A former Cellnet employee has swapped his distributor life to become a reseller.
Paulo Mpliokas joined Cellnet as its NSW state sales manager nearly two years ago but has left to work for Triforce Australia.
He decided to go because he had ‘worked in the distribution space for a number of years’ with Cellnet, and Ingram Micro before that, and wanted to move to either end of the channel; vendor or reseller.
He said after investigating a few vendor opportunities, he had the chance to join the reseller ranks and switched.
Speaking about what he won’t miss in his old job, Mpliokas said: “I honestly think that distribution has a fairly thankless task in the Australian channel. It’s hard work but I mostly enjoyed it.
“I guess I won’t miss the pressure from vendors to hit targets each quarter even in our current tougher economic conditions.
“It’s only been a couple of weeks for me so it’s a big change. It’s going to be fun and different, especially getting used to certain margins that I have to meet and expectations,” he added.
As Cellnet’s NSW state manager, Mpliokas had the task of re-establishing the IT sales operation in this region.
He moved the branch to a new location and hired a number of staff to start engaging with resellers locally.
Before he left, he took on a national sales role working with a few of Cellnet’s vendors to add value to its resellers, enabling them to generate demand for products and solutions with their end users. He was also doing some direct selling.
In his new role, Mpliokas will be selling to a group of enterprise and commercial end users.
“I have a bit of sales and technical training to complete initially also to get up to speed with some vendors and technologies that I’m a bit rusty on,” he said.
Triforce Australia focuses on server and storage sales and integration. It is a HP Premier Business Partner and works closely with other vendors in that space.
“For me personally, the main challenges will be switching from selling and partnering with resellers, to working with end user accounts and IT managers, CIO and the like,” said Mpliokas.
“That will be quite different to fulfilling demand for products in the channel and working with vendors to better address and enable the Australian IT channel. “
He said there won’t be any overlap between what Cellnet supplies and what the reseller does.
“Some integration services we do in-house here that Cellnet and others offer as part of being a distributor,” he said.
Talking about Cellnet, which has recently made changes to its vendor stable, Mpliokas said: “Cellnet will definitely turn its fortunes round.
“They have a great team of people there and have been through most of the hurt already.
“I think it’s just a matter of time before the market sees through the FUD and realise that distributors do a difficult job and accept that there will be bumps along the way.
“I think Cellnet will be around in some form or another, doing very well for itself for years to come,” he added.