PHIL STRANGE, sales and channel sales consulting

Phil Strange initiated his sales career as a teenager, working every Saturday in a high street hardware store in Newport, Wales, and continued it by enlisting two friends to help him sell 500 “rag mags” for his university in Birmingham city centre. Although the promised compensation (a crate of beer) was never paid by the Student’s Union he caught the bug of “going pro” and being paid for results. 

He subsequently embarked on a successful sales career in London where he quickly upgraded from making 90 phone calls a day to sell magazine ads to selling computer maintenance contracts. He picked it up very quickly and ended up working for the European market leader, owning a sales quota which supported a team of 30 staff, selling individual contracts in excess of £1 million, and receiving several President’s Club awards along the way.

The bottom fell out the computer maintenance market and after several frustrating attempts to reinvent himself as a salesperson he put his dreams in a suitcase and headed to Barcelona, Spain. That's when software process automation pioneer Mercury Interactive hired him to be their first Sales and Country Manager in 2000.  Since then Phil has moved on to focus on channel sales management and modestly considers himself to be somewhat of an expert in international channel sales for tech companies, having visited the four corners of Europe creating, developing and managing channel programs for leading global software vendors.

He is a keen golfer and street runner, and if you can find him sitting still you will always be able to interest him in a serious conversation about 1970’s music and cinema, his lifelong passion Newport County FC, and, of course, selling.

Please feel free to contact him in English, Spanish or French (at a stretch) at salesman@thesalesmanual.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.