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Tag: Presales

Change Is Coming

22 September, 2015 / / 3 Comments

2nd November 2015 would be my fourth anniversary as a presales consultant at Avnet Technology Solutions for the Belux region.
“Would” and not “will be” because I gave my formal resignation past August and will be leaving the company at the end of September.
I started out as presales consultant for Hitachi Data Systems and later on moved to the brand new EMC business unit in the beginning of 2014 as the first dedicated team member. Both positions provided me with a lot of challenges and have allowed me to grow on both personal and professional level while on top of that allowed me to work with great people, many to whom I will always be grateful for the knowledge and experience they shared with me. Thank you and godspeed! You know who you are.
Since the word got out, people ask me why I’m leaving and my answer has been the same over and over again: for the past six months, I felt an urge for a new challenge, new triggers to keep me on my toes, something to force me out of my comfort zone and push me to the next level. Unfortunately, it were those things I could no longer find within my current role.
The past has taught me that once I flip that switch in my mind, there is no looking back, only moving forward.
Every end is a beginning.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. T.S. Eliot

So I decided to jump and as of 1st October 2015 I will be joining the Virtual Computing Environment Company a.k.a. VCE as vArchitect in the Belux team!
Straight from the VCE website:

VCE, an EMC Federation Company, is the world market leader in converged infrastructure and converged solutions. VCE accelerates the adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models that reduce IT costs while improving time to market. VCE delivers the industry’s only fully integrated and virtualized cloud infrastructure systems, allowing customers to focus on business innovation instead of integrating, validating, and managing IT infrastructure.

VCE
 
So there, the word is out on social media as well. To those who I’ve worked with for the past four years I say no farewell, but rather goodbye and see you soon because I am very sure that our roads will cross again. After all, the future is with converged infrastructure right? And who knows more about that than VCE 😉 …

Pay Attention To Presales!

24 February, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Interesting read over at the folks of Harvard Business Review.

The key to closing deals is presales’ ability to shape conversations with the client to position the company’s solution as the ideal one. This approach is not about developing a “smoke and mirrors” pitch, but rather investing the time to have a deep understanding of the client’s needs (met and unmet) and then highlighting those elements of the solution that can address them.

My thoughts exactly!

The Switch

6 August, 2014 / / 2 Comments

So I wrote earlier on that I pursued a new job remember? Well, actually I didn’t leave the company that I’m working for – Avnet Technology Solutions to be complete – but I did switched jobs within the company.
When I joined Avnet back in November 2011, I was engaged as Presales Consultant for Hitachi Data Systems. After two and a half years, I felt the need to take up a new challenge and Lady Fortuna must like me a lot because Avnet was appointed as new distributor for EMC². Some of you might remember that I was already submersed in the EMC² brand before I joined Avnet, so for me it was the obvious choice to return to my first storage love :).
Do note that the above took place around the end of March (which accidentally collides with the period things went silent over here… look for the overlap ;)), which means I’m well into my second quarter with EMC² at Avnet.
The first quarter was an exciting and fun roller coaster ride since the team was still in start-up phase and I was the first dedicated team member. This meant that I was wearing different caps, pushing lots of work hours, but at the same time deep diving into a lot of aspects of the channel business that were unknown to me before. Of course I had backing of general sales teams, trained back office teams and an enthusiastic vendor team to get the train on the rails / thanks folks – you know who you are!
Today our dedicated team counts three members and we are catching a lot of momentum, pushing our boundaries every single day, going the extra mile and sometimes even further. Work hard, play hard would be a good way to summarize the team that’s oozing ambition, motivation and has a high “Getting Things Done” mentality.
So there you have it. Unexpected has returned to his roots and of course, I’ll be sharing my adventures through my known social media hubs. Things you can expect me to blog about on a rather short timeframe are:

  • XtremIO – the king of flash!
  • ScaleIO – elastic converged storage.
  • VNXe3200 – the all new entry-level unified storage solution that will disrupt the market!
  • VSPEX – proven infrastructure and how this can add value to a proposition selling solutions, not products.

Stay tuned for more madness!
PS: yes this post was written in English. That’s because I’m also participating in an EMC² program in which I’m stimulated to share all my experiences with my audience. Since I can reach more people in English, I will write all my EMC related blogs in Shakespeare’s language ;).

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