Chris Neal Email and Phone Number

I lead a small team focusing on Presales within a larger Global Sales Enablement organisation. I provide strategy and direction for the enablement of our Sales Engineers, from technical boot camps to self study to skills training.My team and I created Veritas Presales Professional (VPP) -- a home-grown programme of soft skills training aimed at honing and sharpening SEs' Customer Engagement, Presentation, Demonstration and White-boarding skills to give our customers the better buying experience they desire. The programme has been wildly popular and from November 2015 to the end of 2016 we ran over twenty four-day training courses all over the globe, certifying over 300 SEs in the process. In addition to the course we create and foster a community of alumni and have a tiered certification system (see the Bronze, Silver, and Gold pins in my background photo). Other sales enablement professional outside Veritas who have seen a summary have called VPP "Groundbreaking"

A community of passionate volunteers working to advance understanding and knowledge of the Sales Enablement profession.

I joined a newly-formed Enablement team as the Subject Matter Expert for Presales in EMEA. As such I acted as the Enablement business partner for the Technical Sales organisation and built plans to help them achieve their revenue and certification goals. Was promoted to a global leadership role within eighteen months

Working with Product Management, Product Marketing, and my own subject matter experts, develop and deliver a comprehensive program of Sales Enablement training and tools to NetIQ's direct and indirect sales forces worldwide.Thought leader on Sales and Demonstration Methodology.

I led the conception and development of a brand new home-grown system of demonstrating Novell's products. As a result Novell's achieved much greater consistency of customer experience worldwide with demos that were aimed at moving the sale forward rather than just educating the customer on feature sets

Responsible for internal technical training at Novell, covering Europe, Middle East & Africa. Defined product training plans for pre-sales and Consulting, marshalled subject matter experts and other resources, handled all field communication, logistics and quality control.Created the "Utopia" Demo Enablement Project, which later became The Novell Utopia Demonstration System - a standardized system of product and solution demo images (VMware) used by all Field pre-sales engineers, and available also to Consulting, Product Management, and external Training Services.

My career with Novell started as a Systems Engineer, providing technical credibility to the sales process, giving presentations and demonstrations in customer meetings and tradeshows.After one year I was promoted to the position of Manager of the UK Systems Engineering team, and after another year was promoted again, this time to a Regional Management role, covering Systems Engineers in UK, Benelux, and Scandinavia.Then, in 2002, Was promoted to Director of Systems Engineering EMEA, where I drove plans and set standards for Sales Engineers' software and hardware equipment, and product technical training.