IT Sales Contractor
Personal Profile
With over 20 years of consistently exceeding sales targets in software and SaaS companies, I know how to efficiently mobilise any sales territory to build pipeline, collaborate with others (internal/partners/prospects) to drive and close opportunities. There is a lot of sales motion knowledge and experience to offer any IT organisation targeting new logo acquisition or growth of happy customers.
My experiences span:
➡️Enterprise focussed selling into the largest UK national organisations and global companies with over 100k users, where there is typically a wide buying centre, intense competition, and technical complexities to overcome.
➡️First salesperson in the UK, combining a player-manager role with developing the strategy to grow the UK&I business.
➡️Managing industry-focused territories from SMB to Enterprise business — including closing 80 opportunities in a sales year at one vendor.
➡️Sponsoring and being integral to building trusted reseller relationships through on-site collaboration and mutually beneficial outcomes.
➡️Coaching and mentoring junior sales executives with the right attitude and potential to succeed.
➡️Running forecasting with each member of the sales team. Then using management discretion to ensure systems represent what is reported to the sales exec management on UK&I forecast meetings.
For the past 11 years, I’ve specialised in selling cyber security and data protection SaaS capabilities, which has provided me with a thorough appreciation of what it takes to build a strong cyber security posture — from defence and response to frameworks, regulation and compliance.
Use Cases
Long-term Leave
When a salesperson goes on long-term leave — for example, maternity or health reasons — what happens to their territory business?
Often, the salesperson covering the territory focuses on closing existing-quarter opportunities, but over time the pipeline shrinks, creating a significant revenue gap. Here’s why:
- Time spent covering another territory means less time prospecting in their own.
- When the original salesperson returns, they typically reclaim their accounts and pipeline immediately, reducing long-term incentive for the caretaker to build new business.
Headcount Limitations
Getting a sales team to exceed target is not getting easier. If expanding the sales team with a full time headcount is not an option, use a sales contractor to build a territory and revenue contributions.
Sales Leadership
Startups that cannot afford a full-time CRO need help in setting out their go to market strategy to develop pipeline, drive and close opportunities. Advise and guidance will also define succession planning for when the company is ready to hire that full time sales leader.
New Products
Support a critical product launch — one that’s vital to growth, but needs temporary overlay support for your already-busy sales team. This will also validate the longer term need for overlay or simply provide a faster start to success.