Chris Auwarter grew up in a small town in upstate New York – “We had more cows than people,” he said – and, being a big New York Yankees fan, wanted to be a baseball player.
Having enough self-awareness to know he wasn’t talented enough to do that, and tiring of working in a restaurant – “I was tired of coming home smelling like food,” he admitted — Auwarter knew he needed to find a different career path.
His dad, like his mother a teacher, urged him to figure it out before he started going to college, recommending he determine “a six-year path” and determining what he wanted to do first.
An uncle working for General Motors offered him a job and he was off, eventually moving to Toronto and leading a quality assurance team managing 40 team members in 20 different countries.
“The (GM) job just kind of fell into my lap,” said Auwarter. “Why I got chosen … I think part of it was I young and had no responsibilities, and to me it was an adventure. Toronto back then was very multicultural. I had people working for me from all different countries, all different backgrounds, twice my age, and it was just such an incredible, I guess, experience there to really be able to learn about cultures and learn, you know, how to coach and develop people and especially being young, just how to earn respect more than anything else.”
Now he’s putting those lessons to work in his own company. He founded Dallas-based Evantage, Inc. in April 2006 to help large companies develop and execute more effective sales and marketing campaigns. Evantage has expanded from Dallas to having 21 offices throughout 14 states as of December 2023.
Auwarter talked about Evantage, his career and a variety of other business issues during the most recent episode of “CEO Thought Leadership Series on LinkedIn Live,” the discussion series hosted by the National Association for Business Resources.
Produced in conjunction with the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For and Corp! Magazine, the series is hosted by NABR CEO Jennifer Kluge and features business leaders from around the country.
Jennifer Kluge: Talk a little bit about your company, what you do and who you serve.
Chris Auwarter: We’re in the outsource sales business. I started the company primarily as an outlet for large companies to hire us to be their sales team. Instead of them hiring and training and developing their own people, they can focus on what they’re good at. We focus on what we’re good at.
Chris Auwarter: We’re in the outsource sales business. I started the company primarily as an outlet for large companies to hire us to be their sales team. Instead of them hiring and training and developing their own people, they can focus on what they’re good at. We focus on what we’re good at.
Kluge: Can you give us some thoughts and insights from the world of sales today and what you think is happening? We are hearing this is a number-one issue for many executives.
Auwarter: Our kind of focus has always been like a face-to-face sales prospect. When I look at sales, it’s all about building trust, building relationships. And for our clients, how do we create a lifetime value for them?
We have to capture people’s attention, but we have more eyes on us than we ever have before because everybody’s walking around with a cell phone. So if you don’t handle yourself in a certain manner, everybody knows. When you do, though, everybody knows that as well too, right?
Kluge: You’re well known and respected for inspiring and leading young people. What advice do you give to others for managing young people?
Auwarter: I think anybody in leadership can relate to this. You get older and everybody else you hire sometimes, you know, stays the same age. They’re young, fresh out of school, looking to get started. And how do we adapt? I think it starts with passion.
I love diversity … that’s something when we are hiring in our company, we want to be as diverse as possible. It makes it fun for the team and that could be a diversity from ages. It could be a diversity from so many different factors. One of the numbers I saw most recently was by the end of next year in 2025, 27% of the people in the workforce will be Gen Z. What I think is really important when leading people, especially in a younger workforce, is just really being clear with what you want. First of all, when hiring, having a good sense of your core values and finding the right people that match that and then having like an open dialog in communication.
Kluge: You have a pretty heavy goal for yourself for this year to have 40 offices open. How are you attacking it for anybody else who wants rapid growth in their business?
Auwarter: It is very ambitious and we’re off to a good start. From when I was young I was taught to have really good values of working hard … how to be able to always set goals for yourself and not stop until the job is done. It was just really, really important to me.
When we talk about rapid growth, it’s maximizing when times are good and minimizing when they’re low. So when your times are good, that’s where for me and what I like to teach our team is that’s where you work harder. You don’t slow down because it’s easier and you can get more accomplished in a short period of time.
Kluge: Why do you lead?
Auwarter: For me, it’s it all comes down to that passion, that peace and loving what I do. I think as a leader … you have to realize that you’re going to affect a lot of people’s lives, and you don’t really have a lot of time to have off days because of the impact that you have on others. And to me, I love that and it energizes me. And the rewards are incredible, not just for your personal rewards, but being able to see the impact you make.
But in a sense, I am a teacher now, but just not like in math or science. But if I can build somebody’s confidence and see them hit their goals, like to me that’s what it’s all about.
Kluge: How do you define success for yourself?
Auwarter: So as simple as this might sound, I just look at it as becoming the best version of who you can become. The awards … that’s more about the team than it has anything to do with me or the other people in in senior leadership here. Because, you know, if without the good people, nothing else can really get done.
