Kayla Wehnes

Experience

• 

  Caterpillar Inc.

  May 2002 - now

  - Lead Marketing Training Class and customized learning and development program for 15-25 pre-field reps. - Manage $15M departmental budget and lead peers through ABP, RBM, and monthly expense reviews. - Partner with CISD and ADSM leaders to build talent pipeline strategy for field representative roles. - Create role-specific developmental goals for pre-fields to build relationships and strengthen technical skills. - Identify and select domestic and international pre-field candidates in collaboration with business leaders. - Lead regional deployment of Marketing Orientation Program for employees seeking career development opportunities. - Led global cost rationalization, resulting in 25% cost reduction to business partners for talent development services. Show less Drive global market leadership by identifying product commercial issues and developing strategies to overcome them. Leverage deep understanding of global market trends, competitive landscape, sales performance, and long term commercial strategy to develop robust go to market strategies for new product introduction launches. Provide direction for future product, distribution and industry needs to company executives, ensuring alignment between product development and marketing/sales divisions. • Deployed transformational go to market process to motor grader product group, bringing together marketing, sales, product support and product development to create customized new product launch strategies. • Leading five new product introduction go to market projects, leveraging cross functional experts to create customer value messaging, dealer training plans, and develop sales strategies designed to ensure a successful product launch. • Launched marketing analytics toolkit, enabling dealer sales teams analyze customer purchase behavior to develop customized solutions selling strategies. • Provide monthly updates to executive leadership on long term commercial strategies, and progress on short term tactical execution. Show less Women's Initiative Network (WIN) is a Caterpillar Employee Resource Group (ERG). Caterpillar’s oldest and largest ERG, WIN has 3,000+ members and 50 chapters around the world. WIN also serves as an incubator for diversity and inclusion programs at Caterpillar, specifically related to gender. • Grew overall ERG membership by 40%. • Increased number of leadership team applicants by 300%.• Mentored a member of the executive office in Caterpillar’s first gender reverse mentoring program. • Certified instructor for Breakthrough Leadership for Women, the first gender specific workshop at Caterpillar that provides intentional development of high potential, high performing female talent. • Instructor for Breakthrough Leadership – Men as Allies, a program designed to promote gender inclusivity, and openly discuss actions and behaviors that disadvantage and disengage a minority population of teams at Caterpillar. • Facilitator for unconscious bias training. Show less Redesigned Caterpillar’s Value Estimating Tool (VET), a legacy value selling application used by more than 6,000 employee and Cat dealer end users. Leveraged previous IT experience and relationships to create a mobile application, seamlessly integrated with enterprise data, that allowed users to quickly monetize product features and benefits into a compelling customer sales presentation. • Led industry benchmarking study, requirements gathering sessions, and documented application design requirements. • Led application vendor selection, negotiated contract terms and service level agreements. • Led 12-month IT delivery plan, leveraging Agile methodology. • Managed business testing, issue resolution and launch criteria. Achieved planned launch date. • Architected and implemented support model, including incident logging, resolution, and communication. Show less Drove enterprise value-selling culture change, leveraging Value Estimating Tool (VET), a proprietary value selling application as an enabler. Influenced commercial product marketing teams to create marketing material to monetize product features and benefits into customer value. Led value selling strategy engagement and end-user software training for Caterpillar employees and Cat dealers in North and South America. • Grew number of registered users by 330% and number of user visits by 150%. • Launched six major application releases across two platforms. Managed functional requirements documentation, application testing, user support, and vendor relationship management. • Developed software training curriculum comprised of e-Learning and instructor-led courses. Facilitated instructor-led training for 700+ Cat dealer salespeople and Caterpillar employees at annual dealer sales training campus. • Created software usage tracking analytics process. Designed and distributed quarterly stakeholder reports used to measure user adoption and software utilization. Show less

  • Senior Sales Manager

    Jun 2024 - now

  • Sr. Digital Product Manager

    Feb 2023 - May 2024

  • Digital Sales Manager

    Oct 2021 - Feb 2023

  • Commercial Talent Development Manager

    Apr 2019 - Sept 2021

  • Global Product Marketing Consultant

    Aug 2016 - Mar 2019

  • Women's Initiatives Network Global Membership Chair

    Jan 2015 - Dec 2017

  • Value Estimating Tool (VET) Product Owner

    Sept 2014 - Jul 2016

  • Value Communications Deployment Champion

    May 2011 - Aug 2014

  • Industry Territory Representative

    Oct 2006 - Apr 2011

  • Marketing Leadership Development Program

    Feb 2005 - Sept 2006

  • Information Technology Analyst

    May 2002 - Jan 2005