Sports therapy for the channel

Despite plans to work in her first passion of sport, Zoe Nicholson, channel sales manager at security vendor Sophos, is happy with working life in the channel.

Since arriving on Australian shores from the UK in 2004, Nicholson has risen from territory manager and assumed her current role in April 2005. In her present position Nicholson has outlined ambitious plans to extend Sophos’ channel coverage.

“I head up the channel team at Sophos and we are looking to grow the channel. We concentrate a lot on the recruitment of new resellers and set up training programs to help partners develop so they can sell service contracts,” she says.

Sporting ambitions

Nicholson may be firmly focused on channel development now, but that would have seemed a foreign concept for her after she graduated from university in the UK.

“I trained in sports studies and business studies, and did a diploma in sports therapy, so I thought my career was going down that path, but that soon changed. I went to [UK software and services provider] Research Machines [RM] in 1998 and was temping there in purchasing. I got taken on full time and worked there as one of its senior buyers on the manufacturing side,” she recalls.

“When I started working in IT with RM I really enjoyed it and things just kept growing and growing. I was quite shocked by it [my career in IT], as it wasn’t something I was planning in life. I was going to be a sports physio and I worked for a couple for rugby union teams in the UK, but it didn’t carry on and I switched over and did the whole IT thing,” she says.

Keen to progress her career experience in a new organisation, Nicholson moved to handheld vendor Psion Teklogix in 2000 as a technical data manager, before an unexpected phone call paved the way for a significant opportunity.

“I got this phone call from a head-hunter and was asked to go to an interview, but at this point I knew nothing of Sophos. I went with no real intentions, but ended up taking a job at Sophos three weeks later and I’m now approaching six years working here [with Sophos].”

International ambitions

Nicholson started at Sophos in the UK sales team and moved to being
in a team of four covering the northern region. She then became the external territory manager for Manchester up to Scotland, before an international offer was too good to turn down.

“I came out to Australia in August 2004 where I was territory manager. I did that for nearly a year and then in April 2005 I became the channel manager for Australia and New Zealand.”

Current demands

With her feet firmly under the table in Australia, Nicholson has been working closely with the channel to expand Sophos’ coverage across the country.

“We do a lot of marketing work directly with the resellers, and co-branding. I have a team of account managers that cover the different territories and I do a lot of training and development work with them. We also work hard on lead generation between myself and the marketing team on behalf of the partners.”

It has been a busy six months for Sophos with a batch of new products hitting the market, including a new small business edition product, an enterprise solutions product, a new email appliance with another email appliance in the pipeline, and the acquisition of endpoint security policy compliance and network access control (NAC) provider, Endforce.

“All of the developments that Sophos has made, I need to bundle up and ensure the training is there, the marketing facility is there, and the partner portals are up-to-date with all the information partners need. This enables resellers to take these new products, upgrade customers and win new business.”

Despite a bustling local channel set-up, Nicholson says Sophos has resisted moving to a two-tier model and appointing any distributors across Australia or New Zealand.

Any region where Sophos has

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