I started my sales career way back in 2005.

I was living in Edinburgh and took a new business sales job in Exeter (that’s a story for another day). I cut my teeth working in corporate travel and then in Executive Search recruitment. Looking back, those roles were a not only a crash course in sales and customer service but also an early foray into digital marketing. I can think of no better way to skill up.

By 2010, I had moved to Bristol. I joined the specialist ad-tech publisher and events business Existem and progressed to Head of Sales. In that time the conference went international – Munich, Barcelona, New York. The awards went from a London pub to the Grosvenor House in Park Lane. Another publisher and events business followed with Keynote World Media as Senior BDM for their cloud and big data events. Keynote was sold to Informa plc.

I then moved to the digital powerhouse that is Sift. Over the course of nearly seven years I worked across practically every part of the group portfolio (Sift is both publisher of AccountingWEB, MyCustomer and assorted other business titles and the brand behind the B2B marketing agency PracticeWeb).

I went out my comfort zone and took on speaking at progressively bigger stages. Interviewing my Dad live on stage in front of 300 people was a memorable high point. (My Dad is very sweary). I survived that day and have gone on to speak on the marketing stage at the Europe’s largest finance expo, Accountex, at numerous road shows and on more webinars than I care to remember. Content has covered diverse topics such as brand and marketing strategy, lead generation tips and hints, how to structure a sales call and how to lead an account management team.

During my time at Sift, I was both publisher and agency side and booked many £millions of business. I was the commercial lead on the marketing publishing portfolio during a period of sustained growth. As a team we pivoted the proposition towards high value integrated content and lead generation. I won and retained a number of top tier accounts, Microsoft, SAP, Zendesk, SugarCRM and Royal Mail to name just a few.

Later in my career I moved up to Sales and Marketing Director of digital agency, PracticeWeb. We moved the whole business across to Salesforce, which was no mean feat considering we had 18 years of data to sort out. I led the commercial team whose remit covered both new business and the account growth of more than 500 client websites and marketing campaigns (yes it was full on!).

A brief foray into the C-suite at Ascot Group in 2019 told me what I really need to do.

And that was to Make the Break.

Stu’s blog >

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