Robert Wilkening

Robert J. Wilkening is the president and founder of Wilkening & Company, based in Park Ridge, Ill. Prior to establishing the firm, Wilkening was the midwest regional practice director of sales and marketing consulting for the Hay Management Consultants’ Chicago office. He began his career in sales force consulting in 1982. Prior to that, Wilkening also held several executive positions during 8 years with Gould, Inc. At the Gould fluid component division, he was general manager for Imperial Tool company, a $15M manufacturer of hand tools sold in both domestic and international markets.

Wilkening & Company, founded in 1989, is a management consulting firm dedicated to assisting clients in the achievement and implementation of business strategy through improved sales force productivity. In doing so, the firm identifies and measures the key factors of the sales process that impact productivity. This helps create strategies, provide management tools, and build action plans to help achieve maximum return on a client sales investment. Wilkening has conducted several sales force roductivity and compensation projects in a variety of industries including manufacturing, distribution, retail services and financial services. In addition to sales productivity and motivation assignments, Wilkening & Company has also assisted clients in the formulation of business strategy, evaluation of market potential and share of market, design of manager and executive compensation systems and the development of information tools to improve sales effectiveness. Wilkening lectures both on the design of sales force automation and sales compensation plans at the Wisconsin School of Business Executive Education.

Wilkening earned a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.