Melissa Stevens’ expertise in sales and marketing strategy is based on more than 25 years developing and implementing effective sales/marketing management processes… increasing revenue through acquisition of new clients and increasing retention of high value clients. Melissa track record shows a consistent ability to hit the ground running, build and lead a high-performance team, and produce exceptional revenue results within a short period of time.

Having served in both the VP Sales and VP Marketing positions, Melissa has a unique ability to bridge the gap between sales and marketing…driving marketing strategies which create leads the sales team can close…and creating/managing sales systems and processes to maximize the close rate on leads provided by marketing.

Most recently, Melissa spent 5 years as the Vice President of Account Services for The Hacker Group, a leading West Coast Direct Marketing Agency. In that role, it was Melissa’s responsibility to grow agency revenue by growing current client budgets and winning new clients. During her 5 years in that role, she:

• doubled agency revenue, from $25 million to $50 million
• improved client retention rates from 75% to 95%, and
• created significant account management staff retention rate improvements.

Prior to her role at The Hacker Group, she served as Vice President of Marketing at an Internet company retailing party supplies, BirthdayExpress.com. In that role, Melissa took an aggressive stance on implementing ‘measurable’ online sales/marketing programs, reducing the average cost/sale from $225 to $25.

Prior to BirthdayExpress, Melissa served as the Partner responsible for acquiring and growing key client relationships for Seattle ad agency, Bozell (now Foote Cone Belding). Clients at Bozell included Hewlett-Packard, The New York Times, Pac Bell Wireless and Eddie Bauer.

Before that, she had primary responsibility for catalog marketing at Garden Botanika and direct marketing at Borland International. She hired and supervised department heads responsible for creative development and production, marketing analysis, circulation and database management, customer service and fulfillment activities.

Melissa is a graduate of Santa Clara University, where she played varsity level Volleyball for three years. She is on the Board of Directors for non-profit Northwest Behavioral Associates (provides autism behavioral therapy). When she’s not working or spending time with her husband and two teenage children, she’s playing golf, singing in a gospel choir, or leading her neighborhood book club.