Gary Laney

Gary is a dynamic keynote speaker who has motivated tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, business leaders, professionals, and sales teams. Before his entrepreneurial career, he spent 25 years as a high-tech and commercial publishing executive, leading national and global sales organizations. As a serial entrepreneur, Gary has been involved in 20+ businesses, including several startups and one that he helped take public. He is known for turning around underperforming organizations and driving dramatic revenue growth. He holds a triple major MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. A four-time VP of Sales and startup CEO, Gary has built a reputation for transforming average organizations into top-performing teams. As VP of Sales at Upshot (later acquired by Siebel), revenues and bookings grew 500% under his leadership. As VP of Sales at Eloquent (OpenText), he helped lead the company through a successful IPO. He has also held executive roles at OpenText, Folio/LexisNexis, and Eagle Systems. As the author of The Power of Strategic Influence and Become a Super Leader, Gary brings advanced competency in training and building leaders who can develop strategic influence and sustain high performance. He teaches leaders to master a proprietary 13-Week Competency Mastery System for competency acquisition, leadership excellence, and influence-driven results—equipping them to lead with clarity, confidence, and measurable impact. His business expertise centers on major customer acquisition, account strategy, sales leadership, marketing strategy, and best-practice management and implementation. Expert competencies include: Business Networking Sales Training & Coaching Marketing Consulting & Strategy Business Start-up & Turnaround Contract Negotiation Multi-Domain Expertise: CRM, SaaS Applications, Knowledge Management, Document Management, Business Process Management, Best-Practice Management