Richard Thornton

Zusi Ltd is an independent third part supplier of Telephony, Connectivity, Mobile, IT Support Services and Energy, with partnership agreements to supply 3CX, BT Voice, Giacom, EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three.

The role as Business Development Manager was to identify and close new business opportunities across all products within the portfolio, maximising profit opportunities through client visits and commercial presentations.

Monthly GP Target - £15,000.

To date, this target has been incredibly difficult to achieve, as the role changed greatly from the role that was initially offered, as the small team of Business Development Managers were asked to fulfil the role of internal lead generation due to multiple changes in personnel in a very short space of time. I am more than happy to expand on this situation in any subsequent interview process.

Following a hugely successful period as Communication Specialist for Associated Telecom, during which I constantly exceeded sales targets, as well as securing several large ticket contracts, I was promoted to the role of Regional Sales Manager.

The main remit for this role was to mentor and develop the existing BDM team, but also to recruit and drive a new regional sales team in geographical areas that we previously lacked coverage across. As part of this project, I opened a new regional sales office in Leamington Spa, where a team of 8 sales staff operated from.

At my own request, in addition to managing a team gross profit target, I also retained a small gross profit target of my own, as I wanted to lead by example, and also retain the ability to visit customers, as building customer relationships is one of my principal strengths.

During this time, Associated Telecom were awarded Gamma Gold Status, something I was hugely instrumental in achieving.

Associated Telecom is an independent supplier of Telephony, Connectivity, Mobile and IT Services, partnering with Gamma, Pragma, NTA, BT Cloud Voice for Telephony Services.

For mobile, as Mainline's largest UK partner, Associated supplied EE, O2, Vodafone and Three, and multiple connectivity partners including Gamma, Talk Talk, Glide, City Fibre, ITS and Gigaclear.

I joined Associated Telecom at a very embryonic stage of the companies growth plans, but was a largely instrumental and influential in the companies rapid growth in the following 2 year period.

The role of Communications Specialist was to carry out client visits and deliver insightful commercial presentations and product demonstrations,

As Communication Specialist, it was key to be multi skilled across all product areas, in order to maximise gross profit opportunities with every customer. This involved attending regular training sessions in all areas of the product set.

Although there was an internal lead generation team, there was also the expectation to self generate opportunities through various platforms, such as outbound calling, social media and networking.

Total GP Target (August 2022-March 2023) - £81,000

Achieved vs Target - £113,224 - 139%

Midshire Telecom were a third party supplier of Fixed and Hosted Telephony, Connectivity, Mobile, IT Support Services and Energy, with partner agreements with Gamma, NEC, Samsung, Talk Talk Business, Glide, Akixi and Nimans.

The role of a Senior Account Manager was to closely manage and grow a pre-allocated base of business customers through proactive account management and a clear and effective customer contact strategy, to continually cross and upsell our full range of products. Additionally I would also attend new business appointments to secure new business customers, maximising the profit opportunity in each and every meeting.

I would also attend events, exhibitions and product demonstrations to represent the company to a very high, professional standard.

GP Target (2019) - £108.000

Achieved - £142,671 - 132%

GP Target (2018) - £108,000

Achieved - £178,241 - 165%

During this time I secured many high profile new customers, including Chelsea Harbour, Muscle Food, Link, East Lincolnshire Council, Age UK and Arbury Motor Group.

During my time with Midshire Telecom, I developed a strong understanding of the leasing market, and collaborated regularly with a number of leasing companies, including CF Corporate, Tower Leasing, Shire Leasing, BNP Paribas and Grenke.

In the final two years of my employment with Midshire Telecom, following the impact of the Covid virus, my remit was to manage and grow the entire base of mobile customers, which I did with great success. The mobile base comprised 1900 mobile connections, which were a mix of O2, EE and Vodafone business customers.

GP Target (March 2020 - July 2022) - £198,000

Achieved vs Target - £171,142 - 86%

* the above was achieved during the period of the Covid virus, where targets were adjusted, and also included furlough and a staged return to work where daily working hours were reduced to 20 hours per week.

Due to investment from a local property developer, who was looking to diversify into other industry sectors and invest in local aspiring business people, I had the opportunity to start up my own business,

The focus of the business was to provide mobile packages to consumers through employee benefits schemes or sport's club offers. We were able to secure a nationwide supermarket, UK wide vehicle dealership, several top level football clubs as well as one section of the British Armed forces.

Although ultimately, this venture wasn't the success we hoped it to be, I was a huge learning curve for myself, not only in terms of the mechanics of running a business, developing effective partnerships and managing business relationships but also in terms of my own personal development and growth as a business professional.

BT Local Business provided local organisations with fixed telephony services, connectivity and BT business mobile.

The role of a Senior Business Development Manager was to proactively manage the larger business account, and upsell new products and services into those customers, while maintaining strong relationships at all levels. I would attend customer visits and demonstrations, and represent the company at trade events.

During my time with BT, I secured their largest business mobile order with a prominent local care provider.

Following a period of sustained over achievement against gross profit and volume targets, I was promoted to the role of Sales Manager, which resulted in a higher gross profit target which I continued to over achieve against, whilst also managing, mentoring and developing a team of Business Development Manager, driving those team members to attain similar levels of sustained success.

Phonebox Communications Ltd was a third party supplier of business mobile phone packages and mobile hardware.

Also primarily being a strategic partner of Orange, there was the opportunity to supply other mobile packages where required. Latterly the business also supplied telematics solutions.

As a Business Development Manager, my role was to attend customer meetings, to identify the most appropriate solutions to meet their needs, achieved through intuitive questioning and appreciation of the customer's requirements.

I thrived in this role and exceeded monthly target consistently, which resulted in several personal awards and promotion.

The role of Telephone Account Manager was primarily desk based, managing a broad range of business customers, and a high level of professionalism and contact strategy was required. I managed a number of large financial institutions as well as high street stores and significant organisations.

I was very fortunate to attend multiple training sessions, which focussed on every aspect of the role, which included in-depth product training, sales skills, personal development and growth and I also completed a training course to train other sales personnel.

When collaborating with a colleague, I secured the largest ever individual order, totalling in excess of 1.2 million billed revenue, for international numbers, with a well established international call conferencing organisation.

In 2000 I was included in the Cable & Wireless Worldwide Winners Elite programme, which rewarded the highest achievers in each territory across the global business.

New business sales for a Cellnet sub dealer.

Completely self generating new business opportunities for mobile packages and hardware. Attending customer site to identify requirements and fulfil orders onsite if customer passed over the phone credit checking, as we would carry mobile hardware in our vehicle ready to connect.

As a result of my achievement in the telemarketing role, I was promoted to oversee and mentor the team of 6 other telemarketers, whilst also recruiting for additional team members.

Steel Burrill Jones Ltd provided employment law and health and safety consultancy to business customers.

As a telemarketer, the role was to contact business customers to generate appointments for the consultants and effectively manage their diaries.

Millward Brown Ltd (Kantar Group) is a leading global market research agency, working with some of the largest brand names in the world.

The role of a Presentation Services Assistant was to manipulate raw data provided from consumer surveys and provide the client service executives with meaningful presentations to present back to their clients.