Darryn Welsh: awards as recognition.

It was a good night for Vodafone at the British Excellence in Sales and Marketing Awards (BESMA) on 21 February. As the evening drew to a close, the Vodafone contingent must have been feeling well satisfied, with the company’s Small Business Channel entry triumphing in the Sales & Marketing Team of the Year (larger organisations) section, while beating their colleagues in the Enterprise Business Unit sales team to the prize. A little later, Stephen Booth picked up the mobile telecoms giant’s second award of the night when he won the Telesales Professional of the Year category.

Yet for Darryn Welsh, that evening must have seemed interminable as it led up to the 12th and final award – the big one – Sales Professional of the Year (for companies of over 50 employees). With 12 contenders short-listed, the category was described by host Gyles Brandreth as a ‘real test of skill, talent, professionalism and commitment’... and then Welsh won.

Fast forward to the following Thursday – another hotel, another awards ceremony – this time it was the turn of the National Sales Awards to hand out the gongs. Welsh was there again and, on this occasion, the 34-year-old corporate account manager had rather less time to wait before broadcaster Jeremy Vine announced him as winner of the Account Manager of the Year title.

So how did Welsh manage to pull off this amazing double and what is it about Vodafone’s sales organisation that sees it pick up so many accolades? (TSAR Vodafone Stoke also triumphed in the NSA’s Contact Centre of the Year category, while telephone account manager, Daniel Beevers won the Sales Manager of the Year – Office-Based award.)

New role

A few weeks later at Vodafone’s Newbury headquarters we catch up with Welsh, who takes time out from seeing customers three-and-a-half days a week for a chat and an understandably self-conscious first-time photo shoot (‘I don’t want my team to see me doing this.’). Since the awards – but not directly as a result – Welsh’s responsibility has changed from a corporate account manager in the logistics, utilities and rail sector (reporting to a sector head) to a role in sales development management, where he currently reports directly to sales director Amanda Baker.

Going through the preliminaries, we find out that Welsh is married to wife Sara with two children and lives in Worcester (‘nice and central for national accounts’). He relaxes by drinking wine and keeps fit by running – having completed a few marathons. His literary and cinema choices revolve around high-achieving alpha male figures, and range from the inspirational (cancer-conquering cyclist Lance Armstrong), through the historical (Genghis Khan) to the heroic: Gladiator – ‘because I’m “RRRRR”’, he quips tongue in cheek.

Welsh: number of industry challenges.

At work, Welsh faces a number of challenges, particularly as the telecoms industry – in common with many others – is ‘going through an enormous amount of change’. Traditionally focused on mobile voice and, to a certain degree, data, mobile telecoms businesses are in transition to what Vodafone calls ‘total communications in terms of the services and solutions we provide’. This means that the company’s relationship with customers has changed too: a ‘buyers and sellers-style relationship’ is evolving to look at the value Vodafone can add to a customer’s business.

Day in the life

As an example of how he relates to customers, Welsh frequently participates in what he refers to as a ‘day in the life’ where he immerses himself in customer issues. ‘It’s very traditional to deal with procurement; it’s very traditional to deal with IT (in our industry). However, focusing on the operational side of a customer’s business is key, he says. 

‘What I’ve done in the past is very much focus on the operational side of the business to really understand what their requirements and their needs are, what their issues are and just to really understand the way that they work.’ Citing a logistics company as an example, Welsh explains how he spent a day in the life of a warehouse manager: ‘I shadowed her for the day.’

Welsh: engage at all levels.

After about an hour on location in a massive mile-square storage facility for a Littlewoods catalogue, the warehouse manager received a call about a pallet that had dropped off a shelf. She and Welsh walked for some three quarters of a mile to the pallet, which the warehouse manager then cordoned off for health and safety reasons, they then walked three quarters of a mile back to the office to collect a camera and then walked the same three quarters of a mile back again to take a picture. ‘Straight away you are thinking if she had a handheld device that uses wireless data to send the picture through, she could focus on the job in hand and we would be helping to drive efficiencies into that business’.

Understanding the customer

‘Obviously, you can engage at all levels within a business; it’s not just about engaging at board level, it’s also getting to each part of the business to understand what their requirements are, really getting underneath the skin to understand their objectives, what their challenges are, the positions at group and local level. And, really, I think our customers now expect us to have almost a better knowledge of their business than they do.

‘I’ve had conversations with people in the past where I’ve asked them what makes a partner and they don’t actually always know. And so you sit down and I think you start to scope out with customers what a partnership looks like. It’s a very over-used word “partnership”, but each customer has their own idea of what that looks like and it’s making sure you’re flexible and tailored enough to meet their requirements.’

But is this level of service confined to the largest customers? ‘I wouldn’t say so. From my point of view, in terms of looking after accounts, I have always tried to take a consistent approach but obviously tailor it to individual requirements. Yes, you tend to prioritise your time in some of the bigger opportunities. However, in terms of the smaller customers, they often need the same type of guidance but probably at a more simplified level, but it adds just as much value to them as it does to the bigger customers.’

Opportunities

As an account manager, Welsh is responsible for seeking out opportunities within his accounts. He works with a virtual team on each account – usually a professional services person (data manager) ‘to understand the technical aspects of the relationship and what their requirements are’ and a service manager ‘who will support you from a customer services perspective’.

Welsh: need to add value.

