Chris Thomas

A passionate and visionary sales leader for major ICT market leaders. Proven track record in overachieving targets up to

€500M delivering significant consistent year on year growth. Accomplished leader and motivator, with an expertise of

improving processes, performance and results. Sales strategist who develops proven go to market strategies for building

constant pipeline through processed based sales qualification. Impassioned about coaching leaders and reps for consistency

and winning complex sales.

COMMERCIAL SALES DIRECTOR UK, SERVICENOW 2024 - PRESENT

• Developed sales qualification playbook and coached team to from 50% performance in Q1 to on target performance in Q2-

Q3 including closing largest digital sales opportunity of $1.5m for Servicenow Europe.

• Lead team of 15 Digital Sales reps including hiring 2 new sales managers and 5 new sales reps

GLOBAL HEAD OF DIGITAL SALES, VODAFONE 2013 - 2023

Established global digital sales organisation for global telecoms provider for B2B sales from SME to MNC's

• Delivered sales revenue growth from €10M to €500M in 10 years extending sales team from 25 to 400 staff across 7

locations - Ireland, UK, Spain, Italy, Hungary, US and Singapore.

• Developed Vodafone’s digital sales and field sales 2.0 strategies- including go to market strategy, sales processes

organisational structure, career paths, playbooks, L & D, business plans, sales operations and sales automation tools.

• Developed sales strategies to improve customer buying experience achieving a 40% win rate across an extensive

product portfolio - Mobility, Unified Communications, Converged Networks, IoT, SaaS, and Cloud/Hosting solutions.

• Success and rapid growth of sales team led 8 countries moving significant parts of their sales organisation under my

leadership.

• Experienced at company wide strategy presentations C Suite engagement, multi discipline stakeholder and P and L

Management.

• Industry thought leader presenting to house hold name software and technology organisations, customers and at

conferences on sales strategy, sales optimisation, social selling and AI in Sales.

• Proven record of building highly

effective sales teams

• Consistent achievement of sales

targets achieving 100-600%

growth

• Focused on driving results

through strong leadership

• Negotiating and wining complex

sales

• Exceptional coach and develop

of people

• Sales Strategic Planning/

Execution

• Hiring/Development/

Engagement/Retention

• Building a culture to

encourage team members to

bring their whole selves to

their role

• Full P and L Management

• Leading Sales, Marketing,

Commercial, HR and finance

teams

• Executive Presentations/Influence

• Industry thought and strategy

SALES DIRECTOR - QLIK 2011 - 2013

Established successful EMEA sales and business development operation for game changing BI SaaS vendor

• Delivered sales revenue growth from 0-$70M in 3 years.

• Established highly successful “land and expand” sales strategy to take market share from competition and ensure consistent

pipeline coverage.

• Hired and developed 7 sales managers; 70 multi-lingual European sales; business development and pre-sales teams.

• Designed sales 2.0 sales automaton systems: developed GTM sales and marketing strategies; customer centric sales

methodologies.

• Motived highly effective team through personal development plans, training and coaching programme.

• Built strong relationships with marketing and commercial teams to execute with full P and L responsibility.

SALES DIRECTOR, HARTE-HANKS 2007 - 2011

• Recruited to develop direct and channel sales operation within $1 billion sales and marketing outsourcer.

• Delivered sales revenue growth from £20M-£300M over 4 Years.

• Full P and L responsibility across 15 programmes growing margin from 26 to 40% .

• Responsible for demand generation and sales for Tier 1 IT Organisations such as Microsoft, Oracle, VMWare, Cisco, Apple,

3Com, GSK and Xerox.

• Leadership of 10 sales managers, 120-200 multi-lingual sales staff, training, quality control and reporting to ensure client

retention and consistent revenue growth.

MANAGING DIRECTOR, VISION COACHING SERVICES 2003 - 2007

• Established successful sales, executive coaching and training company over 4 years - achieving £500,000 revenues.

• Course director and trainer for winning complex deals, strategic selling, negotiation, presentation skills, leadership and

coaching programmes to improve sales performance.

• Training, coaching and consultancy for sales organisations such as Orange, Alcatel, Blue Coat, Pervasive Networks and The

NLP Academy.

• Personal coaching to directors, managers and sales teams.

SALES DIRECTOR, ALCATEL/NEXTIRAONE 1997 - 2003

• Established inside sales, business development and field sales operations of Telecoms OEM/Integrator.

• Overachieved targets of up to £50M with 35% growth per year.

• Advanced Personal and Business Coaching Certificate, Certified NLP Trainer and Master Practitioner.

• Customer Centric Selling, Target Account Selling, PowerBase Selling.

• University of Reading - Sociology BA (Hons) 2.1 .