Gerald Smith

Background

About Gerald Smith

Since 2005 I've been providing technical and commercial sales support to our indirect sales teams, who bring BT’s data networking products and services to the SME marketplace. These include Direct Internet Access, SD-WAN, MPLS, VPLS, Ethernet, SHDS, DWDM and Security but also VoIP and Data Centre services. It's an ever changing role that enables me to contribute to the direction of the business and is a key to the support of our partners. I’ve helped the SME channel deliver its data target year on year. It is a highly fulfilling role that requires socio-technical abilities and deals with a wide variety of customers. I’ve adapted to the commercial side of the business by taking on financial devolved authority, shortening our response time to customers. I run technical workshops and surgeries for the sales community to ensure they are appropriately skilled and resourced. Post-sale, I also work alongside the project management teams to make sure that Managed Services are implemented successfully.While in BT Business, as part of a virtual account team, I provided technical support to the specialist community and developed solutions for customers. Highly team oriented, my role involved understanding technical and business requirements as well as the provision of bid and pricing information for the appropriate solutions. Key skills needed here were simply listening to and understanding the customers objectives. Upon joining BT in 1997 as a Systems Engineer, I worked as part of an account team in BT Major Business, providing technical consultation for the Content Retail line of business. This involved aligning customers needs to BT’s propositions. As an account based SE, I conducted technical audits for each account and produced technology roadmaps to facilitate direction setting. Also key was staying abreast of changes, both within my own industry and that of my customers, so as to maintain up to date knowledge and applicable skills in voice and data products.