In terms of understanding the opportunities within a customer’s business, he explains that it’s a matter of engaging at all the different levels: ‘It’s doing the days in the life, it’s going back and giving a bit of thought-leadership in terms of where we think they’re going, and making sure that you’re in their business on a regular basis to understand exactly the opportunities that are coming out.

‘You might see things happening at a market level – at a macro level – or you might see things happening at another customer that might benefit that customer. So, it’s looking at the overall picture. The final piece in the jigsaw, which is really important – it might be specific to something the customer wants – is that we can tailor our solution to meet that requirement ’

Timetable

When in his account manager role, Welsh spends about a day a week in Newbury – hot-desking along with the majority of other employees – looking at the commercial aspects of various deals and ‘getting those relevant commercial approvals, spending as much time as I can with the contract and commercial teams, understanding what’s going on’. He also uses his time at HQ keeping his ‘ear to the ground’, speaking to ‘some of the guys who look after the marketing and the products and the solutions’.

The rest of Welsh’s time is spent out with customers where possible – making sure he is  having a meeting for a specific purpose (‘not just ticking a box’) and having meetings with multiple people in the business – although half a day usually goes on administration and ‘catch up’. An account manager in his part of Vodafone – there are some 70 in the corporate division – typically runs between five and ten accounts and would lead a different virtual team for each customer, depending on the account’s size and location.

Accountability

And Welsh has full commercial responsibility for his accounts. As he says: ‘The buck stops with the account manager.’

So, what’s the best part of the job so far as Welsh is concerned? ‘For me it’s the thrill of the chase. I’m a very competitive person and, whenever there are targets to be hit or there’s an incentive in place, it’s something that really drives me. And I don’t like losing….’

Welsh: buck stops here.

But it’s not all about competition for Welsh. ‘When you’ve sold a solution into a customer and you get feedback from that customer that it really works, and you see the difference it’s making to their business, that is a really fantastic feeling.’

At the same time, the most challenging part of Welsh’s role is putting across Vodafone’s new positioning as a total communications business, making sure ‘we take our customers on that same journey’. He explains this is ‘all about how we communicate and the type of conversations we have’. This involves translating offerings in terms of issues that mean something to customers, such as mobile and flexible working, and hot-desking, for example, as opposed to specifically focusing on mobile phones and data cards.

Awards process

All of which is pretty cutting-edge compared with many businesses, which is presumably why he won the two sales awards this year….

On holiday in Portugal last August, Welsh ‘took a sneaky look into his wife’s handbag’ at his BlackBerry while she was getting the drinks. An internal email from the head of the small business channel, Sue Kirk, recognised that he had had a good year and invited him to apply for the National Sales Awards and, subsequently, the BESMA scheme.

‘That was real recognition, so to me that meant a lot.’

Personal development

Entry to the awards is used within Vodafone for the purposes of recognition while there’s also a personal development element. The company holds its own interview assessments and picked eight account managers to participate. ‘We did a pitch to Mark Bond (previously sales director and now head of Enterprise) and we talked about how I had approached working with my customers.’ Having been chosen, Welsh was put forward to the NSA and BESMA assessments.

The awards process has taught him a lot in terms of presentation and style, Welsh says. He admits that the external assessment was ‘very scary’ (NSA was held at the Chartered Institute of Marketing in Cookham) but he turned up ‘nice and early’ and sat shaking over a cup of coffee, which gave him time to reflect on what he was doing there. He remembered thinking back to arriving at Vodafone for the first time from a much less technical FMCG environment and vowing ‘not to change who I am in terms of how I work with customers’. 

Welsh: stick to your principles.

Consistent performance

Clearly it worked. Welsh feels that he managed to impress the judges with his consistent performance across two years and his passion for what he does – both his customers and his own organisation. ‘I truly, truly would not be doing this job unless I felt passionate about what I am doing. I’m sharing ideas and solutions that can make a big difference to people’s lives, ultimately.’

The two awards schemes were different in their methodology. Welsh describes the BESMA awards as ‘slightly more scientific in its approach’ in terms of scoring and the greater use of role-play. The NSA process involved a ‘very thorough paper’ followed by a ‘very thorough interview’ in front of a panel with good questions plus a presentation by Welsh on how he had achieved his success.

And the response at work has been ‘fantastic’ but also useful, helping him to rationalise exactly where he wants to be in terms of his career. ‘I love sales and sales is where I want to be, and I’m sure that will pay a big part in my future.’

Why selling?

However, like many people in selling, sales chose him. Welsh started out as a trainee manager for Sainsbury’s but he soon found that the long hours and ‘really hard work’ also didn’t afford him the responsibility he was looking for. So he joined Scottish Courage as a territory manager for Holsten in the south-west and moved up to national account manager. Redundancy in 2004 allowed him to take time out and the switch to Vodafone and a new industry.

Vodafone was something of a culture shock. Not only is it a large organisation (requiring a whole host of new networking and communications skills) but it also employs the cream of the crop. ‘I was surrounded by very talented, very intelligent people whom I was probably a little in awe of.’ But after six months, and settled into his account base, Welsh found his feet.

These days, as a top-performing sales person and a double award-winner, Welsh has no hesitation in recommending sales as a career to other graduates. He stresses that the common perception of sales is nothing like the reality at his level. ‘I often find myself talking to my family and saying: “Sales isn’t like that; it’s not about your pitch; it’s not about your clever lines. It’s about a conversation – a proper discussion – about their business.”

‘Sales is portrayed as a very “transactionalised” area when actually it’s not. It can really add value to a business,’ he concludes.

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