Mr. Garrison is a profit-focused problem solver with a command of sales program and product strategy development, business strategy and planning, product development, price modeling, manufacturing company channel development, and major contract negotiation. He has successfully grown sales in manufacturing, real estate development and finance and consulting companies. Dan is an analytical and conceptual leader with a distinctive ability to quickly understand a new business and identify its needs. He easily grasps new markets, business models, issues inhibiting profitable growth, gaps in products lines, and then defines the steps needed to achieve profitable sales volume growth. Examples of consulting tools include: Affinity Group Analysis, Activity Mapping, and the G-Plex, a proprietary business analysis product.

Mr. Garrison is a seasoned executive with 20 years in sales and marketing management roles and another 10 years in other senior executive and board roles. His career includes nine years in sales and marketing management in manufacturing. After graduate school, Dan joined Corning Glass’s market research-oriented Corporate Plans Division. His talents were recognized and soon he was asked to serve as marketing manager for a business unit and then as world-wide account manager for Corning’s electronic components business with AT&T. He was recruited to join Electro Controls of Salt Lake City where he served as VP of Sales and Marketing and VP and General Manager. At Electro he created and implemented marketing plans, market-responsive pricing concepts, market models, market development programs, and new product strategies. Dan also has been a partner at Golder Development Corporation where he was involved in expansion of a worldwide investor network. In 1985 he was asked to become president of The Resource Financial Group, a Boston area mortgage bank where he was directly responsible for market development. Through his leadership that highly profitable company became the largest privately held mortgage company in New England. In 2003 he joined a larger mortgage banking firm, Direct Mortgage Corp. of Salt Lake City, where served as Executive VP and Director of Sales and Marketing. During his career Dan has served in consulting and interim management roles as VP of Sales and/or Marketing with companies in several industries, such as: automotive, business supplies and services, communications, printing, and high technology. He also has orchestrated two successful corporate acquisitions.

Dan’s approach, based on detailed business and market analysis, team building, channel development, and strategic sales and marketing planning has led to large growth in sales volumes and profits. At Corning he created the market plan that drove growth in a mature business by 25% per year for some years even after he left that business. Gross margins were increased from a 25% average to over 40% in twelve months. While at Corning, Dan closed the largest-to-date semiconductor sales contract with AT&T in company history and negotiated an increase in the percentage of AT&T’s business given to Corning while obtaining a 10% average price increase during the life of the contract. At Electro Controls gross margins improved from 28% to 42% in less than two years. While there he provided a new strategic direction to national sales organizations of technically skilled sales managers and agents and led an increase in sales from $2.5 million to nearly $9 million in less than 36 months. Dan designed and implemented the marketing plan that grew The Resource Financial Group from almost nothing to 30 million in assets and profits of over $1.5 million annually in less than three years. At Direct Mortgage he led teams/offices that grew the volume of loans closed from $5 million to over $70 million per month.

Dan has been an active participant in many local organizations in Utah. These include the Harvard Business School Club of Salt Lake City, the Utah Technology Council (formerly the Utah Information Technology Association) and the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum.

Mr. Garrison holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brigham Young University where he graduated with Honors.
He holds a Masters of Business Administration degree from Harvard University where he served as Vice-President of the Student Inter-club Council, focusing on student and industry leader networking. Dan is active in his community and has served in many capacities in his church. While a young man he served two years as a volunteer in Uruguay and speaks conversational Spanish. He also has been involved with Boy Scouts for many years. Dan is active, enjoying skiing, though a little less adventurous than he once was. One of his great passions is bicycle touring with a group of friends from Boston, having ridden his road bike throughout much of the U.S. and Canada. He is currently building a custom road bike.