Gigamon provide analytics on, and visibility into, all traffic across their customers cloud, virtual and physical infrastructures. This improves network security, performance and monitoring.
Serving the world’s most demanding enterprises, Gigamon are trusted by over 4200 customers, including 83 of the Fortune 100.
Gigamon believe that collaboration empowers their success and that of their partners and customers.
‘Gigamonsters’ make a commitment to one another. To give and receive feedback in a timely manner and in the spirit in which it is intended.
The Challenge
Mark Coates joined Gigamon as the Vice President and GM, EMEA in April 2022.
US based, Gigamon was a sleeping giant in the European Technology sector. A name known to many in the industry, but not many could articulate what they do.
Mark is an exceptional sales leader. Renowned for delivering very significant, profitable growth against aggressive timescales. He attracts and hires some of the best people across multiple countries and drives an incredibly rewarding culture of accountability, coaching and mentoring. This enables people to reach their full potential and achieve the financial rewards that go with the highest level of performance.
The revenue goals for EMEA dictated a restructuring of the sales team and incremental headcount across the region.
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“In partnership, we recruited 28 Sales Executives in 11 countries in a little over a year”
“In 18 months, we hired 46 Sales Executives in 19 countries”Occasionally Mark may hire based on experience in selling specific software, or the knowledge of a specific customer, but this is rare.
He will generally hire people based on a successful sales track record, work-ethic, coachability and personality. Do they have a growth mindset? Are they a team player? Will they always do the right thing for the customer and the company?
Being referenceable and the quality of the candidate reference is crucial in the decision to hire. Giles has 25 years’ experience in building sales teams for high-growth technology companies. It is rare that Giles cannot take an independent reference. This is something that Mark values very highly.
Mark once again trusted Giles and the Alex Partners team to support Gigamon with their hiring plan. Identifying and securing people with the necessary attributes and values was fundamental to Mark and his leadership team being able to achieve their objectives. Not only from a sales perspective, but also in defining the Gigamon culture in EMEA.
The Value
Mark Jow is the brilliant Technology Lead and Evangelist for Gigamon in EMEA. None of the hires we have made, work directly for Mark. We spent some time with him as he shared his view on the quality and impact the recent salespeople introduced by Alex Partners, have had at Gigamon.
Mark explained “I think the first thing is the fact that they are challengers. They are practiced, efficient and effective at Challenger Sales strategies. They also challenge me to have my team step up and improve our skills, knowledge and materials, but they do so in a professional and courteous way. They are the type of people that will ask questions and make demands that are reasonable and rational but that the company may not be used to dealing with. Nevertheless, these are necessary customer focused requirements that help long term, to build trust. So, they are challenging the customer, the partner, and they’re also challenging the company to improve. But they are doing so in a collaborative way.”
“The people that have been hired in the sales organisation are approachable, collaborative, they share information, they’re transparent, they’re not frightened to engage, they’re not frightened to be persistent and can always back up the detail behind it.”
“They’re able to survive and thrive in a small company environment and take ownership and drive things forward themselves.”
He told us that they added immediate value to the business in terms resilience and creativity. “They are all confident in their ability, with an appetite to learn and be successful. Most have exceeded expectations in terms of time to revenue, having revitalised existing customer relationships, generated new customers and forged strong relationships with the distribution and partner ecosystem in their regions”.
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A Trusted Partnership
The relationship between Alex Partners and Gigamon is characterised by trust, transparency, and a shared commitment to achieving Gigamon’s strategic talent acquisition objectives. Mark and his team consider Giles to be part of the team. This level of integration and understanding sets the stage for continued success and growth.
JOB FUNCTIONS SPAN:
- Channel Sales Leader
- Regional Sales Director
- Head of Service Providers
- Senior Sales Director, Service Providers
- Senior Sales Director, Public Sector
The true value of the partnership is not just in the placements made but in the positive impact of the hires on Gigamon’s EMEA business outcomes.
Download the full case study here.
