Jim Healy and his 2001 award for Sales and Marketing

Jim Healy was honored for the establishment of industry specific selling processes in test. Jim wrote the first book ever published on selling semiconductor equipment, ‘Winning the High Tech Sales Game,” which would ultimately train thousands. Importantly, he saw very early that tech marketing was fundamentally different than was being taught in business schools. Many of his insights can be seen in the titles of his book including: Sell solutions, not products; Selling is changing the customer’s behavior. Be vague to get clarity. Develop and in-house salesperson. Penetrate upper management. Don’t hire the sales candidate who says, “The customer is always right!”

SEMI's Sales & Marketing Excellence Award is our industry’s highest honor for excellence in sales and marketing. The award was established by SEMI in remembrance of our industry’s greatest marketing professional, Bob Graham, after he passed away in 1998. He believed that the sole purpose of sales and marketing was to serve the customer by keeping product offerings and development focused on customer need. The award is presented annually to recognize individuals for their outstanding achievement in the establishment of marketing and sales programs that created lasting value for customers of the semiconductor equipment and materials industry. This section of VLSI Research’s web site honors these individuals with an archive that chronicles their achievements and documents the lessons they learned for all posterity.