Leadership

Bob Junke, Founder & Board Advisor

Bob Junke is the Founder and Board Advisor of Adventace®, LLC. His vision was to create a global sales and sales management consulting firm whose objective would be to help clients create a successful proactive sales culture, where they are able to achieve results that are highly predictable, measurable, and capable of being sustained, even in down markets. To achieve this, he developed a methodology, supporting application, and change management system to help clients Create the High Performance Sales Environment®.

In so doing, Bob developed a complete holistic suite of integrated programs. He developed an Executive Leadership Program to help Executives drive sales culture through a top-down performance program. For sales managers he developed a program to help them master what Bob calls the “Four Pillars”™ of sales management: Opportunity Assessment, Pipeline Balance and Management, Development of Sellers and Managers, and Continuous Improvement. For sales people he developed a comprehensive suite of programs to aid them with account planning, opportunity identification and management, and the ability to effectively execute highly complex solution sales.

Bob brings his experience as a consultant, seller, sales manager, VP of Sales, General Manager, and CEO, to Adventace® clientele. He spent the past 20 years as a sales operations consultant, helping clients on a worldwide basis. It was during this time that the concept of the HPSE was first formulated and began its evolution to the system it has become today. During that time he worked with clients in North America, Europe, the Asia/Pacific Region, and South America. In fact, he assisted his clients with several worldwide implementations of sales and sales management programs. Some of those clients have included BMC Software, Cisco Systems, Computer Associates, CTG, Epsilon, Getronics, IBM, Logica, Progress Software, QAD, SunGard, Tandem Computers (now a division of HP), and Unisys. He has trained and consulted to over 20,000 executives, managers, sellers, marketing people, and consultants.

Mark Populorum, Managing Partner

Mark Populorum is Adventace’s Managing Partner. He brings over 25 years of experience in sales and sales management in the technology industry to Adventace clientele. In 1998, Mark began a sales process development and training consulting practice working with a variety of high-tech companies. Mark has worked with companies to help sales, marketing, and senior management understand how to define and implement a consistent, repeatable and measurable sales process across their enterprise. He has worked with thousands of inside and outside sales people, sales managers, marketing executives, and senior executives over the past 15 years. He has helped them understand the behavioral aspects of selling and buying, the tactics and strategies of aligning their selling behavior and processes accordingly, leading to increased sales performance, better management control, and more effective product and marketing support. Some of the clients Mark has worked with include Ameritech, Catalyst USA, Computer Task Group, Genuity, Getronics, IBM, Imation, Merant and TransUnion.

Mark has worked extensively with Adventace’s Founder and CEO, Bob Junke, for the last 15 years with several worldwide implementations. Mark has also played a vital role in shaping and developing the Adventace philosophy and the offerings that help companies Create the High Performance Sales Environment®.

The first 12 years of Mark’s career were spent in sales in the IBM hardware and software industry with a subsidiary of Storage Technology as well as the telecom/data industries with AT&T and Lucent Technologies. Mark earned numerous sales awards throughout his career and has experience working with Channel Partner sales groups to help them with the performance and productivity of their sales staffs.

Sherri Sklar, VP Marketing & Business Development Executive

Sherri Sklar has built a star track record helping sales and marketing organizations obtain exceptional results. Over the last 25 years, she has enabled organizations to make dramatic turnarounds, helping under-performing divisions achieve significant growth in the most difficult of marketplace conditions. Her results speak volumes through the numbers, revenues, profits, territory growth, and market share increases, but most important, it is her expertise in the development and growth of strong human capital that produces long lasting gains.

Sherri helps organizations gain measurable results through effective sales, marketing and business development strategies.

An expert in competitive strategy and operational excellence, her leadership and management talent helped to drive an unprecedented 500% growth at ABT Corporation, a leading project management software firm. While at ABT, Ms. Sklar held senior management positions as Vice President overseeing Business Development, Sales, Marketing, and as Director, International Sales. As one of the top sales performers in the company, she set company records for the largest deals ever closed. Some examples of her leadership include (in no particular order): turnaround of the worst performing group into the best performing division in the company, outperforming all other divisions by a factor of four; creating the first unified global marketing brand campaign and Corporate Identity Program; first global sales messaging; first worldwide distributor business model; first Alliance Program, structuring partner pricing, global deal pricing models, and new OEM, VAR, and other forms of strategic partnerships.

Early in her career, she moved quickly up the ladder at IBM, where she became one of the youngest first line managers in the company. At IBM, she pioneered many marketing “firsts” for the company while also achieving top sales performer status. As a young manager overseeing a team of technical, services, and sales personnel, she turned around one of the worst performing teams to one of the best in the Northeast Area, while growing the business by over 60% in profits and 24% in revenues, ultimately managing $40 million in local and state government business.

Throughout her career, she has been recognized with the highest awards, honoring her innovative ideas, talents, and significant contributions to company results. Some of these awards are given to only one person in the entire organization, for the most outstanding record of achievement. Ms. Sklar was also featured in the January, 2001 Harvard Business Review article on peak performance, entitled, “The Making of a Corporate Athlete”, written by best-selling author and peak performance expert, Tony Schwartz.

Passionate about preserving the economic base from software technology in the New York Metropolitan area, Ms. Sklar has been appointed the co-chair of the New York Software Industry Association (NYSIA) Sales and Marketing Special Interest Group.

Ms. Sklar received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA from Tulane University.