Darren Holdstock
Bromsgrove
Summary
With over 25 years of successful sales and sales management experience, this A+ senior sales individual is a natural new business hunter. They have honed their skills in managing large strategic accounts and are solutions sales trained. Comfortable operating at the board level, they always take a customer-centric, hands-on, profit-driven approach. A true team player, they consistently achieve high performance and have a proven track record of success. They are open to embracing new ways of working and consistently overachieve on all personal new business quotas. Additionally, they drive multiple teams to exceed expectations in retention and new logo business, while effectively managing large enterprise clients.
Overview
23
23
years of professional experience
Work History
Sales Director- West and Northern Europe
Cognite
UK
10.2023 - Current
- Company Overview: Cognite Cognite Software Ltd. is a global leader in investigative analytics software that empowers a variety of government and other organizations with actionable intelligence. A company of 1500 people and a 30yr heritage in the intelligence service. More recently launching Nexyte the AI and ML decision intelligence platform.
- First UK employee for cognite concentrating on launching Nexyte Decision Intelligence Software.
- Owning all engagement across Europe specifically targeting Law Enforcement Military, intelligence services.
- Responsible for Building the go-to-market Strategy for Europe
- Average deal value $3m-$6m
- Built Contact network from standing to start to >2000 contacts in Europe
- Was responsible for presenting to large audiences of senior Law enforcement, Military and Intelligence service.
- Was fully remote and self-sufficient presenting and demoing the software through to sign off on commercial terms.
- Signed 2 live POC’s with police forces in Holland first contracts in Europe for Nexyte.
- More than 9000 LinkedIn Contacts across most vertices
Sales Director- Financial Crime
Palantir
London
10.2022 - 07.2023
- Company Overview: Palantir Technologies is a public American company that specializes in big data analytics. Palantir are known for producing world-class software for data analytics and data-driven decision making. Market leaders in AI and Machine Learning software.
- Lead for anti-financial crime (AFC) selling into Major Financial Institutions including dealing at c-suite.
- Working with and owning the AFC relationship with large consultancy firms including Accenture, Deloitte and PWC
- Responsible for building and executing the go to Market plan.
- Launching new Foundry AFC platform use case to big 4 banks.
- Average contract Value £3-7m
- Confirmed first pilot with big 4 Bank.
- Pipeline >£30m from standing start
- More than 6500 LinkedIn contacts across most verticals
Sales Director – Head of Fraud
Form3
London
05.2022 - 10.2022
- Company Overview: Form3 are revolutionising the way payments work from Channel to payment Scheme. They have developed and enterprise-grade, managed, payments technology platform that integrates across multiple payment schemes, and connects into your payment system with ease. Form3 are also moving into using transactional data and third-party data sources to produce fraud scoring and alerts on payments.
- Head up the commercial side of the new App fraud solution, responsible for all aspects of the product launch from Proof of Concepts, pricing, go to market Strategy.
- Using Payment data and leading data sources to produce a risk score based on every faster payment transaction.
- Negotiating 3rd party data agreements
- Product Road Map
- Working closely with Product team on design of SaaS model and AI learning for producing fraud scoring
- Responsible for initiating Proof of concepts with major Institutions.
Development Director
Equiniti (EQ) KYCnet
London
12.2020 - 05.2022
- Company Overview: EQ are international specialists in technology led services into the regulated financial services with over 5000 employees. KYCnet is SaaS based enterprise workflow management platform for retail and financial services, Banking B2B customer on-boarding and due-diligence.
- Recruited as commercial lead at EQ KYCnet business unit Specialising in automation and SaaS delivery of Business onboarding as opposed to consumer KYC due diligence.
- Responsible for building strategic Go to market Plan for the business unit which has been in a state of flux for a period.
- Manage the recruitment and growth for the business unit , Lead forecasting and reporting for KYCnet business unit.
- Develop a strong pipeline and clear acquisition of new logo clients
- Closed a Seven Figure software contract with brand new Logo for Equiniti (Interpath formally KPMG), additional revenue of £400k already been generated post contract.
- First >£1m contract for the division and the first major new win for > 3yrs.
- Consult with other divisions within EQ to maximize account penetration. across the group.
- Expand relationships and awareness in the Market and leverage existing large network within identity and security (circa 5000 contacts in the identity and security space in LinkedIn)
- Present the company vision and strategy to the internal and external market.
- Turnaround the declining revenue due to miss management and Underinvestment.
- FY21 was the strongest performing year for the division ever and turned a loss into an EBIT of £1.4m of £5.6m revenue in FY20.
Country Director
Telesign Corp.
11.2019 - 05.2020
- Company Overview: TeleSign Corporation is a Communications Platform as a Service company specializing In multi factor authentication, risk analysis and fraud reduction using telecom data.
- Recruited as first person on the ground to build Telesigns UK&I business Unit
- 100% quota bearing due to Covid-19 pandemic.
