Sales & Marketing in the Connection Age It’s all about making a connection today. How you connect and interact with your existing and prospective customers is critical to giving your brand an edge. Serial entrepreneur Greg Coticchia will break down how sales cycles in the B2B environment have changed and why we all must learn to re-script how we engage with our respective markets. Greg Coticchia, MBA, PC, is an award-winning technology executive with over twenty-five years experience in high tech products and services. He currently serves the University of Pittsburgh as both its Director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Student Startup Accelerator, ‘The Blast Furnace’, and as an Executive in Residence (EIR) for software and information technology. Mr. Coticchia has led or been a major contributor in two of the largest and most successful software companies in the world, LEGENT (now CA) and AXENT (now Symantec). Greg has been in fourteen start-ups and founded four, and has held executive positions for better than two-thirds of his career, participating in various size organizations, from '$0M to over $1B' in revenue. He has participated in raising over $73M in venture capital in his career, and has actively participated in over seventeen mergers and acquisitions, at both the company or product level. Recently, companies that Mr. Coticchia has participated in have netted ‘exit’ valuations of 8X revenue on average, and 16X the investment on average. Greg achieved a +84% success rate across all his startups, whereas most startups experience a 75% failure rate. He has served as CEO (four times), President and COO, and has been involved or responsible for the launch of over 100 products and solutions, and several companies. His publications and presentations on marketing strategy and product management have been recognized as both visionary and thought provoking by leaders in the technology business. Greg has served on many boards (including NFR/Checkpoint, Four Rivers/Accruent and others). A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh in Industrial Engineering, where he also received his MBA, he currently teaches several courses including B2B marketing at the University Of Pittsburgh Katz School Of Business. He holds certificates in Entrepreneurial Management from Carnegie Mellon University and Professional Coaching from Duquesne University. Coticchia was named as a finalist three times for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and for the Tech 50 CEO of the Year. He was also named a 2006 Distinguished Graduate of the University of Pittsburgh (Katz).
Specialties: Experienced in leading and managing organizations during their growth in various stages, from start-up to $1B in annual revenue. Proficient in leading, coaching, and teaching marketing, product management, sales, strategic planning and business development in the commercial software and related high technology business; skilled in introducing and positioning new products, companies and strategies.
