Eric Baron

Eric Baron is the founder of The Baron Group, a sales process training and consulting company that Ariel acquired in 2013. He believes that the highest level of selling is when salespeople use their skills to help clients solve their business problems.

Eric teaches at Columbia Business School and has received both the prestigious Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award, and the Marketing Association award for the Class that Best Prepared You for Your Future Career for his popular course, Entrepreneurial Selling.

His first book, Selling Is a Team Sport, was a business bestseller and explains how sales teams can become much more effective by applying problem solving skills to their strategy sessions and sales interactions. His latest book, Innovative Team Selling, was released in 2013 and focuses more on how sales teams can be more innovative by leveraging their resources effectively and applying state-of-the-art interaction skills both internally and externally.

Eric was educated as a chemical engineer, and began his career at Union Carbide Corporation, where he held positions in sales, sales management, and marketing. He also was asked to manage the sales training function, which led to his career change.

He joined Synectics® Inc., where he spent five years teaching and researching creative problem-solving and innovation. He left as VP of Sales and Marketing to start his own company and build on his work that explored the similarities between problem-solving and selling and how to transform sales calls into problem solving opportunities.

Eric is a nationally recognized public speaker and has worked in depth with clients that include JPMorgan, Kraft, Ogilvy, UBS, Prudential, NetJets, BNY Mellon, AT&T, American Express, Pepsi, and Pfizer.