Craig Wortmann Biography

Craig Wortmann is a Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and is the Founder & Academic Director of the Kellogg Sales Institute. In 2018, 2019 and again in 2020, Craig won the “Outstanding Professor” distinction awarded by Kellogg’s Executive MBA students. Launched in 2019, his Mastering Sales: A Toolkit for Success online course is the highest rated course on the Emeritus platform, and Craig was recently called “the gold standard in remote learning” by Executive MBA students at Kellogg.

From 2008 to 2016, Craig was Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He designed, developed and taught the awardwinning Entrepreneurial Selling course, recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the “Top Ten” in the U.S. He also taught Building the New Venture and developed Chicago Booth's four-day in-depth senior executive leadership course called Building Leadership Capital. Craig was the recipient of the 2012 Faculty Excellence Award, given to the professor who has the greatest positive impact on the students.

Craig is the author of “What’s Your Story?,” a book that helps people tell the right story at the right time for the right reasons. Craig launched The Art of Sales: Mastering the Selling Process, a four-part Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Specialization with Coursera that has helped tens of thousands of people worldwide acquire critical selling skills and disciplines.

From IBM Corporation as the #2 performer in his year-long Sales School class, to a Dean Witter company covering three-quarters of the country selling to large retailers, Craig is an expert in all things sales. After earning his MBA in marketing and finance from Kellogg in 1995, Craig joined the Forum Corporation and quickly became the firm’s new product launch and client recovery specialist. In 2000, Craig was recruited to join startup WisdomTools as its CEO, and he then sold it to a larger firm in 2008.

Craig is the Founder and CEO of Sales Engine, Inc., a tools and services firm based on the belief that a company should treat sales as the engine of their business. As a global speaker and virtual sales advisor, Craig helps companies develop the knowledge, skill and discipline necessary to build a successful sales engine. In 2009, the venture backers behind the interactive marketing and web strategy firm, ClearGauge, sought Craig to become CEO while running his Sales Engine firm. Craig executed a turnaround by building a sales engine and ClearGauge was then acquired by a larger agency.

Craig serves as Operating Partner for Pritzker Group Venture Capital

and helps grow the sales engines of its portfolio companies. An Evanston, Illinois resident for more than 21 years, in his free time Craig enjoys reading and running the Lake Michigan path, and wakeboarding and practicing photography in Wisconsin with his family.

Speaking Topics Include:

• Deliberate Practice
• From Entrepreneurial Selling to Professional Selling
• Building Your Sales Process
• Virtual Reality - Selling in a Virtual World
• The Power of Story
• Your Personal Brand
• Setting & Achieving Goals
• Managing Virtually
• Building a Strong, Positive & Powerful Sales Culture
• Life Hacks
• Generating Positive Energy
• Articulating Your Point of View
• Filter Your Targets
• Stakeholder Mapping
• Competitive Talking Points
• Virtual Reality - Selling in a Virtual World
• Proactive Pursuit
• How to Build a Killer Prospecting Script
• Why Bad Emails Happen to Good People
• The Art of the Sales Conversation
• Networking Like Your Wealth Depends On It. It Does.
• Don’t Let “CRM” Mean “Can’t Remember Much”
• Creating Personas & Qualifying Fast
• Asking the Right Questions
• Running High-Impact Meetings
• Telling Stories
• Handling Objections
• Presenting with Panache
• Balancing Boldness & Humility
• Creating Value Through Negotiations
• Closing Checklist
• Getting a Deal Unstuck
• Team Selling for Impact
• Giving (and Receiving) Feedback
• Having Difficult Conversations
• Teach It Forward
• Weekly One-on-One
   

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