Anthony Parinello

In 1995, Tony Parinello started a revolution with his first best-selling Selling to VITO, the Very Important Top Officer book. He’s authored seven wildly successful sales books, personally trained over 2,000,000 salespeople and the majority of the Fortune 1000, and reaches salespeople around the world with his weekly internet broadcasts. Tony’s students learn to use his unique appointment-setting methods to present their ideas to CEOs, presidents, owners and other difficult-to-reach individuals who hold the ultimate veto power over all decisions made within their enterprises. Tony’s sales career started in 1978 and he is still very much in the game, making sales calls to VITOs on a regular basis. He didn’t always do that, though. Early in his career, he found a great deal of business at lower levels within organizations in his sales territory – in a place he now calls Linoleumville. This is the part of the organization where the folks that did the recommending had to fit their recommendations into a “budget.” After three consecutive years of above quota sales performance, he created a very unfortunate situation: he was at 19% of quota, and the year was half over. As a result, his manager put him on probation. After the initial panic, and after realizing the “blame game” wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he took stock and figured that if he was going to keep his job, he had to change the way he was selling. he booked a one-way ticket out of Linoleumville, started selling to VITO, and went from 19% to 103% of quota. The good news: he got to keep his job. The better news for salespeople around the world: he eventually left that company…and started the VITO selling revolution.