Michael Ahearne

Michael Ahearne (born July 11, 1966) is a Chaired Professor of Marketing in the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.^[1] He is also the Executive Director of the Sales Excellence Institute and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.^[2][3]

Ahearne's research has primarily focused on improving the performance of salespeople and sales organizations. He was recently recognized by the American Marketing Association as one of the 10 most research productive scholars in the field of marketing in the past five years (2009–2013).^[4] His research has impacted business practice significantly, which led the Sales Education Foundation to select him as the inaugural winner of the Sales Education Foundation's Research Dissemination Award.^[5] Ahearne also coauthors the highest grossing professional selling textbook in the world, Selling Today: Partnering to Create Customer Value, which is used to teach undergraduate introduction to sales courses in over 30 countries.^[6]

Biography

Early life and family

Ahearne was born in Norwalk, California and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Springfield, Virginia, by his mother Germaine and father Daniel. He has two siblings, a brother named Douglas and a sister named Melissa. Married to his wife Jessica, he has two children, a daughter Molly and a son Jake.

Athletics

At 18, the Montreal Expos signed Ahearne as a pitcher. The year was 1985 and he was assigned to Jamestown of the New York-Penn League.^[7] Ahearne later competed in collegiate wrestling and college football at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. As a wrestler, he was a four-time All-New England performer, with his best showing being the 1990–1991 academic year when he finished 3rd overall in his weight class. In the same 1990–1991 academic year, Ahearne was selected to be an NCAA Scholar All-American for his academic achievements as a student athlete.^[8]

Education

Ahearne has both a PhD and a master's degree in marketing with a minor in decision sciences from Indiana University. He also holds an MBA and a bachelor degree in mathematics with honors from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Career

Ahearne began his career as a visiting professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He then served on the faculties at the Pennsylvania State University from 1998 to 2001 and at the University of Connecticut from 2001 to 2004. Ahearne has since been a professor at the University of Houston, where he received the C.T. Bauer Chair in Marketing in 2010. He is also the Executive Director of the Sales Excellence Institute, a foundation devoted to uncovering the key drivers of sales force performance.

References

External links

• Official website
• SSRN website