Craig Wortmann

Craig Wortmann is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Craig designed, developed and teaches the award-winning course called “Entrepreneurial Selling” which was recently recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the “Top Ten” courses in the country. He also teaches one of the core entrepreneurship courses, “Building the New Venture,” and a course on leadership called “Personal Leadership Insights” for the executive education program at Chicago Booth. In his capacity with Chicago Booth, Craig travels the globe teaching and motivating leaders, business executives and alumni about the knowledge, skills and discipline that serve as the foundation of each of his classes.

Craig is the author of “What’s Your Story?” a book that looks at how leaders of all types use stories to connect, inspire, and overachieve. In his book, Craig demonstrates the powerful impact stories have on the three most common performance challenges – leadership, strategic selling and motivation. Craig works with teams all over the world transferring his knowledge through coaching and the application of tools he has developed that underlie high performance and drive success for leaders in each of these areas.

Craig has been a sales person and entrepreneur for over 20 years. He spent his first year in sales being trained by IBM Corporation in the classical selling style and was the #2 performer in his year-long sales school class. Post-IBM, Craig covered three-quarters of the country selling to large retailers for a division of Dean Witter. He earned his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and then joined the Forum Corporation to quickly become the firm’s new product launch and client recovery specialist. In 2000, Craig was recruited to join start-up WisdomTools as its CEO. Craig ran, grew and then successfully sold the company to a larger firm in 2008.

Craig Wortmann is currently the CEO of Sales Engine, a firm that helps companies build and tune their sales engine. After founding Sales Engine, Craig was recruited to be interim CEO by the venture backers of ClearGauge, an interactive marketing and web strategy firm. He executed a turnaround by immediately building a sales engine, developing a new web presence and cutting significant costs. He then sold the company at a high valuation to a larger agency.

From $250,000 computer systems to $1,500,000 consulting projects and from $20 books to entire companies, Craig has been a consistent high-performer selling products and services across the B2B and B2C spectrum.

During the week you can find Craig working with growing companies and at Chicago Booth teaching and coaching his fantastic students. On weekends, he is an avid runner and reader, and he can be found coaching his two kids in soccer and little league, or losing to his wife Jill in the Chicago Marathon.