Why a sales team built on only one of the two struggles to repeat its results, and what one country manager changed first when a business needed turning around.
Some salespeople win on connection. Customers warm to them, and trust follows. Others win on structure: they prepare, follow a method and deliver what they promised. Either kind can have a strong quarter, sometimes a strong year. The harder thing is doing it again.
Hitting the number at all isn’t a given. In Salesforce’s sixth State of Sales report, published in 2024, 84% of the sales reps surveyed said they had missed quota the previous year, and 67% didn’t expect to meet it in the current one.
Ian Santos has spent more than 30 years in sales and leadership across FMCG, food and beverage, pharma and consumer healthcare. As Country Manager of Mundipharma in the Philippines, he led a turnaround in which the business doubled and was awarded Best Performing Country globally. Today he is the Founder & Managing Consultant of IMS Learning & Consulting and the Founder & Chief Sales Sensei of the Institute of Sales, training sales teams and the people who lead them for companies including Coca-Cola, Monde Nissin Corporation, Ajinomoto and Roche. One FMCG client he has trained for seven years has more than doubled in size in that time.
His answer to the charisma-or-method question is that a salesperson needs both. “I believe that for people to succeed in sales for the long-term, you need both charisma and methodology,” he says. “If you are only good at one or the other, you may achieve some level of success in the short-term, but it will not be replicable over a long period of time.”
Both an Art and a Science
The distinction he draws is about what each quality produces in front of a customer.
“A person with charisma has the tools to develop connection, rapport and trust. Someone on the other hand with structure and methodology will be able to build credibility and will have the capability to meet commitments and exceed client/customer expectations.”
Ian Santos, Founder & Managing Consultant, IMS Learning & Consulting
One builds trust. The other builds credibility, and the capability to deliver on it. He wants both in the same person. “After all, sales is both an art and a science,” he says.
He has written the shortest version of the idea on LinkedIn, in a post headed Sales 101: Build Trust and You Build Sales. It runs to three lines: “Be truthful with your words,” “Be reliable with your actions” and “Deliver on your commitments consistently.”
In his sessions, the frameworks travel inside stories.
The Stories in the Room
He starts from what has changed in his own field.
“Today, any sales trainer can easily use AI to create training programs. But AI cannot replicate actual real-life experiences that provide one with credibility and authenticity when they facilitate training programs.”
Ian, Founder & Chief Sales Sensei, Institute of Sales
His own background in FMCG, F&B, pharma and consumer healthcare, he says, gives him “a deep wealth of actual lessons from successes and failures that I translate into many stories that I weave into my sessions so that participants can relate better.” The stories do a second job as well. They “put my frameworks into life and make my training sessions more interesting and impactful at the same time.”
The Institute of Sales describes its training in the same terms, as “based on actual experience of trials, failures and success and not simply theory and frameworks.” Much of the work is built in-house for one company at a time: a Strategic Key Account Management day and an Advanced Negotiations day for the national sales team of Leslie Corporation, and a Strategic Sales Planning & Execution Masterclass and a Fundamentals of Sales Masterclass for Ajinomoto, in what his posts describe as a third straight year of partnership. His client list also includes Coca-Cola, Monde Nissin Corporation, Gardenia, Galderma, Maxicare, Roche, Atlas Copco, PHILUSA and J&F Foods, a joint venture between Frabelle Foods and U.S.-based Johnsonville. He has run sales and leadership courses in 10 countries on three continents.
Most of the stories come from three decades inside companies.
Thirty Years Inside the Business
He studied at the University of the Philippines, taking a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Marketing, and an MBA. His roles have spanned general management, sales, marketing, key account management, trade marketing and sales training, in FMCG, consumer healthcare, pharma, and food and beverage.
A profile of him in FinancialAdviser.ph, which he shared on LinkedIn, lists the titles: National Sales Manager, Sales Director, Vice President for Sales and Marketing and Country Manager, along with an expat assignment in Moscow, Russia. Asked there what prepared him for consulting, he pointed to “general management, sales, operations, and people development experience across industries and companies.”
The latest corporate role on his profile is at Sanofi, where from November 2020 to September 2023 he was Sales Director for Consumer Healthcare, in charge of trade sales, medical sales and e-commerce for brands including Lactacyd, Buscopan, Dulcolax and Erceflora. His profile records that the business ended 2022 growing faster than the market, and grew by double digits again through September 2023.
