Rick Halbrooks is Vice President, Sales for McLeod Software. Rick joined McLeod in 2004 and is responsible for all sales and business development for the company. Through his leadership, McLeod Software’s sales have consistently grown by more than 20% year over year ever since his arrival, including a 45% increase in new business sales so far in 2020 over last year.
Rick has 45 years of experience in sales and senior sales management, including 8 years as Vice President of Sales for ABM Graphics, 8 years as Regional Vice President for Danka Industries, and 5 years as President for Bank Partners Leasing.
He got his start in sales and sales management selling books door to door with the Southwestern Company during summers in college. He has also owned and franchised a chain of retail stores, owned and managed a Dinosaur museum and hosted an afternoon drive radio show for several years.
Rick is a native of Birmingham where he lives with his wife of 38 years. Deborah and Rick have 3 sons, 3 daughters-in-law and 7 grandchildren. He has received numerous honors in sales, management and marketing, including being named Branch Manager of the Year, worldwide, while at Danka, receiving the distinguished Sales and Marketing Award from Sales and Marketing Executives International, and being chosen as a recipient of the Forbes – McKay “Marketing Firm of the Year” Award from the American Marketing Association. Rick has actively served on the Board of Directors of the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) for the past 12 years and was honored with the TIA’s Chairman’s Award in 2012.
A graduate of Auburn University, Rick received his Bachelor’s Degree in Pre-Medicine with a Major in Mathematics. He attended graduate school at UAB School of Medicine just long enough to learn to recognize the symptoms of all sorts of medical problems, but left before studying treatments, so he may be someone to avoid if you are a Hypochondriac.
Rick enjoys a wide range of interests including fishing, travel, natural history, photography, acoustic guitar, investing and sports, especially golf, snow skiing, basketball, football and racquetball. He also claims to be a “Collecto-Maniac” and his amassed collections of fossils (at one point he was the only person in his neighborhood with a complete Stegosaurus skeleton in his basement), rocks and minerals, colored vinyl record albums, logo golf balls, stamps, coins and has assembled one of the world’s largest collections of soda cans (over 14,000 different, dating from 1938). “If it can’t get away from me, I collect it,” he says.
Read his complete interview here
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