Audiovisual hybrid company’s Paul Berry believes direct and indirect business can work alongside each other

To help it bridge the gap between its direct and indirect sales model, audiovisual (AV) hybrid Promethean Technologies Group has recruited the former director of VAR Compel to the newly created role of director of UK business.

During his nine years at Compel, Paul Berry was responsible for helping the reseller evolve from a hardware VAR into a solutions integrator.

Berry said: “I am working for the Group, and both the direct sales team and distribution business now report directly to me.”

Promethean Technologies Group’s UK operations consist of Promethean Ltd, which serves primarily the education and training market through a direct salesforce, and Promethean AV, the indirect side of the business.

Berry said: “Promethean’s direct and indirect operations have operated independently of each other, but Promethean was concerned its direct team was conflicting with its resellers. There is a place for both a direct approach and resellers at Promethean and my job is to get the two aspects working alongside each other.”

Berry added that because of his background at Compel, he knows how important resellers are to Promethean.

“They’ve got skills we don’t possess and vice versa,” he said. “My short-term goal is to understand the resellers’ businesses and find out how they want to work with us.”

Jack McGuigan, director of AV reseller, Independent Products, said: “We’ve dealt with Promethean for a number of years. We’d obviously rather they didn’t have a direct sales team, but it’s good to know that the new director of UK business comes from a reseller background.”

Roland Dreesden, managing director of AV integrator Reflex, said: “The direct sales team causes us a problem, but it is better than it used to be. Promethean employs education specialists in its direct sales team so perhaps we could benefit from their knowledge if we worked together.”