Weber State University alumnus Brett Bradshaw recently received one of the first Sales and Marketers of the Year awards from Utah Business Magazine.

The SAMY awards, which were given out at the end of January, were part of the first round of a newly introduced annual ceremony by Utah Business Magazine.  Tyler Dabo, the magazine’s publisher, explained that the new annual award was nomination-based with a majority of managers and coworkers submitting applicant names.  It was aimed at recognizing all levels of achievement in sales and marketing from marketing directors to presidents and vice presidents in Utah businesses.

Bradshaw graduated from Weber about eleven years ago with a degree in technical sales and has since become the vice president of sales for Spring Holding, a structure which runs three businesses: Spring Mobile, Simply Mac and Gadget Guard.

“Just in the past year, Bradshaw’s efforts have increased company revenues by more than $20 million and increased accessory sales by over 25 percent,” Utah Business Magazine said. “He also developed and launched Spring University, an online training tool that provides Spring Mobile employees with 110 hours of training within the first 90 days of employment.”

This small review comes from a cluster of credentials which merited Bradshaw’s receiving the SAMY.

“We wanted to keep it specific to performance both for sales and marketing; nominations had to have performance results,” Doba said.

Doba also said that a lot of the criterion was determined by looking at an individual’s history within an organization, as well as in previous organizations.

“We wanted this to be more based on an individual’s impact on their company, seeing results of their actions on the entire organization,” Doba said. “We looked at what overall percentage and revenue growth that an individual had produced to improve company revenue, someone who isn’t easily replaceable within the company.”

Bradshaw’s capacity at Spring is to regulate any aspect of the company that has to do with revenue. Bradshaw also said that Spring Holding’s three companies are all predicted to grow up to 30 percent over the next few months.

In Bradshaw’s personal comments, he wanted to especially give credit to the educators who taught him in the technical sales department at WSU. Bradshaw and two other associates decided to start a cellular phone company approximately 11 years ago, very near Bradshaw’s college graduation.

“It was good timing and a bit of serendipity,” Bradshaw said.

He recalled that, at the time when cell phones and minutes were expensive, the saturation was only about 20 percent versus a current population where nearly everyone has a cell phone on hand. Bradshaw had some prior experience working for a cell phone company called Cellular Technologies which had a short life of about six months and was sought out by his partners for this as well as his sales experience.

“I started the business when I just finished school, and a lot of our basic plans were things I learned in the technical sales program like our training documents and situation of leadership,” Bradshaw said. “The professors would see a lot of their curriculum in what we do.”

Bradshaw attributes much of his learning to the knowledge of his professors. He recalled that while he was taking the courses in the technical sales program, many of his professors had their own businesses in addition to teaching. He said he felt like this legitimized the program as he saw his professors put into practice the elements they had been teaching him in the classroom.

Bradshaw advises up-and-coming entrepreneurs to remain optimistic.

“Life’s going to tell you that you can’t do things and success is figuring out how you can overcome that obstacle,” Bradshaw said. “Stop worrying about what you can’t do and think about what you can do.”

Bradshaw added that Spring Mobile already employs a slew of technical sales graduates as well as current students.

“Any technical sales students looking for work while going to school, we would love to hire you,” Bradshaw said. “We love having people out of that program.”