The fullest account he gives of how he works, though, comes from Mundipharma.
Turning Around Mundipharma Philippines
When he arrived as Country Manager, his first priority was the culture. “One has to start with the right culture and mindset,” he says. “I am a proponent of a culture of inclusivity, accountability and collaboration. In an environment with trust and respect for all co-workers, no matter their rank, role or seniority. This was the first priority when I came onboard as the Country Manager.”
The sequence that followed is his, in his order. With the culture in place, the team redefined its joint vision, mission and values, which he says was “key to creating alignment across the whole organization.” Then came a strategy “in-tune and agile to the environment where we operated in, focusing on achieving sustainable, profitable growth for the company.” Only after that did the structure change. “We then worked on the organizational structure and put the right people in roles that supported the new strategy,” he says. “We also had to inject talent from the outside for critical positions to ensure new energy and skillset to support our growth ambition.”
“As I always say, the best strategy on powerpoint is useless without excellent execution on the ground. You need great people for this.”
Ian, Founder & Managing Consultant, IMS Learning & Consulting
Alongside the doubling of the business, his profile lists the award for Best Performing Country globally and a place among HR Asia’s Best Places to Work in the Philippines. Mavel Gatchalian Banocnoc, who reported to him there, wrote in a recommendation: “Ian was a breath of fresh air when he joined our company Mundipharma. He was instrumental in turning around our business.”
People development is the thread through his consulting work too.
Seven Years With One Client
Asked for a result from the training side, he gives one, and qualifies it. “I have been working with an FMCG client for 7 years as a regular sales trainer,” he says. “This company has more than doubled its size in that period and have gained market leading positions in key categories they are competing in.”
He’s careful about how much of that to claim. “I am obviously just a small part of this success, but I would like to believe that developing their people to world-class sales practitioners was one of the key success factors in reaching their current status in the market.”
The two businesses he runs describe that aim in similar terms. IMS Learning & Consulting, he says, “focuses on developing world-class leaders and organizations.” The Institute of Sales “focuses on developing world-class sales leaders and salespeople.” In February 2025 he was certified by ICMCI as a Certified Management Consultant (CMC), the credential that now follows his name.
Where Ian Is Now
Ian works from Metro Manila. The Institute of Sales, which he founded in March 2024, runs the SALES 50: The Philippines’ Top People in Sales recognition program, which he created and which is now in its third year. He’s also a co-founder of the Philippines’ Top 30 Leaders on LinkedIn, now in its fifth year, and the influencer marketing platform Favikon ranks him as the Philippines’ No.1 Sales & Customer Success Influencer.
What he wants from the year ahead is more corporate training and consulting clients. He works with teams as well as one to one, and his engagements run from a 30-minute sales kick-off or keynote to a full day, live or online. Companies can book a free 30-minute call through his website.
His profile names people development as his No.1 passion, and the purpose behind the work as “to inspire, equip & empower people & teams to be best in class.”
Five Lines from Ian’s Diary
“After all, sales is both an art and a science.”
“One has to start with the right culture and mindset.”
“You need great people for this.”
“Deliver on your commitments consistently.”
“I am obviously just a small part of this success.”
From the Diary of Ian Santos
Ian Santos is a Metro Manila-based sales and leadership consultant and the Founder & Managing Consultant of IMS Learning & Consulting.
| Role | Founder & Managing Consultant, IMS Learning & Consulting, and Founder & Chief Sales Sensei, Institute of Sales |
| Based in | Metro Manila, Philippines |
| Previously with | Sanofi, Sales Director, Consumer Healthcare (2020 to 2023) |
| Also with | Philippines’ Top 30 Leaders on LinkedIn, Co-Founder |
“Sales is both an art and a science.”
Editor’s Note
Executives Diary features Ian Santos because his argument about sales rests on a record rather than a theory. He has run a country business and led sales for a consumer healthcare division, and he now trains the sales teams of companies he names. The editors chose him for the plainness of his account: a turnaround told as a sequence, and a seven-year client result for which he claims only a small part.
Executives Diary, Editorial
