Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office

A leadership and career manifesto told through the narrative of one of today s most inspiring, admired, and successful global leaders.

In Winners Dream, Bill McDermott the CEO of the world s largest business software company, SAP chronicles how relentless optimism, hard work, and disciplined execution embolden people and equip organizations to achieve audacious goals.

Growing up in working-class Long Island, a sixteen-year-old Bill traded three hourly wage jobs to buy a small deli, which he ran by instinctively applying ideas that would be the seeds for his future success. After paying for and graduating college, Bill talked his way into a job selling copiers door-to-door for Xerox, where he went on to rank number one in every sales position he held and eventually became the company s youngest-ever corporate officer. Eventually, Bill left Xerox and in 2002 became the unlikely president of SAP s flailing American business unit. There, he injected enthusiasm and accountability into the demoralized culture by scaling his deli, sales, and management strategies. In 2010, Bill was named co-CEO, and in May 2014 became SAP s sole, and first non-European, CEO.

Colorful and fast-paced, Bill s anecdotes contain effective takeaways: gutsy career moves; empathetic sales strategies; incentives that yield exceptional team performance; and proof of the competitive advantages of optimism and hard work. At the heart of Bill s story is a blueprint for success and the knowledge that the real dream is the journey, not a preconceived destination.