About The Guerrilla Group - to download this article, click here
In 1984, Houghton Mifflin published the first edition of Guerrilla Marketing, the first book in the series by Jay Conrad Levinson. They followed it with a sequel, Guerrilla Marketing Attack in 1988. Both books did moderately well, so in 1989, the editors at Houghton Mifflin proposed another book, Guerrilla Selling, on the rationale that there were more salespeople in the world than marketing people.
Jay's agent, Bill Sheer, went looking for a ghost-writer. At the time, Orvel Ray had been working for several years as a seminar leader for CareerTrack, presenting large-audience programs on a number of management and marketing topics all over the US and Europe. He was also one of two sales training specialists on the CareerTrack roster.
When Bill Sheer suggested that Orvel Ray ghost Guerrilla Selling, he resisted. He wanted his name on the cover and credit for his contribution. And that was the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration.
The Guerrilla Group was incorporated in Colorado in 1990, to promote the publication of Guerrilla Selling, and to raise awareness of ALL of the Guerrilla Marketing books in the series. They opened a small office in downtown Boulder to accommodate the new business. After offering more than 40 successful public seminars based on Guerrilla Selling through Chambers of Commerce, TGG partnered with Professional Training International of Provo, Utah, to mass market the program. It soon became the #1 Sales Seminar in America. Orvel Ray built a crack team of top speakers, and together they delivered more than 140 public, and nearly 100 private on-site seminars a year, each year throughout the early 1990's. Guerrilla Selling was SO successful, that it sold out its first printing before it left bindery, and it drove demand for the earlier titles as well. Soon Jay was overwhelmed with proposals from authors who wanted to contribute material to the series, and The Guerrilla Group team moved into a larger office suite to accomodate the growth.
Over the next few years, The Guerrilla Group team produced Guerrilla Trade Show Selling, Guerrilla TeleSelling, Guerrilla Negotiating (with Mark S.A. Smith) and Guerrilla Retailing (with Elly Vallas). They delivered custom seminars for IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Marriott Hotels, Apple Computer, and hundreds of other clients, large and small. Their audio and video products were soon being distributed by Nightingale-Conant, and The American Management Association. They presented keynotes at leading industry conventions, full-day custom training seminars, and even a three-day boot camp with ropes in the rainforests of northern Australia .
Soon, these same companies started looking for ways to leverage this content over the Internet, to reach a more global audience. The Guerrilla Group team developed innovative video and multi-media programs for IBM, Ingram Micro, Choice Hotels International, and others, that still set the standard for quality and content on the Web.
In response to the collapse of the meetings industry after 9/11/01 , The Guerrilla Group downsized considerably, closing their downtown office and moving into a smaller facility in the Historic Highland Building . They licensed their public seminar to Fred Pryor/CareerTrack, and still offer it nationwide.
In 2007, Orvel Ray and his wife Denise completed construction of a new office and studio addition to their mountain home west of Boulder , and today, they continue to serve clients around the world. For more articles, click here
Guerrilla Selling | Orvel Ray Wilson, CSP | Keynote Speaker |
