Maintel gets Legg up on sales

Stuart Legg takes sales reins after joining through Proximity Communications acquisition in October

Avaya partner Maintel has appointed Stuart Legg as its new sales director, following the firm's recent acquisition of Proximity Communications.

Legg was previously in charge of sales and marketing at Proximity before the managed services provider was bought for a net-cash deal worth £9.6m in October.

The appointment comes as part of Proximity's integration into Maintel which is seeing its sales force move over to one Maintel team in January, headed by Legg. For the time being, Proximity will maintain its own brand.

Looking forward Legg said that a more cloud-based focus will be key to Maintel's growth strategy.

"We are seeing more opportunity around the cloud and hosted platforms. Rather than equipment on premise we are seeing a shift to cloud and hosted and that is going to form a large part of our strategy next year," he commented.

Legg also said he felt the acquisition of Proximity will give the firm a larger customer base with the new integrated portfolio which he hopes will create more opportunity for the company.

Prior to buying Proximity, Maintel also completed the acquisition of Datapoint in September. When asked if Maintel would be acquiring any more companies, Legg said: "We will get the businesses integrated first and then make decisions from there."

Legg also said he was confident that the firm's partnership with vendors including Avaya could help the firm push its revenues into the £50-60m region by the end of 2015.

For the year ending 31 December 2013, Proximity's profits before tax were £1.1m on sales which reached £12.4m.

Eddie Buxton, chief executive of Maintel, said: "Bringing Proximity into the fold marked a significant change in our market position, so that today Maintel has one of the largest, most comprehensive and highly skilled offerings in the market.

"Stuart's role, with the support of his team, is to ignite this compelling proposition with sales success as we target ambitious growth for 2015 and beyond," he added.