Sue Crofts, Partner
Sue Crofts graduated with a B.A. (Hons) in French and English from Middlesex Polytechnic.
She started her career delivering practical training on word processing, IT systems
and scanners then moved into sales in the mid-1980’s. At first she was in territory
based roles selling into medium-sized companies, then into public sector and FT
Top 250 corporate customers.
She built experience in product, IT hardware, software
and solution-based sales, whilst also gaining an extensive knowledge and understanding
of different industries and market sectors.
She joined Toshiba Information Systems (UK) Ltd in 1990, initially building experience
as a
UKchannel account manager, with responsibility for creating
demand for product, managing marketing funding, events and generating customer sales
with reseller sales managers and their teams. The opportunity to take
up a corporate sales role attracted her back into direct customer relationship-based
selling and she gained several years experience in major
UK
and global corporate accounts for Toshiba.
Successful campaigns into companies such as Deloitte & Touche, The Post Office,
British Gas, the BBC, and global wins in Astra Zeneca and BP typically involved
her and respective teams in pro-active “partnering” with the UK’s leading resellers,
consultants and systems integrators.
After gaining promotion to Toshiba’s management team, she went on to focus on corporate
and new business development strategy in a team management role and latterly headed
up the UK-based Corporate Sales ‘managed account’ team.
Sue decided to go freelance in 2000, bringing together her extensive industry and
sales experience together with a passion for helping people develop and enhance
their own skills.
She now specialises in providing training, coaching, sales
process consultancy and skills analysis and development, predominantly for organisations
in a sales, customer or consumer-focused environment.
Projects in the last 6.5 years have included extensive work with global suppliers
in the IT sector and leading organisations in the Utilities, Healthcare, Services,
Manufacturing and Retail sectors.
Training programmes have mainly been focused on
relationship-based selling, opportunity reviews, business development, performance
management, presentation and sales skills workshops
Consultancy projects in the last 2-3 years have included helping organisations to
change and improve management and sales staff skills and simplify in-house processes.
Sue has delivered this via personal development interviews, training-needs analyses
and consultancy, leading on to the design and implementation of new processes, review
tools and techniques and direct skills training delivery.
Having qualified as a Certified NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Practitioner
this year, she also brings these simple and powerful techniques into her consultancy,
coaching and training programmes for clients. Her main focus is in helping
people to enhance their own communication techniques with others, focus on successful
personal development and improve their business through a better understanding of
their staff, customers and partners.
Pete Davis, Partner. Head of Business Development
Pete has thirty years experience in the IT industry and has worked in the
UK
, the
US
,
Sweden
and the
Netherlands
. He graduated from the
University of Manchester
in 1977 and spent ten years following a technical career path at LogicaCMG and then
Deloitte Consulting. In 1987, Pete took his first full-time commercial role – that
of sales manager for a small
UK
software house called IPL. Since then he has held a range of sales management roles
at companies as diverse as Global Recall (a privately-funded UK-based new venture)
thru to Microsoft – with stops in between at Oracle, Siebel and BroadVision.
Whilst at Microsoft, from 2002 to 2004, Pete led the global relationship with Vodafone
Group. It was during this period that he began to take an active interest in finding
new ways to make the B2B sales process more effective – taking into account the
impact of eCommerce and the mobile internet.
Pete left Microsoft to join QA, the leading independent
UK
provider of IT training services, where he created a mobile email accreditation
programme for Vodafone which was part of their global SME partners programme.
Following his success at QA, Pete was invited by one of the founders of On Demand
Distribution (OD2) Limited to help them to market and sell their multi-channel full-track
digital music download service to the European mobile operators. He worked for OD2
as an independent consultant, helping to introduce best practice B2B sales processes
and mentoring the existing sales force.
Pete has been a Member of the British Computer Society and a Chartered IT Professional
since 1992 and takes an active interest in the teaching of Information and Communications
Technology.
John has more than 30 years experience in selling, sales management and director roles with
large multinational IT Suppliers, Systems Integators, Specialist Hardware Designers, and
Software Service companies. He has worked in both local and international roles for Digital
Equipment Corporation and Mentec International, and was a founder director of Linux
specialist SecureLinx.
John graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and also
holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Trinity.
After his initial years in the
computer industry in technical and project positions, John joined Digital Equipment
Corporation’s sales organisation in Ireland where he became Country Sales Manager. He
subsequently moved to Digital UK where he enjoyed continued success in senior Sales
Management positions involving Commercial Solutions through to managing the Components &
Peripherals Business.
After leaving DEC John joined Mentec International as Group Sales Director and was
responsible for the Group’s activities across multiple product areas, from commercial
software solutions to the design of specialist processors. John later founded Linux services
company SecureLinx, and helped establish the company as a leading force in the Linux area.
John has considerable experience of the Reseller Channel model, gained from operating with
both suppliers to the channel, and as a reseller. He has worked with several companies who
rely on such partnerships as part of their business, helping them maximise their
relationships with both main suppliers and their own reseller channel partners. He also
provides coaching and mentoring for sales directors/managers, and for the management teams
of small hi-tech companies.