The Interview

Kluster's Take

We spoke with Skip Vish, Vice President of Sales at Upland Software. He explains his fascinating process-heavy approach.

Skip has a unique journey into sales, starting out working in aviation. He has a lot of passion for the military and is proud to have served in the first airborne division. Once Skip decided to take a civilian path, he worked for Texas Instruments for 7 years. Towards the end of his tenure, he was working in a marketing role. He learned that the sales team didn’t have a deep understanding of the product line. Skip then realised that he thoroughly enjoys getting out in front of customers.

The transition from aviation to SAS was a challenge. Although Skip tries to learn something new every day, pushing his comfort zone. He explains that it’s critical to understand how well or how poorly something is working. You have to diagnose before you can prescribe. This way you don’t fix something that’s not broken, you’re there because you need to make some process improvements. 

Skip is process orientated, he doesn’t fly by the seat of his pants. He tells us when you fly helicopters you need a process. He’s transferred this process mentality to implementation. He thinks carefully about scalable, repeatable processes. Tech and data capture are critical in any process. Skip thinks that data and automation are of critical importance. Once the process is installed, it needs to be accurate and repeatable.