One the Job With. Hal Becker, Author and Speaker/Consultant on Sales and Customer Service.
By DANA CANEDY
PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
Age: 52
Lives in: Solon
Responsibilities: He gives about 140 speeches a year on sales, sales management, customer service and negotiating. He’s also a business consultant who works with companies that usually have $300 million in sales or more per year. He deals with sales culture or infrastructure and assists in training or realignment of sales, sales management or customer service. He is also an author of three books and is syndicated in more than 45 newspapers and magazines
Experience: He has been a business speaker and sales consultant for 22 years. His first paid speech was at the University Heights Community Center. Today his client list includes Verizon, IBM, Disney, New York Life, Continental Airlines, Pearle Vision and hundreds of other companies and associations. Before becoming a speaker, he founded Direct Opinions, a customer service telemarketing firm that he sold in 1990. He started his career at Xerox Corp. At 22, he became the No. 1 salesman among a national force of 11,000. “To be successful in life is easy. It takes hard work, focus, and consistency.”
Education: Bachelor’s degree in sociology, John Carroll University, 1976.
Worst job experience: Flipping burgers at a fast-food restaurant when he was 16. “I quit when they stopped allowing me to give my friends free food.”
Best job experience: Working for Xerox, the company he credits for teaching him the science of sales. “That experience pointed me in the right direction for success.” It taught him the discipline it takes to be the best in sales.
Best advice: “Someone once told me to make now the most precious time. Now will never come again. If you want something bad enough, you must go after it. If you don’t, you will never know the outcome.”
Best stress buster: Watching TV or a movie at home with his family. He also enjoys flying his ultralight aircraft. “To be up in the sky and watching the sunset with my wife, Holly, is the best.”
Mentors: His deceased parents, Joe and Eunice Becker, who taught him proper values and morals that he has carried throughout his life; and Dr. Walter Nosal, a retired psychologist and career counselor at JCU, “who played a powerful role in developing my career path.”
Career goals: “I want to lecture as I do, all over the world, for the rest of my life (although a little bit less than I do now), and have my wife share the travel experiences with me.”
Hobby: Collecting shampoos and lotions from all the hotels he stays at on the road, and playing golf with friends. “We laugh so hard we forget about how bad we are doing on the golf course.”