Alexander swings into HP action

Imaging and Printing Group country manager is a golf fanatic

By Hamish Barwick, Auckland | Friday, 13 August 2010
“FMCG is a very fast-paced environment where you have to react quickly. The volumes are huge and the negotiations are tough. Although there is a different skill set required, the selling [in IT] is still needs based.”

He shifted to HP five years ago as a sales and marketing manager, and says going from a small New Zealand business to “the machine” - as he likes to call HP - was a lot easier because of his prior experience with the vendor’s printers.

“Once you’re in the Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) it’s quite an exciting place to be. I was the delegate to the vice president, so anything new that came along within IPG that needed to researched or developed was given to me.”

Alexander also spent three years in Australia as HP’s business development manager and retail photo business manager.

“Sydney was a great place to live and I miss it. My role was an Asia Pacific one so I travelled around Asia a lot developing the photo [division].”

As retail photo business manager, he helped secure retail photo kiosks in Kmart stores across ANZ.

“HP is either at number one or number two [in terms of sales] for most products we do, but in photo kiosks we were at number four. The software wasn’t there and print speeds and volumes weren’t there. It took us a good two years before we got things right.”

He also learnt about different Asian cultures and how to work within those cultures.

“Working across IPG has given me a thorough understanding of the printing needs of everyone, from consumers to large enterprises.”

His first strategy as country manager is to build the IPG team. He has hired five new staff and says the culture has changed to have more of a sales focus.

Three staff have been hired in the consumer team and two in the enterprise space. Alexander says this is designed to build up its strength and intellectual knowledge.

“We’re very good at selling boxes but we want to be a printing company, not a printer company.”

He also wants IPG to take a more focused approach to partners.

“We’re offering incentives such as office print specialisation which is specifically designed for partners. We want to understand what their pain points are and work through how we can grow together.

The New Zealand market is relatively small and the enterprise space for print is not that big. Being able to capture and allow partners that play in that space to have an offer that’s compelling.”

To interact with partners more closely, the IPG division will also be taking part in the Ingram Micro Showcase and Exeed’s series of roadshows.