Stafford, England, United Kingdom
As the Sales Engineering Manager for Major Accounts at Cyera, I lead the strategy and execution of our Sales Engineering capability. I am accountable for the full end-to-end technical sales lifecycle, leading a high-performing multi-disciplinary team that protects, detects, and responds to sophisticated data and GenAI threats and business challenges. My role is to build, lead and maintain a high-performing technical pre-sales function, driving technical wins, revenue growth, operational excellence and maturing our capabilities in a hypergrowth start-up. I act as the primary coach for major accounts, translating complex data and GenAI challenges into successful business outcomes. I am passionate about fostering an intelligence-led collaborative culture and approach where understanding and delighting clients informs every aspect of our technical selling posture. Ultimately, I believe in the power of strong relationships between sales, product management, customer success to achieve holistic data and GenAI security solutions and drive business success. Beyond my role at Cyera, I am a Director and committee member at my golf club and a fully qualified grassroots football coach.
- Headhunted by CEO and CRO - Created, built, coached company first presales function - Located, hired, onboarded and maintained team - Established and proved the value of presales - Embedded presales within every aspect of GTM strategy and wider business - Linked presales to Sales, Marketing, Product Management, Professional Services, and Engineering - Advocated and championed the 'voice of the client' back to broader organisation - Industrialised a reusable content operation, improving resource availability - Created, chaired and strengthened win/loss review sessions and actionable output - Oversaw a technical win rate of 70%+ - Targeted and hit 30% revenue growth per annum (2021-2023) - Supported technology partners, including Microsoft, AWS Cloud, Google, Splunk, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Netskope, Tenable, and Cribl
- Inherited an unhappy team of Sales Engineers in France, UK, and Sweden - Established a team of 9 Sales Engineers across 5 countries - Directed and guided the pre-sales team for 3+ successful years - Achieved 30% market growth annually, winning EMEA team of year two years running - Utilised MEDDIC, Command of Message frameworks and Sales Engineering playbooks - 0% attrition during my tenure - Supported existing channel partners and tracked new partners, including Cisco - Accelerated technical sales of software, hardware and AWS, Azure and GPC cloud services - Partnered, reported and informed EMEA VP for Sales on territory planning, segmentation and collaboration
- Promoted to WW Director for Security Pre-Sales - Led a team of 100+ professionals in 20+ countries - Served successfully as WW Director, facilitating significant and above-market growth YoY - Accountable for technical wins with $1b revenue quota by 2016 - Implemented effective territory planning and segmentation strategies - Pioneered and co-created a best-shore approach in India - Increased productivity whilst successfully driving down field selling costs - Contributed to DXC-wide approach and strategies to drive digital transformations in cybersecurity - Secured trust of VP level leadership through effective communication, collaboration and navigating a highly-matrixed organisation successfully - Successfully managed a $14m annual budget - Enjoyed the lowest attrition rates and highest leadership approval rates across business - Led and successfully maintained the team through the company split from HP Enterprise and the merger with CSC to create DXC Technology
- Promoted to EMEA leader to lead hypergrowth efforts - Created EMEA team, 0 members to 50+ in 12 months - Created leadership structure - Coach and strategist for a team of 50+ security pre-sales professionals across EMEA. - Coach and leader to 9 direct report leaders in EMEA North, South, DACH and ME. - Operationalised end-to-end EMEA pre-sales capability from scratch, displaying my initiative, vision and agility in a heavily matrixed organisation. - Created an end-to-end pre-sales engagement model - Created an end-to-end delivery assurance process to ensure effective collaboration, sign off, and approval by the delivery organisation. - Worked in partnership with WW Head of Security Presales and EMEA Head of Sales - Grew TCV revenue from $0 in 2011 to overtake UK&I by TCV won by 2014. - Led and successfully maintained the team through the company split
- Promoted to UK&I leader and interim EMEA leader for cybersecurity pre-sales - Coached and strategised for a team of 14 security pre-sales professionals within the UK&I business - Successfully grew the UK&I team to 19 members while maintaining low attrition - Spent 12 months aggressively acquiring talent across EMEA - Created a successful on-boarding plan, and fully operationalised the team - Doubled hypergrowth TCV revenues in 2012 from $100m to $218m