Jim is a Senior Instructor at Baker Communications. During his 30-year sales career in Chicago, he has established himself as a substantial "sales producer", leader, and creative communicator. The most distinguishing characteristic of his career is in how he integrates creative communication techniques into the sales process. Jim executes all of the traditional sales skills and processes in an imaginatively wide range of marketing and sales venues.

Three quarters of Jim’s career has been as a stockbroker, primarily at Bear Stearns’ and CIBC-Oppenheimer’s Chicago offices, covering the entire Midwest, with the full arsenal of the firms’ financial products and services. He held the titles of Vice-President and Director, respectively, at the two respected financial services organizations. The other quarter of his career was at CCH, a Wolters Kluwer information company. At CCH, Jim sold research and software to Financial and Professional Services Firms. He was selected for the Publisher’s Roundtable in successive years, among other awards and was chosen regularly to train new hires and his colleagues at the firm’s Sales Kick-Offs and other events.

Jim’s use of "creative communication techniques" in sales/marketing venues include freelance writing, speaking, training, improvisation, teaching, and web-enabled selling. This is blended with mastery of the traditional Sales Skills, and employed at various stages of the Sales Process, as appropriate. The breadth of these sales/marketing activities ranged from solo Proposal/Presentations to the Boards of multi-billion dollar corporations, paid speaking engagements, the design and presentations of courses through Northwestern University’s Continuing Education Division and several NYSE-listed companies in Chicago, the design of websites, "demo-ing" via the Web, Trade Shows, Public Seminars and award-winning work for a telemarketing firm.

Jim’s core competency is sales and marketing training and also includes:

Win-Win Negotiations
Exceptional Presentations
Time Management
Sales presentations
Effective Business Writing
Telephone Selling Skills
Exceptional Customer Service
Consultative Selling Skills
Managerial Coaching Skills

Jim is a graduate of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., and spent two and a half years working on a competency-based PhD in Psychology at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He regularly takes computer and writing classes and is currently a student at Second City in Chicago, where he takes advanced improvisation and comedy writing courses. He is the principal of the Salescraft Applied Improv Collaborative and has an active sales consulting practice.

Jim lives in Evanston, the college community home of Northwestern University, directly north of Chicago. Jim’s daughter Betsy is a Senior at the Landmark Boarding School in Boston, MA.

An active outdoorsman and fitness aficionado, Jim is a bike commuter, and has a daily yoga-swim-strength training practice. His outdoor interests include skiiing, backpacking, photography and organizing adventure bicycle trips domestically and abroad. Jim is a member of the Applied Improv Network, the National Speakers Association, the International Association of Facilitators, the American Society for Training and Development, and the Colgate Club of Chicago.