Soccer star who fell into IT

they need to have unique offerings. If they haven’t got a differentiator, then they should consider [offering] services,” he says.

It’s a significant “step up” for resellers to change their mentality from moving boxes to advising on customer cost savings and business processes.

“All this takes commitment and requires investment to get there. For a distributor, the next level up is to add a level of expertise around the vendor’s channel program,” he says.

The main problems for the printer market channel can be compared to the mobile phone market, he says. The market is saturated with products at a low price; printer vendors need to come up with a way to keep their channel happy.

“I think a lot of [resellers] simply sell printers and let the [consumables sales] go by the wayside. It was the same with Microsoft package product a few years ago. A lot of the resellers simply sold Microsoft software and forgot about the licensing,” he says.

Campbell plans to have a series of programs out by next year to help resellers gain annuity revenue streams selling printing supplies. “This will allow resellers to sell services through things like print management,” he says.

Resellers need to look at becoming sub-distributors selling products to other resellers, because they can become an “instrumental part in the channel”, he says.

At the end of the day, resellers have the key contact with customers; the big distributors can only do so much and vendors don’t have the face-to-face contact with SMB customers, he says. For the past eight-and-a-half months, Campbell has been working on building a print specialist channel for Lexmark. He says this will give its traditional resellers the framework and tools to provide print services to their customers.

Print services relates to a managed service for print output. It embraces hardware (Printers and MFP’s), maintenance services and consumables management.

Soccer or IT?

Previous to his present job, Campbell was at hardware vendor Hewlett-Packard for five-and-a-half years, running its distribution channel division. He has also worked for distributors like Merisel before its collapse in the early 1990s.

He almost veered into a career in marketing medical supplies. When he started looking at potential career fields, he was given the choice of two markets – medical and IT.
“I was lucky enough to get the role of marketing cadet at Dunlop because at the time there were no job vacancies at Bull Medical Systems, so I didn’t end up getting into medical the field. But hey, look at me now. I don’t think I have done to badly for myself,” says Campbell.

Campbell’s early career was primarily focused in the marketing sector. He has a combined marketing and accounting degree, although the latter was done so he could do his own tax.

A keen soccer fan, Campbell played the game at a high level for teams in Sydney. He started his junior years with the Forest Soccer Club. He also spent time at Sydney City and was fortunate enough to be coached by the national coach Eddie Thompson. From there he played state league with Rockdale and Manly before heading off to the UK.

During his time in the UK, Campbell with the help of a business partner set up a business employment agency in the UK. He found lots of companies needed temporary staff but none had proper regulations when it came to hire these people. “We had been working in temping ourselves and someone was making money out of us. At the time, a lot of companies had problems with temps saying they could do things they couldn’t do. We saw an opportunity to regulate temps for these companies and it worked out very well. I did that for about two-and-a-half years and then we had people running the company whilst we performed other roles.”

These days, Campbell says he would be lucky to be able to even walk across a soccer field, although he finds digging holes a form of therapy.

“I also spend time with my family and with my sons who are very active in sport to the point where I just don’t know where they get it from. I also love tinkering with my Holden,” says Campbell.

hardware neill campbell