My Sales Career

Thank you to the team at Proventeq for letting me come and help in your growth and change for the last 6 months. 

However the 4th March 2024 is the end of my contract and my last 'full time role' as I head into more short-term and advisory roles. As I start to put back what I reaped I wanted to thank all those who have been instrumental in my career. 

I had started my career in Software, then Software management and then Product Management and after my mentor Tadashi Nakaoka Citizen GM had said that if I wanted to get into general management I needed to carry a bag, So I did!  It’s nearly 30 years ago that Toine van Ooijen gave me my first sales role at Bitstream and a merger with Architype got me into Selling Digital Asset Management software and my love affair with content tech products started. Thank you Paul Trevithick a wonderfull visionary.

A move into the new industry of WebContent Management and Commerce at OpenMarket followed, and thank you to Philip Richardson , Peter Stanley , @nigelabbott and others who were wonderful role models/ great coaches and where I worked with some of the best marketing people like Chris Blaik and technical consultants Neil Brooks , Deirdre Duffy and Dolf Dijkstra .

As Openmarket became part of Divine Inc this opened up experience of all forms of the connected customer model and its a shame that the great vision of Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski came to an abrupt end in Chapter 11 

This was followed by some time at Percussion software where I met Joe Wykes , to be Aquia, where I learnt how to drive an inside sales team and the rigour needed to drive growth. Many in that team have gone onto bigger and better thanks to Joe. James Palmer

I missed Enterprise sales at that time and went to work for Barrie Hoban at Filenet and met some great sales people and managers, Simon Walker , Mark Adams Hugh James and youngster David Wyatt and saw the power of a great sales enablement and product team Phillip J. , Douglas Coombs .  We were bought by IBM and working in their Content business was and still is an excellent grounding for anyone who wants to do a professional sales role.

While I have focused on Sales and Sales Management, it’s right now to mention Partner Managers, the myth in the business is that partner managers are failed sales people. This could not be further from the truth in my experience, I have been privileged to work with many and know people like, Peter Ford , Moira Edwards (now CEO Preservica), Jim Brown , Mark Littlewood  & Andrew Palmer  to mention a few who really showed me the power of partnering done properly.

I really need to thank Claude Cosson , for calling me and asking me to leave IBM and trust me to take over the running of Fatwire as Northern European VP and the great team there. Thanks to Alex Gowing (who together we did the biggest deal for the company and beat Oracle (see later), Chris Barrett and Peter Walsh and Tim Howling and my first encounter with Michael Bednar-Brandt who is an amazing visionary. I got to work for Mark Bridger (ex CEO Computer Ass and UK MD Opentext) and Yogesh Gupta (Progress CEO), who directed and guided us through a partial acquisition by EMC where I met a great guy in Sales Director Saul Neal (RIP Saul) and then a full acquisition by Oracle. Thanks to Jason Scott Swanson and team, Arup Vidyerthy Patrick Shone and Benjamin Fozard etc) who had to implement what we sold! To Michael Buckler my first SDR hire, and last but not least Pauline Crossley who kept us all organised and amused.

At this point I need to also thank the special presales people I have worked with without whom sales could not be so successful, David Gillespie for the great support in the project with Sky, , @DanielCrow, Bastiaan van Os and especially Noël Jaffré / Michael Carter (both OpenMarket, Fatwire , & Oracle) as well as Dan Wingrove and his team for supporting my team for 6 years at Oracle and the partners and integrators such as Trevor Smyth at Lbi and Vikram Setia at Infomentum, Martin Hess and Barry Maybank and Annette Klimczak and Bill Palmer at HP wonderful times, thank you. 

During my time at Oracle I was so lucky to work for Paul O'Riordan (now Sage) who taught me so much  as well as the supporting cast of many such as Peter Silvester , Barry O'Reilly , Martijn Vlek Neil Sholay , Ian Tickle , and David Le Strat but mostly to my great sales team, e.g. Steve Harrison , Paul Herdman , Norman Sawers , Suki Mahal , Alan Heron ,   @nickwilliams, Rob Packington Matt , Steven Killeen , Eddie et al.  Thank you. Sorry for nearly drowning you all on the Banana boat!

As I had always worked for US companies, I decided then to go to work for a German company Acrolinx, HQ in Berlin where I had my office. Thanks to Andrew Bredenkamp, PhD. who is one of the most gifted and clever people I ever met and another great marketing exec Christopher P Willis . Thanks to Felix Lemke and as well as Felix Hahn and ☁️ Venelin Dimitrov ☁️ , inside sales turned excellent sales!

However I could not resist the temptation again and 2 years later I worked for again some of the special people in the industry at Egnyte, Rajesh Ram and Vineet Jain and Charles Lawson . How I learnt how to run a monthly targeted commercial company focused business! Thanks to a special group of sales people Kay Singh , Alex Hamilton Nicole Lavelle , Cameron Healy and Fadel-Albert Vigaru / Nate Nisar  from SDR to Successful sales! Plus Darrell Cook and the Customer Success team fun times! 

It been a pleasure writing this and remembering many of you. I could not include everyone and for those I have missed, thank you and I am truly sorry pleased feel free to message me and make me feel bad! 

I have always said Sales is a true profession when done properly and thanks to those that taught me and I hope in some way I helped some of you. 

All the best , Andy