Louis Stott

Early Bird

Lois Stott is up with the larks most mornings and so it was for breakfast at Heathrow we met her. Having already covered 100 miles and with many more to go before she finished for the day we asked Lois, a seven year veteran Area Sales Manager for Oak Telecom to profile her job.

“There are a number of roles I undertake on a day to day basis; I am an account manager for four distributors, Crane Telecommunications, Nimans , Frontrange and Mayflex, and am also responsible for third party applications sales via Toshiba, Aastra and Avaya SMBS. I guess you could say that here I act as a product manager to ensure we maximise the potential for our applications to fill gaps in vendors portfolios. My current focus with these vendors is very much on our CTI products, the SmartApplications series.

One of things I enjoy about my job is the way Oak is so flexible when it comes to sales opportunities. I feel very supported, and know, when having identified an opportunity for an application with a vendor partner, that Oak will act upon that opportunity.

Distributors on the other hand need a different approach from Oak. They need product expertise and support for their resellers. Distributors put me directly in touch with these resellers when they have identified an application for one of our products. Normally I would qualify the prospect over the phone and use this initial interest in our products to offer to visit the reseller and provide sales training. At this point I can widen the conversation and cover all the other products in our portfolio.

I want resellers to feel confident in contacting me when they have identified an immediate application, however large or small that opportunity may be. The more often I can get small resellers to think of Oak and keep contacting us via their

distributor the more opportunities there are for Oak to make sales. It's the way I like to develop business partners and Oak has remained successful as we provide this level of support for all channels.”

In her time at Oak Lois says she has seen many transitions. “I first started at Oak in a technical support role when we were purely a call logging company. I developed training packages for end users which gave me an insight in to how companies used our products. From there I took over a strategic account, ACC in London before becoming involved with our billing platform, accountaBILLity and latterly as Areas Sales Manager with my own accounts.

Challenges:

For such an early riser it was surprising to hear that Lois's biggest challenge was getting to appointments on time. The problem is that she eats up the miles (45,000 last year) and the roads are not getting any less congested. As a consequence her phone bill is huge but she is, she says, becoming more disciplined in planning her schedules.

The Market:

“In the last six months huge progress has been made in CTI sales. Oaks products are now SIP enabled and incorporate central reporting packages, call recording and CTI on an integrated platform. “This provides a great opportunity for our resellers to re-visit their customer base. Call recording is a huge opportunity right now and will become as commonplace as voicemail provided the price is right. Overall I see our product range as being ideal for resellers wishing to add value to their sales and functionality for their customers.”

Mini Bio

Lois lives in the Southampton area and previously worked in the travel industry selling high end holidays to visit private gardens around the world. Prior to joining Oak Telecom she has also worked for a charity in South Africa providing musical education in schools – she plays viola, sings and is constantly trying to beat her husband uphill mountain-biking!

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