Salesstars International, SSI, was started by Stuart Armstrong with support from Hall of Famer Mike Bossy as a project based B2B event production leadgen business focussed on the technology sector. (LinkedIN profile) . The concept was a result of several integrated marketing programs including telemarketing, PR, seminars and events organized by Armstrong and Bossy at Rhythms, a Denver based telecom company opening in Canada and later at  AVAYA. (see photo, exhibit link) 

In 2000, as new Channel Manager for startup Rhythms, Armstrong cold called Bossy with a one page letter outlining how Mike could be an effective national B2B spokesperson and "lead generator" catalyst for the new telecom company. Armstrong and Rhythms negotiated an agreement with Mike. 

Armstrong co-designed, executed demand generation programs, resulting in signing TELUS PQ as a key partner, in addition to other major partners such as Primus, Distributel, Openface with market launches in Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec City. These programs incorporated and leveraged Mike's stellor B2B reputation and included SMB sector telemarketing, Mike Bossy hosted seminars, product testimonials, C level PR, client events such as Telus CEO hockey tournament and personal "one on one" motivation by Mike to the partner sales reps connecting Bossy directly to sales and rep performance. (see Openface letter) 

Armstrong later joined global ICT/CRM leader AVAYA (formerly Lucent), in New Business Development and faced the challenge of creating awareness, demand in the SMB, enterprise sectors which could be fulfilled by the channel partners such as Cygnal, Westcon and Telus. In addition, Avaya Quebec was not well known with Global Alliance partners such as IBM/LGS, Siebel, Citrix and HP. Due to limited US controlled marketing budgets, the idea of a Mike Bossy Hosted Collaboration event was approved by management and local Avaya VP Pierre Normandeau. Armstrong reached out to partners such as IBM, Citrix, HP, Siebel, Blue Pumpkin, Packeteer, HP and Cygnal convincing them to fund and a complexe event held at the Montreal Canadiens private Club, La Mise au Jeu, Bell Center. Each partner sales person was motivated to contact and invite 150+ ICT guests thereby assuring over 2,000 IT decision makers were made aware of AVAYA, with 280 attending and $1MM of leads/sales closed. This event triggered the IBM/LGS - Avaya Quebec relationship in addition to creating new leads for the channel and improving team morale in a tough market.   

A similar, larger event was executed in Ottawa with 220 attendees. Unfortunately, 9/11 resulted in Avaya US downsizing operations globally, including much of the Avaya East team in late 2002. Armstrong approached Mike to determine if a scalable Celebrity Collaboration Leadgen event business was possible.  (Computer Dealer News)

SSI History

2003;  First event is produced and held at Club la Mise au Jeu, Montreal Canadiens private club in Bell Center. Exhibitors include Compugen, CA, Storagetek, Appliimaxx, Netapp, Nishan, 3Com. Host Mike Bossy. 150 attendees (see photo link)

2004: Second event is produced and held at Wayne Gretzky's No 99 restaurant Toronto. 150 attendees came to see exhibitors Storagetek, 3Com, Charron Systems, Netapp, Applimaxx, ASI, presentation and host Mike Bossy. 

2004: Pitney Bowes Vice-President Marketing attends Collaboration event at Wayne Gretzky's, contracts SSI to design two sales motivation seminars for 60 reps in Montreal and Toronto, hosted by Mike Bossy.

2004: Applimaxx ERP VAR VC investors attend both events and contract Stuart Armstrong/SSI as Interim Business Development Manager Eastern Canada to evaluate sales funnel and refocus marketing on ideal customer profiles for QSi ISO9000 Workflow software.. Leadgen is executed and 52 bilingual web presentation are delivered to companies such as Bombardier and Shell resulting in $1.5MM leads.  

2005: Contracted by new owners of Sandbank Developments as Interim Sales, Marketing Manager to help rebuild residential real estate development Picton, Ontario. (CRM, website, tradeshows, local PR,). Closed $5MM, 25 homes in 6 months. 

