Welcome to My Career Presentation Page
My name is Chris Wilson and I've taken this space to tell the story of my career. I'm looking for like minded people to work with and a great company to work for. After reading about my career path and learning of the type of contributions I can make to your organization, I hope to hear from you. I enjoy meeting new people and learning how I can help solve their problems. Maybe I can solve yours.
To Contact Me:
865-599-7503
I've been fortunate enough to enjoy a varied career path. I've changed industries several times and learned entirely new business models along the way. But while the change may remove me from my comfort zone, I enjoy the challenge and look forward to opportunities to learn and try new things. My expertise is in retail management, marketing, and sales. I've experienced both sides of a business and as a result have developed an in-depth knowledge of consumer wants and needs. Through my accomplishments I've earned a reputation as a problem solver and become an expert at building trust and relationships with customers. When I started out, I owned and operated a pizza shop named Pizza Chef Gourmet Pizza. It was here that I began to develop my skills in sales and marketing and realized I had a talent for it. As the owner, I was involved in every area of operations. I handled everything from establishing standard procedures, customer service, and admin to code compliance and equipment maintenance. This was where I learned about staff management including hiring, training and scheduling.
Running the pizza shop I had my first taste of success in sales when I developed my own sales and marketing campaigns. I was able to improve company name recognition and generated enough traffic to increase revenue by over 200%. I was able to make the business successful enough that I sold it at a profit after only 3 years. It was challenging and exciting to have my own business and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
My next career stop was at Walgreen's where I started as an Assistant Manager. Within a year I was promoted to Executive Assistant Manager. Not long after I was promoted again. I went from Assistant Manager to Store Manager within 3 years of being hired. Within Walgreens this was a rapid progression achieved because of my natural aptitude and passion for management.
During my time at Walgreen's I enjoyed some notable achievements which helped me learn where my strengths lie. Through restaffing and retraining most of the pharmacy staff our store was able to improve focus on customer service and teamwork. Monthly sales increased in the retail section of the store with an increased sales volume of over 18%. Working with the staff I learned how to lead through encouragement, training and appreciation.
I left Walgreen's to follow my dream of starting my own marketing, advertising and consulting business which I named Target Knox Business Solutions. I still own and operate the business as it is where my career passion is. I enjoy meeting new clients and building a relationship with them. Learning how I can solve their problems, and actually meeting their expectations is very fulfilling and is the main reason why I enjoy the work so much.
Since founding Target Knox, I've some success that I'm particularly proud of. I developed a Grand Opening campaign for Dan McGrew’s restaurant. Prior to the grand opening, business was slow. It was determined that the issue was a lack of brand recognition, the customer just wasn't familiar with the restaurant. We formulated an advertising and marketing plan, including the creation of all design work, which resulted in customer familiarity and recognition. Sales more than tripled from our initial advertising campaign. Customer counts increased by over 500 per week for the first 4 weeks of the campaign and continued to increase through the remainder of the six month plan.
I've also worked with businesses to promote Grand Openings, special events and provide marketing materials including several local Snappy Tomato Pizza franchises. With each Grand Opening campaign, pizza sales nearly doubled immediately from one week to the next. New customers were directed to the existing stores through aggressive marketing utilizing New Mover Campaigns, Apartment Complex Campaigns and Social Media. The results have been positive and provided consistent long term growth for our clients. Helping my clients achieve success is what motivates me through the sense of accomplishment it gives me.
In the fall of 2009, I accepted a job as a General Manager with Advance Auto Parts, where I'm currently employed. During my time here I've been able to utilize my strengths in leadership and marketing. When I started, I designed an aggressive commercial sales strategy which has resulted in a regular increase of profits each year. The staff has been motivated and experienced a boost in morale by implementing a creative training program that has fostered a healthy, competitive spirit. As a result, everyone was motivated to be successful when new inventory controls were introduced. With a greater attention to detail and increased accuracy of the physical inventory we've enjoyed a dramatic increase in sales. This was directly due to increased customer loyalty which we earned by having the right items in the store available when our customers need them. All the hard work paid off, I received the 2012 Service Leadership Award in recognition of being in the top 20% of highest performing managers in the company.
While successfully managing each of these businesses I've become more knowledgeable and skilled in how to reach customers and present products and solutions tailored to their needs. I've also learned a few important things along the way.
It's important to take the time to understand the real issues/problems. Without a complete and honest understanding it's impossible to implement a plan that will resolve the issue rather than simply using a quick fix. This is a skill set I developed to its full extent with Target Knox. I have seen how important it is to attack the actual issues that are causing the problems to build a stronger foundation instead of the aforementioned quick fix.
I've learned that attention to detail is critical. One of my favorite quotes is “retail is detail.” The details are where success and failure meet. If you do your due diligence, take the time to make sure everything is working correctly and make any adjustments as needed, you will find success.
And most importantly, I've learned that you have to have fun. You absolutely must enjoy what you do and have a good time doing it. If you can accomplish this you can't help but be successful. Attitude is everything when it comes to how far you can succeed. This has held true my entire working life. There is no substitute for a good attitude and a get the job done right mentality.
Education
The University Of Tennessee
Bachelor of Arts
Political Science with Psychology Minor
