New roles at Gladstone create smoother process for customers

Changes at the top have seen former Regional Sales Manager, Andrew Marshall, promoted to Pre Sales Architect at Gladstone Software.

The brand new role will see Marshall take a three-pronged attack, creating a seamless link between customers, the entire sales team and Gladstone’s development team, whilst also managing the internal sales team and working on new business development.

Marshall will attend regular meetings with the development department to ensure product prototypes would work from a sales perspective and that the sales team are fully up to date when speaking to customers.

He said: “In an ever changing world we need to continually adapt to ensure our products and services align to the needs of our customers and partners.  What we sell is a lot more comprehensive than it used to be. A customer’s requirements can’t just be written down and handed to the development team.  When I first joined Gladstone our customers had one product, Plus 2 – our membership database. Now we offer 26 complementary products and solutions that all work together. And when you bring into the equation things like hosting, you’re not just talking to the head of leisure, but to IT and finance too.

“There are a lot more steps to ensure we can deliver what the customer has ordered and so we identified an opportunity to strengthen the alignment between development operations and front line sales.  This new development role is a way to provide an efficient interface between our customers, the sales team and development, enabling us to be more agile in building the best of breed products for our customers.  Ultimately this results in increased operational effectiveness, which in turn empowers our sales team to deliver world class relationship management to our customers.”

Gladstone’s Head of Commercial, Claire Rollins said: “Andrew has been a Gladstone employee for 12 years and so his knowledge of our business is in a class of its own. He identified a gap in where the company was going and this new position will fill that, ensuring a smooth journey from sales team to new product development for our customers.”

Replacing Andrew as Regional Sales Manager is Alex Callaby, who joins Gladstone from The Retention People where he was Head of Sales.

Callaby’s journey in leisure started in 2005, running his own part-time 5-a-side soccer leagues business, Azzuri Sports & Leisure, which rapidly expanded and was acquired at the end of 2009. Following this he moved into fitness software, working with Ez Facility and then TRP.

“I’ve worked closely with Gladstone as a TRP partner for the last three years, and as the UK’s leading supplier of software to the leisure industry, working with some of the biggest names in this sector, have long standing admiration for the company,” said Callaby. “People rarely leave Gladstone and so when Andrew moved internally and the South East region role became available I jumped at the chance to join them.”

Continuity is one of Gladstone’s biggest strengths, according to Callaby, but with energy and a fresh pair of eyes, he is hoping to bring some fresh perspective to the role. “Gladstone has a vast array of products and services, which gives me great scope as a salesperson, but it’s a massive challenge to get my product knowledge up to that of many of my customers! However, I’m looking forward to getting to know them all and helping to deliver some of their most important solutions.”

Callaby is a keen runner and his aim is to complete the Surrey Half Marathon in under two hours – his last attempt was two hours and three seconds.

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Editor’s notes:
Gladstone is the leading supplier of leisure management software in the UK and Ireland and has been the chosen partner of leisure trusts, local authority sports facilities, international health club chains, universities and independent operators for 35 years. Today more than 30,000 users and two million members benefit from Gladstone products across the globe, including 55 per cent of the UK’s public sector leisure market.

Gladstone offers a single, integrated solution to manage sales and marketing, membership management, bookings and resources, payments and finance, communications, point of sale, access control and security, and management information and reports, all in one place. www.gladstonesoftware.co.uk

For further information contact:
Abigail Harris at Big Fish Public Relations
Tel: 07738 331019
Email: abigail@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk