It’s tough out there and the name of the game is sell, sell, sell

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 10 March 2009 16:21

IT Industry - Deals

When the going gets tough the tough get going, and no more than at the moment as all sectors of business and industry, including the technology sector, face a much tougher job marketing and selling their products and services as the economic downturn bites deeper.

Which is why almost every second day, including today, there’s another announcement by one of Australia’s technology companies – this time Dimension Data - that they're beefing up their sales and marketing teams and looking at ways to sell more of their products and services and, no doubt, to just simply maintain, or maybe even grow, their marketshare at the expense of competitors.

Only today http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23725/598/ respected analysts, IDC, reported that the tough economic conditions in Australia had significantly slowed ICT spending in vertical markets  

IDC has revised its verticals forecast compound annual growth rate down from 4.0% to 3.6% over the period 2008 to 2012 and, it coupled that forecast with a caution to suppliers that pushed too hard on the brakes that they “will not only limit their viability in the long term but also miss key growth opportunities in 2009.”

Which brings us to today’s announcement in Sydney by Dimension Data that they have appointed Christopher Long as national sales director to “manage and enhance Dimension Data’s sales team and also to promote a much broader range of services into the company’s client base, with the aim of addressing clients’ business challenges.”

According to Long, Dimension Data’s strengths around the converged client, converged network and multisourcing, need to be conveyed by his sales teams and, he says, he’s intent on working with all of his sales people  “to ensure we are taking solutions in these three strategic areas to every one of our customers.”

Which is pretty much the sort of message, in these tough times, coming out of a number of new senior sales and marketing appointees announced by Australian technology companies over recent weeks.

Christopher Long will report to Dimension Data’s Australian CEO, Steve Nola, who says Long has an astute understanding of the IT sales process and how to take a total solution to the client – both in services and technology – to solve an organisation’s business challenges.”

Long joins Dimension Data after extensive Australian and overseas experience in IT sales management and services management. He began his IT career in Australia in 1985 with Accenture, then joined software vendor Epicor, before joining e-commerce software maker InterWorld as regional VP for Asia-Pacific. He was a joint founder and executive vice president of Q Strategies, a US-based services firm.