ANS profits from Calyx upheaval with new sales team
Mancunian VAR launches 10-man sales team with four former Calyx figures and plans to recruit six more graduates
ANS Group has bagged a sales team from Calyx Managed Services (MS) as the Mancunian VAR makes a £1m investment in a new mid-market sales force.
It has been an eventful few months for Calyx MS, with the firm changing ownership twice and new owner Redcentric making redundancies, CRN revealed last month.
Paul Sweeney, ANS chief executive (pictured), said the new recruits were not made redundant by Calyx MS, but a deal was made to take on the team two months ago, "when there was a lot of uncertainty about it [Calyx MS]".
"They saw an opportunity to join us, and they wanted to join another Manchester-based company," he said.
The team will be headed up by Robert Grimshaw, formerly a sales manager at Calyx MS, and last week three of his previous sales team moved over to join him at ANS.
"We interviewed the manager, and he said there was a sales team there, and we interviewed the team and got them on board," Sweeney said.
He added that along with the three former Calyx staff, Grimshaw's team will also feature six graduates who will start training at the company in September.
"With Rob [Grimshaw], the team [from Calyx MS], the six graduates he is taking on, the CRM system we are putting in for them all – all of it represents around a £1m investment in a new sales team within ANS," he said.
Sweeney said the new graduates will initially be put through a sales academy run by Grimshaw, and then will move to internal sales.
"They [the graduates] will be the future and growth of our business. Within two years they will be fully fledged sales guys out there and we will keep replacing them. As soon as those six graduate from the sales academy, we will take on another six," he said.
The new team will focus on the mid-market and will be separate to existing enterprise sales teams, he added.
Calyx MS did not provide CRN with a comment at the time of publication.