David Telleen-Lawton

Overview

Mr. Telleen-Lawton combines the problem-solving skills from his engineering education with his leadership experience as a key member of sales and marketing teams at several start-up companies.  Years of consulting have exposed him to a variety of products, people, problems, and organizations.

Clients and friends describe him as someone who obviously enjoys what he is doing.  He is intense, focused, and excells at coaching others to maximize their personal and professional effectiveness.

Product and Industry Experience

Telleen-Lawton received his Master and Bachelor Degrees (with distinction) in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and was honored with the School of Engineering Senior Achievement Award.  He became a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) in September of 1991.

He began his career as a systems analyst for Procter & Gamble's Paper Products Sales & Marketing Groups.  After two years, he relocated to Santa Barbara to initiate the marketing and sales group in a small company pioneering hardware interfaces between mainframes and mini-computers and the ARPANET.  He held various sales and marketing management and field roles in seven years with the company.

Mr. Telleen-Lawton joined Frank H. Robinson & Co., Inc. in 1987 and helped launch their successful Market Validation^SM service and methodology.  As a senior consultant, he worked in the telecommunications, computer, and software industries working on products as diverse as financial management software, data communication chipsets, and color printers.

On The Inside . . .

Telleen-Lawton was drawn to the challenge of implementing this methodology from the inside, so after nearly seven years of consulting, he accepted an offer from a client, SpectraLink Corporation (Boulder, Colorado), to become their vice president of marketing.  He was instrumental in ramping up revenues and building the sales team as SpectraLink became the leader in in-building wireless telephone systems, dislodging Lucent, Nortel, and Ericsson as market leaders.  In April 1996, SpectraLink (SLNK) held a successful public offering.

Major initiatives under his leadership included a) identifying and focusing resources on the highest return-on-effort market segments, and b) recruiting and training an inside sales group to maximize the reach and effectiveness of the field team.

After five years, investors recruited Mr. Telleen-Lawton as vice president of sales for an internet-based information service back in California.  Using the methodology, the management team determined that the market was not nearly as large as anticipated and had significantly higher selling costs.  The company was refocused on an opportunity more promising and a significant round of financing was secured.

Mr. Telleen-Lawton returned to his Santa Barbara consulting roots and now works with organizations who are trying to grow through developing new products and new markets.

He emphasizes the Best Practice of assembling a team of business and engineering managers and leading them in waves of "sales" meetings at prospective customers' sites as early as possible in the development cycle.  The results are a product with bull's-eye features in the first version, a backlog of customer interest at introduction, and a business properly scaled to the opportunity.

Clients range from business units of Fortune 500 companies to newly funded start-up companies.  He has been an active member of the Keiretsu Forum, Central Coast and Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forums, and a planning committee member of the Southern California Software Council (SCSC).

Below are the companies Telleen-Lawton has worked for as a manager or as a consultant:

Contact Information

By Mail:
Decisive Path Consulting
718 Las Canoas Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105

By Telephone:
805.453.6071

By E-mail:
DTL (at) DecisivePath.com