We speak to entrepreneur and global CEO, William Gilchrist.
William has accumulated over 15 years of experience in technology sales throughout North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific. He holds a Bachelors of Arts (B.A.) in International Relations from Bowdoin College, TEFL Certification from GLV Zhuhai / ??????, Mandarin certification from Cornell University and another Mandarin certification from Beijing University / ????.
William began his career within the corporate sector of Shanghai as a Media Relations Manager for Wai White Dragon, a publication for Shanghai’s elite. William then returned to the United States to work in school administration as Director of Admissions and College Planning at Hales Franciscan High School in Chicago Illinois. He was hired to rebuild the admissions department by devising a plan to increase enrollment numbers among a unique demographic within the Chicago-land area. William then returned to Asia and worked in Business Development in Singapore for TSL Marketing. At TSL, William ran multiple lead generation campaigns in both English and Mandarin for top-tier tech firms throughout J-APAC.
He then moved to a position as Regional New Business Sales Manager for Google, Asia-Pacific. William has also founded and facilitated internal sales training courses for multiple departments. William transitioned to the APAC Knowledge Manager role where he focused on training and quality systems management for regional and global projects. William then ventured outside of Google to build and direct the Outbound Sales Teams for TradeGecko (QuickBooks Acquired) as Director, and then as Vice President for MyDoc, both Singapore-based startups.
William is currently the Founder of Konsyg and runs an end to end sales operation for Enterprises and SMEs globally.
WE CHAT ABOUT:
- Konsyg’s adaptation to the pandemic
- Discrimination and exploitation of Asians in business
- Asian towards Asian discrimination
- How working with companies like PR agencies, has helped
- Personal experiences of dealing with discrimination
- The existence of foreigner’s privilege
- Horror stories with clients
- Getting ghosted by clients
- Red flags shown by clients that businesses should be aware of
- William’s key takeaways during the pandemic
- Automation of HR department
- The phenomenon of integration between tools
- Best way to get a bad salesperson off you
- How much time do you give your salesperson to close a business deal
- Tips on expanding your sales team in multinational company
- Tips on building and scaling team
- Challenges in certain markets to get businesses to understand the value of an external sales function
- Outsourcing sales team
- William’s battle with diabetes and how he overcame it
