PETER KAFEGELLIS
Oakleigh,VIC
Summary
Results driven, committed and articulate Specialist Sales Executive with excellent communications skills and a high level of customer commitment, with a willingness to over-achieve. Extensive experience with over 20 years in the ICT (Information & Communications Technology) industry, selling datacentre infrastructure solutions. Multi-skilled with a technical background enabling the ability to communicate and engage at both the “C” level executive and technical levels within prospective clients. Fostering a good team spirit with a focus on achieving the best result, for both the organisation I work for and the customer.
Enterprise sales professional with strong experience in driving revenue growth and developing lasting client relationships. Skilled in consultative selling, strategic account management, and negotiation. Known for effective team collaboration, adaptability to changing market demands, and consistently achieving sales targets. Equipped with solution-oriented mindset and excellent communication abilities.
Overview
28
28
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Enterprise Account Executive
Lenovo
01.2022 - Current
- Key Role & Responsibilities: Employed as one of two Enterprise Account Executives in the Melbourne office, with a primary role to understand the outcomes of Lenovo’s Enterprise customer and create a partnership with our customers. Brought into the team based on a history in developing customer relationships to drive outcome driven sales, specifically in low yielding territories.
- Responsible for liaising with both “C” level executives and technical customers to communicate the business advantages of a Lenovo partnership to deliver outcome driven solutions in a rapidly changing digital world. Targeted to develop and grow the Education and Government territories within two States.
- Additional Responsibilities: Channel and partner development and partnership growth, Generation of customer trust in Lenovo and our capabilities and abilities, Sales of Lenovo Enterprise infrastructure solutions, Maintaining ongoing customer relationships and strategic account management to foster repeat business, Dealing with a diverse range of customers in both public and private sectors through enterprise to mid-market, Ability to execute against territory plan
- Achievements: Developed the territory from limited/no run-rate, to having a well-defined run-rate business within the first year. Took a low yielding territory and scaled to hit target in the second half of the first year within the role. $3M+ multi-year infrastructure and software virtualisation solution in a highly visible major mail/parcel distribution organisation. Opportunity closed in the first year and was won against a highly competitive landscape of incumbent vendors. $4M+ multi-year infrastructure solution in a major retail customer. Closed in the first few weeks of the second year. Took average deal size from ~$20,000 to greater than $120,000 averaged. More than doubled the number of opportunities in the customer database in any given quarter. Developed a partner eco-system by creating a pricing catalogue, allowing our Education partners to be more competitive, faster to market and drive their own business without dely. This has developed a run-rate business for the territory that is low touch and yielding more than 2.5x the close rate of previous business. Helped develop an in-bound focus for net new business and opportunities for Lenovo.
Enterprise Account Manager
Somerville
10.2019 - 12.2021
- Key Role & Responsibilities: Somerville is a highly respected national brand within the education community of Australia, providing services and support for predominately K-12 private schools and corporates. The role, Enterprise Account Manager, providing sales specialty and experience around Data Centre ICT technology and services to the current customer base. Connectivity, As-a-Services, Managed Services, Service Desk and Technical resource enhancement a focus. A responsibility to grow and scale existing customers through cross-sell and up-sell, while maintaining and enhancing the current relationship and partnership with the customer base. The role has an outlook to develop new corporate business for a Melbourne branch growing rapidly with no current ICT focussed sales people in office.
- Achievements: Developed over $1.5M of pipeline within the first 4 months. New logo within the first quarter in Medical vertical, new for Somerville.
Senior Business Development Manager
Communications Design & Management
11.2018 - 09.2019
- Key Role & Responsibilities: Senior Business Development Manager, providing experience around Data Centre ICT technology and services, with an outlook to develop new business for a Melbourne branch in a re-building phase and a current sales baseline near zero, working the current in accordance with start-up mentality. Responsibilities relate to developing new business around the Data Centre ICT infrastructures of organisations, helping them to digitally transform and modernise their IT applications and business offerings through end-to-end outcome driven solutions.
