The Chip Insider®–A Tribute to Barry Rapozo

An industry sales legend is gone: Barry Rapozo passed on June 22, 2025, at the age of 80. Barry's career spanned many of the semiconductor equipment industry's icons, including IMS, GCA, KLA, and TEL, where he was instrumental in their growth and, in some cases, lack of it after he left. He was best known for his legendary sales ability.

Barry was awarded SEMI's Sales and Marketing Excellence award in 2001 (its second year when it was still named the Bob Graham Award) for the establishment of professional selling processes in wafer fab equipment. Before that, it was a time when the industry was young and when “professional” was not a word that customers would have used to describe the person who sold a tool to them.

Instead of the sell and forget techniques of the day, Barry’s techniques focused on building positive relationships with customers for a lifetime of sales. One of his principles was to sell yourself first, your company second, and your product third. This allowed a lasting shift from transaction-based sales to problem-to-solution-based relationships. You can only meet specific customer needs by identifying them, and with his techniques, the customer’s success always came first…

Barry's sales class, "Pathway to Success for establishing lasting customer relationships," could have doubled as one not only for your career but for life itself. Barry had 8 rules for Success: 1) Learn from the Experts: … 2) Think Small: Repeat customers come from the small things … 3) Get to “My”: True customer loyalty comes when the supplier refers to you as “My ___,” as in … 4) Build Trust: This seems easy, but it’s easy to fail at... 5) See Through Your Customer’s Eyes: … 6) Listen, and Listen Some More: … 7) Communicate: Barry saw lack of it as being the largest single problem behind most failures... 8) Sell Internally: While the last ... Failure after the order is taken often occurs in the internal support team and can mean the last sale is truly the last…

All 8 rules are fantastic advice from a true master… a master that sadly cannot tell us more. Barry is survived by his wife, Rozanne. She hopes passing on these bits of Barry’s wisdom will be useful in your life.

"What you do in life echoes in eternity" – From the Movie “The Gladiator”