XON has appointed Graeme Schippers to head up its sales operation in the Western Cape.
Schippers, regional business development manager at XON, brings a wealth of experience to the business with more than 17 years spent in sales and a strong technical background in IT and telecommunications.
“We’re a solutions business,” says Mark Harris, national sales manager at XON. “Graeme has a strong solutions background, excellent consulting experience and a long history of developing markets and channels based on meeting customer needs as opposed to selling boxes or licences.
“He’s from the Western Cape so he understands the markets there and he understands the OEM business from his time at Alcatel Lucent and IBM. He also knows what customers need, rather than what vendors and distributors want to push because he spent years with customer –specific solutions companies like Internet Solutions, IBM and Dimension Data.
“What’s also important to us is that he knows how to build a rapport with customers because this is a long term investment for us.”
Schippers is accustomed to strategic business development and notes that his time with a global vendor was dedicated to that, where he was head of solutions and marketing covering South and East Africa, later on taking on the roles of head of pre-sales, channel transition and South and East Africa territory strategy.
“We had to build a business based on integrity, giving customers value by ensuring they had the right solutions rather than offloading kit, like so many other hardware vendors operating in the same area. Customer Intimacy and sharing customer values in key in emerging markets and its about the sustainability around the engagement that contains the recursive value and not just the acquisitive sale,” he says.
“By our second year we met targets, by year three we achieved profitability and by year four we achieved 253%. That’s a sustainable business and not a quick-win operation just like what we’re doing at XON in the Western Cape.”
Schippers was also instrumental in developing business in the local mining industry sector for a multinational where he and his team achieved 20% year-on-year growth by building rapport with customers through understanding the business their customers were in. “We didn’t sell hardware; we sold solutions, that overcame Business Challenges and drove Customer Revenue,” he says.
Schippers and his team at XON Western Cape will initially focus on the public, financial services and mobile and telecommunications service provider sectors. Although the mobile and telecommunications service provider industry is comparatively small compared with Gauteng, Harris and Schippers agree it has enormous potential to grow.
XON has become one of South Africa’s largest ICT businesses and operates in 16 countries across Africa and has nine offices in South Africa.
It has regional offices in Namibia, Kenya, DRC and Guinea Conakry. It is a level 3 EmpowerLogic-certified BBBEE systems integrator with six divisions including physical datacenter infrastructure, alternative power, networking, security, cloud services, storage and availability supported by professional services.