- Additional Responsibilities: Ability to execute against territory plan, Sales of Security, Networking, Compute, Storage and Hybrid Datacentre infrastructure, Strategic solution consulting, Vendor liaising, Mentoring resource for younger team members, Maintaining ongoing customer relationships to foster repeat business, Identifying and understanding customer requirements and outcomes, Generate New logo business
- Achievements: Developed over $6M worth of pipeline within the first 6 months. Developed vendor relationships during this period to a point of trust, providing for opportunity generation and account sharing. Winning preferred supplier status for government defence contractor, initial Security Networking infrastructure sale of $200k, with additional two phases of security infrastructure over the next 6 months.
Specialist Sales Executive – Storage, Data Protection & Archive
Dell Technologies
02.2011 - 07.2018
- Key Role & Responsibilities: Employed as the lead Sales Specialist in the Melbourne office, with a primary role to understand the outcomes of Dell Enterprise customers and provide end-to-end solutions to meet those business outcomes. Brought on as the first Storage Specialist in the newly formed Enterprise Solutions Group for Melbourne, to develop sales around storage based platforms (primary storage, secondary storage, data protection and archiving). Responsible for liaising with both “C” level executive and technical customers to communicate the business advantages of Dell Technologies in a rapidly growing digitally transforming world.
- Additional Responsibilities: Channel and partner development, Generation of customer trust in enterprise capability (Dell Enterprise recognition, as Dell not know for enterprise capability at the time), Sales of storage, backup and archiving infrastructure into enterprise accounts, Mentoring resource for younger team members, Strategic solution consulting, Maintaining ongoing customer relationships to foster repeat business, Identifying and understanding customer requirements and outcomes, Dealing with a diverse range of customers in both public and private sectors through enterprise to mid-market, Ability to execute against territory plan
- Achievements: Consistently hit and surpassed yearly sales targets within a dynamic organisation. Latest targets exceeding $12m annually, an approximate 300% growth in targets the first year the role started. 3 years of target overachievement, 100%+, 2 years of target overachievement, 120%+, 1 year of target overachievement, first year, 200%+. $1.2M infrastructure solution in a new major retail customer, realizing in excess of $15M+ spend over 7.5 years. The solution helped the corporation grow and scale from a revenue of under $1B to $5B annually, 500% growth. The solution reduced risk, downtime, cost and increasing profitability. $2.5M, infrastructure refresh for a major public transportation organisation, consisting of an end-to-end primary storage and data protection solution. Removing the incumbent existing major storage provider, increasing uptime and resiliency while reducing cost and complexity. $1.1M, national data protection (backup) solution for international Defence Engineering organisation. $2M, datacentre storage infrastructure for global mining organisation. $6.5M datacentre refresh for retail customer, HCI and storage infrastructure upgrade. Dell Enterprise Sales Gold Award 2017.
Commercial Sales Executive \ Avamar BDM – BURA
EMC² Corporation
02.2009 - 01.2011
- Key Role & Responsibilities: Specifically head hunted and recruited by EMC to facilitate a role in developing business around the EMC Avamar backup product. This role grew to include the development of the EMC channel partners as a Commercial Sales Executive, to educate, help and generate interest in backup and data protection solutions and infrastructure from EMC.
- Achievements: Achieved Presidents Club in the first year, 150% target achievement. My achievements at EMC include the facilitation of EMC backup and data management infrastructure into major enterprise customers, including: Global engineering firms, A major Telco organization, Retail businesses, Transport businesses.
Solutions Specialist
Data#3
02.2008 - 02.2009
- Key Role & Responsibilities: The role at Data#3 was as a Solutions Specialist to provide enterprise solutions to enterprise customers around storage, virtualization and backup. Primary focus as the lead storage specialist in the Melbourne office was around end user engagement, understanding customer requirements and outcomes, and providing enterprise solutions to this end. With responsibility to liaise at both the “C” level and technical level of the customer organisation and to communicate both the business and technical advantages of the solution and the value of the Data#3 partnership.
