First, let me say, that I’m a sales guy, not a blogger.

While I do appreciate the importance of social media in forging and strengthening personal and business relationships, I’d much rather spend my time face to face – or even over the phone — with a customer or prospect. In my book, that’s what truly enables you to listen to what their needs are.

Like a lot of things in life, you can trace current behavior as adults to the experiences we each had growing up as kids. Growing up in a large family, I developed a competitive nature but also realized early on the value of a strong team and team execution.

Speaking of teamwork, I couldn’t be happier to come on board last month as the new EVP of sales at Interactions Corp. Luckily, thanks to colleagues like Phil Gray and Mike Iacobucci, there’s already a stellar customer base and terrific forward momentum.

Not to mention, Interactions offers an awesome product that customers connect with very quickly. While I’ve worked at a lot of software companies, and was fortunate to have had the opportunity to help grow Cognos expand exponentially into a $1 billion global leader in performance management, there’s something to be said for selling a product like Interactions’ HumanTouch™, which truly sells itself.

Whether I give out a phone number for one of my teenagers to call an Interactions enabled system, or play an actual recording for a potential enterprise level customer, the reaction is usually the same: WOW!

I hope my quote in a recent press release captures both my enthusiasm and theuniqueness of our offering: “I’ve been in the technology sales field for 25 years, and the level of satisfaction among Interactions customers is unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

Fortunately, I’ve also learned from the experiences of others, from colleagues to competitors to my first “co-workers” growing up in the Murphy family in Belmont, Mass. In fact, 5 of my brothers have made their careers in software sales as well. http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2009/01/05/weekly17-Six-software-selling-brothers-span-Mass-business-landscape.html

I intend to apply this and other lessons I’ve learned along the way as we work together to take Interactions Corp, and our customers and their customers, to a new level of customer service. Oh, and by the way, we also intend to have some fun doing it!