2005: Unified Communications event held at Bell Center Montreal with Microsoft, Polycom, Telus, Nortel, Trapeze, Fusepoint, Ennixum, ADSI, salesforce.com, Packeteer, vmware, Platespin, CPU Design. Mike Bossy welcomed 175 attendees.

2005: Primus Telecom. Interim Sales Manager Montreal following merger with Magma. Re-motivate team, re-focus on ideal customer SMB profile.Telemarketing leadgen into 2,000 SMBs. Customer surveys. 

2006: Stuart Armstrong/SSI is contracted by CAS Systems, Oakland California as Interim Sales Director pending merger with larger competitor Rainmaker. CAS is a marketing services BPO providing IT, telecom leadgen with a 200 seat call center. CAS was also Microsoft's first marketing BPO. Armstrong closes a $50k contract with Hartco and a $300k program with Telus, PQ in addition to building a $4MM funnel with companies such as Allstream, Motorola. Armstrong is also tasked with the Microsoft winback initiative.

2007:  Unified Communications event at Old Mill Inn, Toronto with HP, SONY, Allstream, Compugen, Equalogic, Datadomain, Packeteer, Spectralogic, Bakbone, Trapeze, CRN/Varbusiness, Bluecoat, Host Darryl Sittler. 150 attendees.

2008: Business development pre-lim study with Spectralogic Canada and their UK distributor Zycko UK. 

2009: Business development contract with Tricrest telecom infrastructure services. Market map. Opened relationships with qdata, Radiant, Crossover and Glentel. Lead generation program with Firstspike, Business Intelligence consultancy . Using 6 Million LinkedIN connections and tools such as Jigsaw built and contacted a C level prospect list of 700 decision makers/influencers in 100 $1Billion + companies USA, Canada. (ie CIO/teem at RIM, Hartford Insurance, Westjet, etc.)

Management Team

• Stuart Armstrong, Manager Sales & Marketing (20 years business development, sales: see LinkedIN)
• Bilingual, from Montreal, with over 20 years sales, business development and operations experience in several industries. Started his career as a production supervisor with Montreal Engineering while completing a B.Admin in Marketing/Finance, Concordia at night. Recruited by the CEO of Weltex, an international textile broker, and spent four years negotiating $1MM+ contracts between countries such as Romania, Brazil and Canadian manufacturers, In 1980, after telecom deregulation, was recruited by Mike Miville, co-founder of CTG, Canada's first interconnect, where he sold MITEL PBX's. His interest in IT resulted in being recruited as Sales Manager by the CEO of Cesco Electronics, which later became Arrow Canada. At Arrow, he managed a small team that sold over $5MM of Televideo Novell fileservers including a $1MM contract with The Catholic Church. In 1984 he was recruited by Digital Equipment (now HP) to help grow their VAR Channel and recruited Mitech who became DEC's worldwide partner for chain store solutions. He was then recruited by CDI, Canada's first national IT distributor, to open Eastern Canada, where he grew sales from 0 to $10MM building a team of 22. He went on to sales, marketing positions with VAR SolEL, Westcon and Dynavar Networking where he was contracted by the CEO to open Eastern NA and grew telecom sales from 0 to a $7MM run rate with a team of 5, Referred to Rhythms SVP, by Paradyne, a Dynavar supplier, he opened Eastern Canada, signing Telus, Distributel, Magma(now Primus) and several other major ISP's in addition to recruited Mike Bossy as B2B spokesperson.   
• Lorraine Binette, Translator, Administrative Assistant, Event Manager. Ms. Binette has over 20 years experience as a professional translator and executive assistant for companies such as Merck, Pfzer, National Film Board and IT firms such as Dynavar (telesales), Rhythms (launch events) and TeraGo. (open new office, first website translation).    
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• Event hosts: Darryl Sittler, Mike Bossy and other suitable B2B celebrities depending on event theme 
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