- Achievements: During my time at Data#3, I was involved with and lead a number of enterprise data management solutions provided into a number of enterprise customers. $1.5M+ DC infrastructure solutions into a Melbourne based University, which subsequently has grown into a multi-million dollar multiple datacentre solution.
Solutions Architect
Commander
08.2007 - 01.2008
- Key Role & Responsibilities: Employed with Commander as a Solutions Architect to provide technical pre-sales skills predominantly around storage. As the lead storage architect in the Melbourne office, my primary focus was to understand the business requirements and outcomes of prospective clients and then architect an appropriate range of products and solutions to solve their technical and business needs. It was also my role to liaise with, maintain, and grow the local vendor relationships, as aligned to Commander Storage practice.
- Achievements: In the 6 months at Commander, I was involved with and lead the technical architecture for a number of storage solutions that Commander won, these included: $1 million SAN storage solution into the Finance sector, $1.6 million mirrored DR solution into the Finance sector, $1 million backup infrastructure upgrade into Higher Education University, $600,000 VMware and storage infrastructure opportunity, $500,000 virtualisation and storage infrastructure solution.
Netsolutions Australia (Netsol) Pty Ltd
01.2004 - 01.2007
Systems Engineer
XSI Data Solutions
01.1998 - 01.2004
- Senior Consulting Engineer
- (2000-2001 Excellence Award)
Education
Associate Diploma of Engineering - Computer Systems
Chisholm Institute of Technology
Australia01.1999
Advanced Certificate in Electronics - Computer Service Technician
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Australia01.1993
Skills
- Consultative and Solution Sales
- Identifying and developing sales opportunities
- Influencing
- Negotiation
- Relationship Building
- Driving client response outcomes
- Driving and providing direction for both virtual and local teams
- Stakeholder Liaising
- Technical Liaising
- Writing responses for tenders and sales documents
- Maintaining and fostering customer relationships
- Solution presentation to groups and stakeholders
- Sales presentations
- Key account management
- Strong relationships
- Customer relationships
- CRM proficiency
- Value-based selling
- Solution selling
- Mentoring
- Sales strategies
- Account management
- Territory management
Certification
- Industry Based certification: Juniper Networks Certified Internet Associate, WX (JNCIA-WX) (2006), IBM Certified Deployment Professional – Tivoli Storage Manager v5.3 (2006), EMC SE CX Accreditation (2006), NetApp Accredited Storage Architect Professional (2007), Dell Compellent – Solutions Architect (Storage) (2011)
- Sales based industry accreditations: Certified - VERITAS Commercial Sales Specialist Program (2004), Certified - VERITAS Enterprise Sales Specialist Program (2004), Certified – Juniper Networks Sales Specialist (2006), Quantum Pre-Sales Certified (2007)
- VMware VCP certified, Dell Compellent Top Gun – Sales (2011), Dell Compellent Top Gun – Pre-Sales Specialist (2011), HPE Aruba Sales certified (2018), Fortinet NSE 1, 2 & 3 (2018)
Timeline
Enterprise Account Executive
Lenovo
01.2022 - Current
Enterprise Account Manager
Somerville
10.2019 - 12.2021
Senior Business Development Manager
Communications Design & Management
11.2018 - 09.2019
Specialist Sales Executive – Storage, Data Protection & Archive
Dell Technologies
02.2011 - 07.2018
Commercial Sales Executive \ Avamar BDM – BURA
EMC² Corporation
02.2009 - 01.2011
Solutions Specialist
Data#3
02.2008 - 02.2009
Solutions Architect
Commander
08.2007 - 01.2008
Netsolutions Australia (Netsol) Pty Ltd
01.2004 - 01.2007
Systems Engineer
XSI Data Solutions
01.1998 - 01.2004
Advanced Certificate in Electronics - Computer Service Technician
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Associate Diploma of Engineering - Computer Systems
Chisholm Institute of Technology