Latino Business Speakers Bureau: Vince Chapa
story by: David Gomez
Vince is a great storyteller. Within a few minutes of conversingwith him, one feels as if he is been a friend for years. He listens with empathy and sharesstories withimpassionateenergy. He sees each conversation as an opportunity to share valuable lessons and to help the listener grow. His communication tool of choice is stories, “People don’t remember facts, they don’t remember numbers, they remember stories,” he says.Itexplains his desire to share the stories of his journey. Vince was born in Nuevo Leon, Mexico in the small town of Agualeguas. His family moved to Chicago in 1967, in a year of political unrest after the assassination of JFK. He remembers many details of the dayhis family arrived in the windy city. It was a cold December morning and he was only eight years old. There were no ESL (English as a Second Language) courses in his school which meant that he had to learn the language quickly. For Vince, that was the first challenge he would overcome in this new live journey.
Vince Chapa is Senior Vice President of Sales at SoftTek, a Monterrey, Mexico based technology company that provides IT services and business process solutions to global companies. Through his career, he has lead sales organizations from good to great numerous times. His journey is filled with stories of taking the initiative and finding solutions to problems or opportunities. His natural inclination towards leadership roles began from an early age. In high school he noticed that only a small percentage of students were of Latino ancestry and he saw an opportunity to establish a Latin American Club. He saw that even in his small group there was diversity. He had Latino friends that came from all places in Latin America, but they were united in culture.
Among the stories he shares passionately is the importance of the sales profession and he has witnessed firsthand the power of shifting an organizations mentality towards their salesworkforce. In one of the organizations he joined earlier in his career he noticed that HR had a focus on corporate “professions.” There were, accountants, lawyers, and other groups that were recognized as corporate professions,but no such approach existed for the sales profession. This opened an opportunity for Vince to advocate for a professional approach and he authored a methodology to do so. The result was a spectacular change and growth. The organization grew its sales staff from a 50-member team to a sales force of over 400 team members. Its revenue also grew from $20 million to $2.5 billion by the time this approach was fully implemented. He is passionate about the value of sales and his contribution to the profession. He serves as an advisor of BaylorUniversity professional sales program and continues to advocate for growth in this initiative.
Vince has many valuable stories to share on leadership, sales, and culture; each with a great application to life and personal growth. He isdetermined to continue inspiring and sharing his experiences with emerging Latino leaders and tech companies to help them reach their full potential. He contemplates where he is in his career and the thinks about retirement. Fortunately, he was recently inspired to view this point of his journey as an opportunity to “re-fire” his purpose, rather than retire. He is ready for a new challenge and to take this rekindling of his purpose and vision to the next level.