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Richard Mays

Professional Profile

Richard is a Consultant at Sand Cherry Associates, with 16 years of product management, sales operations, pricing and competitive strategy experience spanning the wireless, telecom, broadband, retail and new media verticals. Richard is an integral part of our firm's ongoing success in the design and delivery of strategic customer-centric initiatives through digitally-native, data-empowered solutions.
Richard has led numerous engagements, using an analytical approach he partners with key stakeholders across an organization to understand and optimize complex operational processes. Richard has extensive product management experience, leading initiatives to create and implement new product features, design sales positioning and retention strategies, plan and execute go-to-market strategy and he uses data backed insights to communicate concisely with all levels of an organization. Richard’s more recent work has centered on redesigning the sales order fallout process, developing technical solutions to replace manual tasks.
Prior to Sand Cherry Associates, Richard held Sr. Manager roles in product management and sales operations at Comcast NBC Universal. Responsibilities included end-to-end product management of Xfinity wireless and home security products and optimization of the sales order process.

Professional EXPERIENCE

  • Product Management: Wireless and home security product management at a Fortune 50 company. Collaborated with cross functional teams to develop and implement new product features and resolve operational issues. Led multiple projects including new product introductions (NPI), pricing and packaging updates, developed go-to-market strategies, analyzed promotion effectiveness, facilitated sales channel training sessions, managed communications and playbooks and created reporting to provide data driven executive level updates. 
  • Sales Operations Support: Worked to identify and eliminate system and/or process errors which caused sales orders to fail across all lines of business. Worked cross functionally with data architects, policy leads and tools teams to develop data views and perform testing on identified scenarios. Redesigned the existing order fallout process to prioritize key orders and launched automation components such as SMS customer outreach & auto dialer functionality to improve customer response rates.  Documented issues, executed change management communication plans and prioritized development sprints based on the severity of issues.
  • Pricing & Packaging: Led a team of pricing analysts at a Fortune 100 food distribution company. Executed accurate and timely pricing updates each month on thousands of SKU's based on commodity price fluctuations. Designed and executed promotional strategies and ensured the company purchased appropriate volumes to secure optimal supplier pricing.  Used data insights to identify gross margin enhancement opportunities down to a SKU level. 
  • Analysis, Insights & Activation: Led a team of data analysts to manage performance of front line sales support teams.  Used data backed insights to report on agent performance to KPI's, designed agent score cards and prioritized behaviors and/or KPI's to align with organization goals.
  • Finance & Reporting: Inventory and promotional effectiveness analysis on 20K+ SKU's for a national retailer.  Managed inventory at a store/SKU level, produced senior leadership reporting to highlight aged inventory liability, ensured promotional activity aligned to overall financial plan.  Identified and removed ineffective promotions, launched price optimization software and made recommendations on the length and depth of promotional activity.     
  • Vendor Management: Managed multiple external vendors assisting with sales channel support.  Worked to ensure vendors were appropriately trained and communicated with when enterprise changes occurred.  Identified several process inefficiencies and cost saving opportunities leading to updated statements of work on more favorable terms.  Recommended automation opportunities and reassigned certain work tasks to internal teams with available bandwidth.

EDUCATION & Certifications

  • Chartered Insurance Institute - Financial Planning (FPC I,II,III & CF6), London UK
  • Cornell University - AGILE leadership certification