Kim E. Cooper

Kim began his B2B sales career with the Polychrome Corporation at the age of 21, and it didn’t take long for him to realize that there’s really no such thing as a “natural born salesperson.” Instead, he learned that to be successful, it was going to require training, commitment, hard work, and learning through a whole lot of trial and error. It was during this early period that Kim dedicated himself to becoming a student of sales - a personal theme that has remained a constant throughout his career.

In his second year with Polychrome, as a technical sales representative based in Los Angeles, Kim was awarded top honors as the Sales Representative of the Year. Several months later, he accepted a promotion to take over the sales management position for Polychrome’s struggling Seattle/Portland offices. Over the course of the next five years, the Pacific Northwest region went from one of the poorest performers in the company to one of the best, and during that same period, Kim was nominated for the Manager of the Year award three times, winning this top honor in 1981. As a direct result of the transformation he led while in Seattle, Kim was then asked to lead a similar, but much more substantial, turnaround effort in one of Polychrome’s largest, most high-profile locations - New York City.  

During these first 9 years of his career, Kim ascended the ranks - from calling on printers in Southern California as a sales representative to running one of the largest sales offices in the company. And, while his management style and priorities have never ceased evolving to keep pace with the times, it was the experience he gained during this initial period that would lay the foundation for his passionate, disciplined approach and belief system regarding professional sales and business development leadership.

In the years that followed, Kim would hold sales leadership positions with some of the most widely recognized and progressive companies in the printing communications and integrated marketing services industries, including W.A. Krueger, Bowater, Banta Digital Group, Laser Tech Color, Vertis, SGS, Schawk/SGK, and Quad/Graphics. And although he’s celebrated many significant accomplishments along the way, some of the accomplishments Kim is the proudest of are those experienced by many of the team members he’s worked with, along with the collective achievements of the sales teams he’s assembled and had the privilege to lead.

Kim and his wife make their home in Santa Barbara, CA., and enjoy spending time at their High Sierra mountain home in June Lake, CA.