CSW-IT lures major Telstra scalp

A former Telstra manager who oversaw up to 3,500 internal and external staff across the telco's business and consumer division has moved to eStore and CSW-IT to head up their sales operation.

Until late 2010, Paul Humphrey held significant management roles at Telstra, including general manager for contact centre sales and service - a division that had some 3,500 staff and revenues of $1.3 billion at the time, according to Humphrey.

Asked by CRN about his achievements at the telco, he said he "led the change" from telco kit and carriage selling to "consulting on solutions".

"This was a big change at the time for Telstra who were looking to move from being a telco to becoming a full end to end true ICT player," he said.

Humphrey also pointed to his involvement in the initial review of Telstra's offshore outsourcing plans, a project which he said lead later to the involvement of up to 2,000 workers in the Philippines.

Another achievement was introducing a sales methodology and framework across Telstra's consumer division.

At the telco's consumer arm Humphrey managed Telstra's digital customer channels including Telstra.com, BigPond.com, live chat and Twitter.

"We had people on Twitter way before anyone was using it as a social media mechanism [and] staff manning a retail shop in Second Life. All that was way ahead of anybody else."

Humphrey was also group sales manager for Telstra Business in Victoria and he lists "complex solution selling in the area of managed services" in his skillset.

For the last 10 years he has also coached sales professionals and managers in  B2B solutions selling/business consulting and run his own consulting business specialising in sales and marketing.

Humphrey was tight lipped about how he might make an impact at estore and CSW-IT, except to say the company would be looking at "new areas" while "squeezing the lemon from a customer experience" perspective.

He said the company is looking to partner with vendors who are "strategically aligned with our growth plans".

"I think IT providers and vendors are not good at articulating business problems, business drivers," he said, speaking about the industry in general. "It's all about the tech, it's all about how fast the flux capacitor spins."

"I've done a fair bit of consulting over my time. It's not uncommon for most sales teams to not actually get to the bottom of why [customers should buy a solution]. They're more stuck in 'buy this because I'm saving you money.'"

Open to acquisitions

Estore founder Lorenzo Coppa said Humphrey's management and leadership capabilities will be important as the company looks to grow. He is confident business could "double or even triple" in the next three to five years.

"The key reason why it will grow is because of [Humphrey's] ability to improve the customer experience of our call centres and all communication methods with the customers. His experience will bring a new dimension to our organisation, no doubt about that."

Future growth might involve acquisitions, he said.

"If we find an online player that wants to exit, we'll consider acquiring them. We'd also acquire your traditional infrastructure resellers  - the target size would be small ones. But we could still double or triple the business organically."