Career Path of a Partner Manager at Dell Technologies
Matthew's career path took an unexpected turn from a criminology degree to roles in social work, where "working with people, working with leadership, really setting goals, targets and developing communication skills" proved valuable. A return to sales at Dell led to rapid advancement, including sales coaching and ultimately a leadership position managing a $300 million territory, showcasing a successful transition and impressive career trajectory.
Sales, Leadership, Career Pivoting, Communication Skills, Professional Development
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Matthew Ferguson
Partner Manager
Dell Technologies
Loughborough University, 2008
N/A
Criminal Justice
Technology
Business Strategy
Took Out Loans, First Generation College Student
Video Highlights
1. From a criminology degree to a career at Dell: Matthew's career path highlights the value of transferable skills and adapting to unexpected circumstances.
2. Rapid career progression in sales at Dell: Matthew's journey from entry-level sales to a leadership role demonstrates the potential for growth within a large company.
3. The importance of leadership and relationship building: Matthew's experience in managing a team and growing a large book of business emphasizes the significance of these skills in sales and management roles.
Transcript
Could you walk me through your career path, starting with your experiences in college? Did you have any internships or jobs before your current role?
I went to university in England and got my degree in criminology. Unfortunately, I then moved to a country where I'm not able to work with any type of law enforcement or with the government.
So I started working with criminal justice, then working with people with mental health issues, steadily working through criminal justice and then into mental health specialty. That role gave me a lot of good experience working with people, working with leadership, really setting goals and targets, and developing my communication skills.
From there, I hit a bit of a glass ceiling in terms of progression in that field. So at that point, I moved back over to where I first started working at 14, which was back in sales. I moved over to Dell and started working on a queue team, taking inbound calls, putting together quotes, working with customers, and building relationships.
That helped me get back into the swing of doing the sales motions and really starting to develop a book of business. From there, I was able to progress quite rapidly through the sales levels, from level one to level two, level three, and level four.
From there, I was able to jump into the sales coach role, which was basically training the division on how to do sales effectively. That also went very well. I worked with a business development manager to train them how to do sales and develop the business.
From there, that really got me my leadership role, which is what I'm going to talk about today. Moving into leadership, I had a team of 12 reps, each with their own individual territory and book of business in the Northeast. Grando is about $300 million in business that we oversaw.
My job was tasked with growing that book of business, developing relationships, converting more of the business to Dell, and on the leadership standpoint, building out programs and new ways to run the organization and grow it more systematically at scale. Both of those really went into the sales role.
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