Leff Bonney

Dr. Leff Bonney is an associate professor of marketing in the Dr. Persis E. Rockwood School of Marketing at Florida State University's College of Business, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in sales and sales management. His research interest relates to decision-making in sales and sales managers, specifically around customer selection and targeting and sales strategy. His research has been published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of Business Review, among others.   

Bonney has served as director of executive programs for the FSU College of Business and the FSU Sales Institute, which is housed in the College of Business. He helped create and grow the FSU Sales Institute, which supports the college's professional sales program and is considered the premier sales program in the nation. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Sales Education Foundation. Bonney founded and is director of the Sales Educators’ Academy, which is a program designed to better equip faculty from all over the world to teach sales and sales management at their respective universities. He also co-founded the International Collegiate Sales Competition, which is the world’s largest sales competition with more than 400 students and executives from 40-plus companies participating each year. Recently, he won the American Marketing Association’s Don McBane Award, which is given to sales educators and sales leaders who have made a lasting impact on the field of sales and sales management.

Prior to joining the faculty at FSU, Bonney worked in sales leadership roles for two Fortune 500 companies. He worked for eight years on major accounts for RR Donnelly negotiating large multi-year print contracts, where he was Sales Rookie of the Year and a four-time Outstanding Performance Club Member. Bonney also spent two years working in field sales and marketing teams for Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, where he won the Rising Leader Award in his first year. Over the last 15 years, he has consulted with dozens of corporate clients on sales force effectiveness, including areas such as customer segmentation and targeting, sales process design and adaptation, sales messaging, and sales training design and implementation. He also has designed and led corporate training programs such as basic selling, sales coaching, sales leadership advanced situational selling, sales operations leadership and negotiation.

Bonney earned his bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Tennessee, an MBA from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in business administration with a major in marketing from the University of Tennessee.