvard Business School Alumni, Cornell University Alumni, USC and UCLA.
Clients consistently marvel at Adam’s endless enthusiasm and how it leads to increased motivation and higher performance for their sales organizations. Clients also highly value Adam’s “street credibility” from his years in the field as a top performing salesperson and sales manager and his current success selling consulting services at Accelerate Performance.
Prior to joining the consulting world, Adam worked in sales, sales management, and marketing at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Score Learning Corporation, a division of Kaplan. At Score, Adam led the top performing team in the Midwest and one of the top performing teams in the country. Adam received a B.S. in Applied Economics and Business Management from Cornell University, where he played lacrosse for four years, and an M.B.A. in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from the Anderson School at UCLA. Adam was born and raised in Columbia, Maryland and currently resides in Hermosa Beach, California.
Kathy Bearden
Kathy Bearden loves sales, storytelling and speaking! She is thrilled to combine those passions with her sales leadership experience and partner with organizations worldwide.
Her sales seminars, motivational keynotes and training sessions are high-energy with high results! She focuses on building individual strengths, enhancing skills and putting the lessons into action! Action leads to results!
Kathy is a strategic business development consultant with more than 20 years of leadership and sales management in the business travel industry. She has partnered with fortune 500 companies across the country and implemented large-scale programs on a global basis.
As vice-president of sales for a worldwide travel assistance company and east divisional director of sales for a major car rental firm, Kathy was responsible for new business development opportunities, and sales support services. She oversaw a large sales force responsible for the development and growth of national and mid-level accounts. Kathy implemented joint advertising and marketing partnerships with many major firms including: Delta Air Lines, The Coca Cola Company, American Express and Federal Express.
Kathy also mentors professionals in rising leadership positions and works with women from Bellsouth, Cisco, Hewitt and AT&T.
Kathy's versatile background lends itself to a variety of industries where she focuses on improving personal performance to maximize revenue and growth opportunities with new and existing clients.
Kathy has served on multiple legislative committees and has held a number of board positions within the business travel industry. She received many awards as a top sales performer and is recognized nationally by the business travel association. She is Myers-Briggs Certified a professional public speaker and enjoys taking learning from words to action to life for her participants!
Patrick Giordano
Patrick specializes in helping organizations meet their revenue performance objectives. Through the implementation and application of practical strategic and tactic training solutions, he has developed a highly successful corporate training taxonomy as evidence in his track record.
Patrick is a highly driven, passionate and accomplished Training Professional with extensive experience leading training teams for domestic and global companies. His expertise has been leveraged to help companies achieve their competitive edge, and realize success with their market capitalization goals. Through the delivery of Patrick’s dynamic and comprehensive sales, leadership and corporate training initiatives, he has established himself as a top professional in his field. Recognized by the American Business Awards organization as an honorary winner for Best Human Resources Team Leader in 2007. In addition, in 2006 and 2007 with over 2600 total entries, Patrick received the finalists designation from the American Business Awards in the categories of Best Sales Training Leader, Best Trainer and Best Program of the Year. Judges for these awards represented over 90 business professionals such as, Tom Peters, best selling author, Anthony Robbins, CEO The Anthony Robbins Companies and Donald Trump.
Patrick has led the successful integrations of common sales processes and sales force training for 15 corporate mergers and acquisitions for companies such as MCI and DHL Worldwide Express. Keys to his success combine two separatebut equal powerful corporate factors; results and bottom line focus. His efforts have seen business results such as increases in corporate revenues from by 12-20% and decreases in sales employee turnover by 30%. In yearly comparisons and according to employee opinion surveys, he has increased levels of employee engagement by over 20%.
With more than 20 years experience as a Human Resources Training professional, Patrick has been called upon for his expertise in the profession by prestigiousgroups such as the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) and others. He has held leadership roles for Sales Training and Development for the the world's largest logistics company, DHL Worldwide Express, and the second largest telecommunication provider, MCI. Patrick is an accomplished international training professional who has delivered programs to over 25,000 sales professionals across Europe, Asia, and the US.
Patrick also served the South Florida market as a sales professional where his consultative approach with clients enabled him to soar to the top 2% of a nationwide sales force for the second largest business forms printing company, Standard Register. In addition, his sales efforts achieved 200% of revenue targets while working at MCI.
Patrick earned his Master of Science degree in Miami, Florida. He is a value oriented person whose high standards, trustworthiness, and integrity stem from his parents and loving family. These qualities have infused his professional life with a sense of morality and clarity of purpose.