- Showed massive versatility when change in focus from the initial role to a 100% quota bearing new business
- Created 15 new logo opportunities from no pipeline with a TCV > £30m
- 4 New logos were at contract negotiation stage
- Closed 2 new logos in first 5 months from scratch
- Sales coach for the junior members of the team
- I left this role by mutual consent due to the pandemic and investment for UK&I market being pulled.
Senior Sales Manager
HID Global
London
04.2017 - 05.2019
- Company Overview: HID Global is the trusted leader in products cyber security services and solutions related to the creation, management, and use of secure identities for millions of customers worldwide.
- Pipeline of £18.2m in 2019 and closed more than £3m in year revenue into the financial services sector
- Strong focus on closing new named accounts in the financial services sector selling HID’s full range of authentication and risk management solutions
- Responsible for maintaining and growing largest existing accounts whilst increasing customer satisfaction, successfully turned around relationship at risk accounts.
- Successfully grow relationships with key partners such as Temenos and BT resulting in significant new revenue.
- Created detailed business plan and executed targeting tier 2 Banks.
- Closed 2 New logos in 2018 with TCV of £6m
- Generated > £3m of recognised new business revenue in 2018.
Sales Director- National and Internal Sales
Experian Ltd
01.2010 - 01.2017
- Company Overview: Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 65 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score, and protect against identity theft
- Challenged to create new sales teams focused on up sell to existing clients with a large focus on new named clients.
- Grew from managing direct sales contributors to managing sales leaders within excess of 30 salespeople, this was only achieved by consistent overachievement resulting in budget to grow headcount.
- Hired, organised, coached, and managed large diverse portfolio of sales teams, implemented sales and marketing plan, incentive plan delivering on new business and retention budgets.
- Adopted an inspirational leadership style to promote a focus on growth – equipping the team with clear direction and focus to overachieve.
- Grew the NB team from no revenue fy10 to closing Fy16 with £19.8m revenue and a margin more than 60%.
- Full responsibility for P&L including building and advising finance teams on incentive plans
- Sales teams overachieved against all targets on new business and account retention.
- Technical IT software and service solution sales often involving multiple system integrations and multi-level sales relationships.
- Implemented the adoption of SPIN selling across the sales teams which resulted in significant upside on closing ratio. This is by ensuring sales teams concentrate on sweet spot sales and qualifying out at an early stage.
- Segmented client account base of >1000 accounts to maximize the account management exposure based on current/potential wallet share as opposed to just current spend. This resulted in an increase in retention rate of existing account base by >7% by concentrating finite resource on growth opportunity and high-risk accounts after carrying out detailed market segmentation.
- Responsible for Experian Strategic Law society relationship and sponsorship negotiation resulting in rev of £1m P.A into the legal profession.
Head of Public Sector
Experian Payments
01.2007 - 01.2010
- Responsible for new business and existing revenue, selling Experian’s market leading range of IT payments software into Central and local government including DWP, HMRC, CMEC/CSA housing associations and local authorities.
- Dealing with complex long-term sales cycles at board level often involving multiple third-party systems Integrators including HP, Fujitsu, Cap Gem, and Capita.
- Grew the public sector recurring annual software revenue by over 100% in 2 years.
- Responsible for creating several new reseller partners within local authorities including Capita, IBS open Systems and COA solutions.
- Responsible for agreeing Public Sector sales plan including marketing and targets.
- Overachieved against target every year.
- Numerous Large Value new business Wins across Public Sector, performance in FY10 more than 200%. Performance >100% in all years.
Senior Sales Consultant
CACI
01.2006 - 01.2007
Business Development Manager
Verizon
01.2005 - 01.2006
Business Development Manager
T-Mobile
01.2002 - 01.2005
Education
BSc (Hons) - Degree Business Systems
Birmingham City University
01.1997
Skills
- AI and Machine Learning
- Fraud/ Financial services
- SaaS
- Data Mgmt/Decisioning
- Cyber Security
- Identity management
- Access management
- Payments and Fraud
- Billing and Collections
- Telecoms
- Business Information
Vertical Sector Experience
Extensive experience in all major public and private sector verticals including Law Enforcement , Banking, Telecoms, Insurance, Financial Services, public sector and retail.
Timeline
Sales Director- West and Northern Europe
Cognite
10.2023 - Current
Sales Director- Financial Crime
Palantir
10.2022 - 07.2023
Sales Director – Head of Fraud
Form3
05.2022 - 10.2022
Development Director
Equiniti (EQ) KYCnet
12.2020 - 05.2022
Country Director
Telesign Corp.
11.2019 - 05.2020
Senior Sales Manager
HID Global
04.2017 - 05.2019
Sales Director- National and Internal Sales
Experian Ltd
01.2010 - 01.2017
Head of Public Sector
Experian Payments
01.2007 - 01.2010
Senior Sales Consultant
CACI
01.2006 - 01.2007
Business Development Manager
Verizon
01.2005 - 01.2006
Business Development Manager
T-Mobile
01.2002 - 01.2005
BSc (Hons) - Degree Business Systems
Birmingham City University
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