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I work on ... guiding sales teams to improve performance.

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Vincent

Having worked in sales for a number of years I moved into a role between finance and sales at computer hardware provider Compaq (acquired by Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2002), which gave me a real interest in how the finance function works. I then home-studied for my qualification while based in the UK and settled into a series of roles in finance--my last pure finance role was looking at the balance sheet and forecasting for the EMEA region.

I then began a business practice finance role, which coincided with a move back to South Africa in 2010. It was at a time when HP was going through a huge amount of change. In this role I started to look more closely at the approach of the sales force to achieve better returns at a lower cost.

A small core management team put together the structure for the plan, which set out to not only empower the sales team, but also encourage it to compile high-quality information from clients. Part of the work involved making sure sales professionals understood that this information would be used not only to improve overall intelligence on the market, but to give them the means to close more and better deals. It gave sales teams the chance to construct their own P&Ls and showed them how and where they needed to improve their efforts.

As a result, salespeople began asking me if I could attend customer meetings for a number of reasons. For example, I could talk to the finance director of the client if they were present, or help with contract negotiations.

My role has changed to become increasingly more customer-facing...

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