Absolute confidence born on back of success

For the winner of sales excellence honours at this year’s ARN IT Industry Awards – Daniel Nyssen of Sophos – absolute confidence in the quality of the product is instrumental to his performance.

“From a sales perspective, if the product is going well, then that’s half the job done and to get good feedback from partners for our product gives me a lot of confidence – from there I know I can provide any necessary support whether in terms of technical or sales training or company structure to get the partner up and running,” Nyssen said. “The Sophos product is going well and word of mouth has helped that greatly.”

Sophos is a multinational vendor of Web security solutions. It maintains offices in the UK, US, Canada, A/NZ, mainland Europe, mainland Asia and Japan. According to Nyssen, it has been a good year for the vendor on a global scale.

“The company is growing in a number of areas. It’s great to see success in the US and Europe, and of course that filters through to Australia,” he said. “My area is southern channel, which includes WA, SA, Victoria and Tasmania, and I’m focused on a large range of partners – from small business IT resellers up to the larger partners within Victoria.”

Nyssen has been with Sophos in Melbourne for almost three years now as its channel development manager. Prior to that, he worked the channel for the vendor in the UK for two years before deciding with his wife to return to his home town.

There are some differences between working the UK and Australian channels, but Nyssen said the transition has been a comfortable one.

“Our channel here is younger than that of the UK, but our partners are as well trained and have access to all the same materials as any other partner worldwide,” he said. “Even though we have a younger channel in terms of years working with Sophos, they are certainly as advanced in their abilities to sell, maintain and support their customers.”

Nyssen’s focus has been firmly on building relationships with channel partners and bringing in fresh blood.

“We work directly with our channel partners and don’t use distribution, so it’s been key to cement some good relationships with partners and to educate those partners on our products, training and look for other ways to differentiate ourselves from our competitors,” he said.