Donavon Brown

• Hired, trained, and mentored 4 department managers, and 3 supervisors for front-end staff to demonstrate excellent communication skills for client negotiations.
• Implemented ambitious client satisfaction goals and cross-collaborated with Project Managers to effectively meet them.
• Negotiated short- and long-term contracts with sales associates and clients.
• Participated in meetings with internal and external stakeholders.
• Worked with department managers to formulate annual budgets.
• Developed strong internal relationships across departments to manage projects from conception through completion stages effectively.
• Monitored customer feedback via surveys.
• Reviewed financial statements and sales activity reports to measure productivity or goal achievement.

Key Achievements:

• Expanded client base by 40%.
• Reduced customer service staff turnover by 100%.
• Managed a portfolio of 70 client accounts, driving customer satisfaction and retention rates of over 95%.
• Conducted internal audits and reviewed findings with the Customer Service Manager to improve the efficiency of the customer service department.

• Effective leadership for over 65 employees to ensure the acquisition of office and business supplies for every state government department in Arkansas.
• Created and monitored budgets for all departments within the $8M/year company.
• Conducted a thorough overhaul of processes and management policies for the Customer Service and Transportation department. Reducing overhead expenses by 30%.
• Completed quarterly assessments of managers and supervisors to identify weaknesses to provide additional training.
• Identified candidates for cross-training for internal promotion based on performance metrics and quality of character.
• Collaborated with department managers to identify growth opportunities as well as staff training, and to enhance cross-departmental communication.
  

Key Achievements:

• Instrumental in the growth of each department to expand the business from an average net profit of less than $500K per year to an average of $8M per year.
• Prepared and mentored employees for subcontracting into a Tier One Partnership with Office Depot.
• Supply diversity initiative achieved as a minority owned business becomes Office Depot's subcontracting office and furniture supplier.
• Goddess Products was later named Arkansas Small Business of the Year.
• Conducted a hiring blitz that increased the company’s manpower from 10 to over 65 employees due to the success of the service contract with the State of Arkansas.

• Evaluated costs and market price points to determine the best value propositions for internal purchases and wholesale sourcing.
• Researched, advertised, and hired additional sales personnel to increase the size of the sales department by 100%.
• Developed in-house training guides to enhance sales and maintained a 100% employee retention rate.
• Achieved company growth and brand development through market expansion, B2B sales and government contract bids.
• Developed successful strategies and goals to penetrate new territories by assessing competitor offerings and approaches.
• Analyzed competitors' successes and failures, evaluating the impact on the market.

Key Achievements:

• Increased sales from $480K per year to just over $2M in combined sales from B2B and government contract bidding.
• Promoted to General Manager.
• Identified sales processes causing order accuracy errors.
• Streamlined and simplified the ordering process and achieved a 98% order fulfillment accuracy.