James Rahfaldt
Entrepreneurial leadership skills of: managing tremendous growth, operations management, financial and accounting acumen, developing new products, eCommerce, webdesign, product management, and strategic management of R&D.
Twenty five years of successfully driving sales growth by accurately anticipating operational needs and market trends.
As President of X-TEL Communications, Inc, Mr. Rahfaldt has over 25 years, at a senior executive level, building growth in new and existing competitive markets - Proven expert at identifying opportunities by setting a strategy and directing the execution of the sales plan, creating high-quality/high value products and services, delivering unprecedented profits, and knowing where and when to take strategic risk. Produce optimum profitability, in one 3 year stretch sales increased 150% while maintaining a 72% gross profit margin.
Recognized for creative solutions - Championed working with outside developers as well as inside development at multiple facilities, some international.
Core Competencies
| New Product, Service & Market Launch | Entrepreneurial Leadership | Emerging & Advanced Technologies |
| Revenue, Profit & Market Growth | Strategic Partnerships & Alliances | Team Development & Leadership |
| Strategy, Execution & Management | Product Development & Marketing | Financial & Legal Transactions |
Professional Experience
X-TEL Communications, Inc. Barrington, IL, 1994 – Present
President
Lead the growth of X-TEL into one of the leading providers of cellular test and optimization equipment in the wireless telephony industry.
Full P&L responsibilities for creating business and growth strategy plans, establishing vendor relationships, and building network of sales, development and distribution globally. Developed the company mission and goals; with the vision to define critical success factors. Built strong internal teams as well as establish relationships with vendors and far reaching sales and distribution partners. Mr. Rahfaldt was instrumental in establishing OEM and business relationships with Qualcomm, Motorola, Nokia, DTI, DRT, Xceed, Gladiator, and PCTEL.
Spearheaded X-TEL’s operations, focusing on: financial operations, technological development, global sales and marketing, and manufacturing activities, and increasing the efficiency and productivity of the company’s business.
RFI/RFP responses: Involved in every RFI and RFP response for the last 22 years at X-TEL. In our industry these were very large documents initiated by the wireless service provider that got down to the functional requirements of a product as well as how one would service and support the product in the field.
Successes & Solutions:
Instrumental in co-designing the core modular product model employed in X-TEL’s wireless test, optimization and analysis systems. X-TEL’s data collection equipment was designed to be totally upgradable so as to just need an additional interface license for a new technology; the competitors needed a whole new unit every time a new technology came into use. Our solution gave the customer the least expensive way to go from one technology to another without losing their past investment. It also gave us a strong, built-in market base that had a high degree of upgrades.
Training/Service/Support: Instrumental in developing training for internal employees as well as customer product training on sight and/or in field. Our service department would ship a loaner/replacement unit next day so that customer was never down more than 24 hours while their unit was being repaired. Unparalleled support was provided 24/7/365. X-TEL provided the best support plan in the industry. Mr. Rahfaldt realized that we could offer it at a much lower cost than our competitors because our equipment and software didn’t break very often and the software was more intuitive to use.
Hardware and Software Development. Instrumental in high level design of our test and analysis products. X-TEL was one of the first test equipment vendors that developed an application for SMART phones to be used by cellular engineers and technicians in the field.
International Sales Team. Supported international development of representative sales companies in over 15 countries throughout the world, maintaining tactical sales and fulfillment flow through X-TEL’s corporate headquarters. Drove increased sales through the use of sales commission plans and sales methods and tools like order entry, business objects reporting, sales proposals and RFI, RFQ, and RFPs to the end customer organizations.
North American Sales Team. Built North American sales team. Effectively lead all phases of the sales cycle, marketing, internal sales, external (field) sales, sales management, management of external sales representatives, sales engineers, and sales/support and training for post sales.
Drove tremendous sales growth at X-TEL. Maintain key customer relationships, established and nurtured sales relationships from the “grassroots” level up to the C-Suite and Executive Level. Managed a high performance sales team that helped establish us as approved vendors in such domestic companies as, at&t, Cingular, CellularONE, Bell South, Southwestern Bell, T-Mobile, Sprint, and dozens of other smaller companies that ended up being acquired by one of the above.
Safco Corporation, LLC Chicago, IL, 1993 – 1994
National Accounts Sales Manager for North and South America
Successes & Solutions:
- Drove 20% growth of sales in Safco’s largest markets, North and South America.
- Created new parts numbering system to create faster quotations, previously almost every order had dozens of unique order numbers.
- Established key sales contacts and sales that helped make Safco have the most profitable year up to that point in their history.
- High level design, worked with engineering to deliver product, form and function needed to win new deals.
- Helped design and implement new trade show booth that was used for ten years after leaving Safco.
** Additional Experience **
Motorola, Inc. Arlington Heights, IL, 1988 – 1993
Senior System Engineer
- High level design of cellular systems. Designed cellsite locations, including all buildings, towers, antennas, grounding, Motorola infrastructure (base station radios), and all 3rd party devices located in cellsite location. Frequency planning, cellsite location planning, switch location design and the entire data programming fill required to run a cellular system. Overall testing and certification of new systems and/or additional switches and cellsites.
- Worked on PacTel/AirTouch project in southern California. Largest system that was completely replaced by another vendor (Motorola was replacing AT&T/Lucent equipment.) Designed the replacement and increased capacity of key cellsites (some of the largest in the world at that time) on-site. Also, worked on a special 16 person team that optimized the entire cellular system in L.A. and southern California after the replacement.
Education & Achievements
Master of Business Administration ♦ Keller Graduate School of Management
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering ♦ Marquette University
Board of Directors ♦ Prevent Child Abuse America, Chicago Chapter – 2009
Author of Novel ♦ SPY FAMILY (available on Amazon)