Craig Elias

Summary

I am a LinkedIn user 3,956 of 1.2 billion users - I joined on day eight, May 13, 2003 – and I have over 10,000 unsolicited endorsements for innovation, entrepreneurship, sales and marketing, with over 1,000 endorsements for my favourite sales topic - lead generation. I am a passionate technology development advisor, startup mentor, globally recognized sales expert, award-winning entrepreneur and a gifted pitch coach whose passion is helping entrepreneurs generate early revenue and attract investors. I have an Executive MBA from the University of Calgary, specializing in new venture creation and technology commercialization. My first startup (InnerSell.com) went from initial launch to winning the $1,000,000 prize in a global billion-dollar pitch idea competition, being funded by a Tier 1 US-based Venture Capitalist, and twice being named by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America, less than 24 months after launching. Before my luck as an entrepreneur, I had a 15-year track record as a top-performing salesperson who was a top sales performer at every company I worked for. In analyzing my six, seven and eight-figure wins, I realized my success was a result of impeccable timing— being the first person to talk to a decision-maker who had recently experienced an event that triggered dissatisfaction with the status quo and put them into a Window of Dissatisfaction™ — where research by Forrester says the typical close ratio is FIVE TIMES HIGHER than normal. That ‘Won Sales Analysis™’ resulted in the creation of Trigger Event Selling™, and in 2018 and 2019, I was chosen by LinkedIn as Canada's #1 B2B Sales Expert - #15 globally. I am a Startup Mentor for the Alchemist Accelerator in San Francisco and on an advisory board for South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. I was a mentor for Techstars Toronto, have been a National Growth Advisor for Goldman Sachs’ and Babson College’s 10,000 Small Business Program in Boston and am the recipient of the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics bi-annual Gold Award of Excellence in Entrepreneurship, I love finding innovative ways to help aspiring, first-time, early-stage, youth, rural, and underrepresented entrepreneurs learn how to launch a product or start a company without draining their bank account, bruising their egos or ruining relationships. Check out how @Brandy Old and I are doing that across Canada with a board game called Playing Lean out of Norway that was developed with input from start-up thought leaders like @Ash Maurya and @David Bland: https://bit.ly/3LPqz8B