Merlin5 · The Podcast Series
Welcome to the Merlin5 Podcast on digital sales
Episode 2
Conversations with people who have run global sales organisations from the inside, at IBM, HPE, Vodafone, Qlik, Alcatel, Apple and Microsoft, and now spend their time finding what is holding the number down. Unscripted. Built from real situations, anonymised.
Three reasons to listen
Operators, not commentators
Real situations, anonymised
No script, no sponsors
latest episode
Most of the buying decision is made before anyone calls you
Chris Thomas spent a decade as Global Head of Digital Sales at Vodafone Business, where he built the organisation from 25 people to 400 across six hubs and took it from a standing start to €500m. In this conversation he sets out what digital sales covers, why field teams were wrong about the deals it can close, and why every AI programme in a sales organisation turns out to be a data programme first.
SPEAKERS
Chris Thomas
Martin Hess
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Who this series is for
Which of these sounds like your sales organisation?
Every one of these is the same problem wearing different clothes. The way you cover customers has not changed at the rate their buying has. Each one also points at a specific thing digital sales is built to fix.
Chief Revenue Officers
Accounts nobody has called this year
One seller to forty accounts, a long tail that gets a renewal call and nothing else, and no realistic way to cover it with the team you have.
Marketing and demand generation
MQLs that never become pipeline
Marketing hits its number and sales says the leads are not ready. Most are not. They need qualifying, nurturing and working over weeks before they are worth a meeting, and nobody owns that stretch.
Chief Executives and CFOs
Field rates paid for desk work
Most of an expensive seller's week goes on research, admin, follow-up and CRM. You are paying a premium for hours that never reach a customer.
Revenue operations
AI tools bought, no payback yet
Two or three of them, none feeding the CRM, none talking to each other, all sitting on records nobody trusts at the pipeline review.
Transformation leaders
Your best sellers on transactional deals
Strategic accounts still absorb the renewals, the small orders and the repeat business, so the transformational work never gets the time it needs.
Private equity and portfolio boards
A plan that needs reach you have not got
The growth number is underwritten and the clock is running, but coverage cannot grow at the rate the investment case assumes.
The speakers
Two careers spent carrying the number
Merlin5 only employs people who have run sales organisations at scale. Both of these are practitioners, not board observers — they still deliver the work.
Host · Chairman, Merlin5
Martin Hess
Thirty years across IBM and HP. Ran HP's UK and Ireland business as Vice President and General Manager, leading sales across the full portfolio with more than 600 people and revenue targets above $2bn, then took on HP Enterprise Services across the UK, Ireland, the Middle East and Africa. Chief Executive of Telefónica Tech UK&I and later its Chairman, growing the business more than tenfold. Now chairs and advises private equity backed and founder-led companies, including Clientshare, Arc Systems and mywage, which he chaired through to a trade sale in 2025.
IBM
HPE
Telefónica Tech
Clientshare
$2bn P&L
10× Growth
Guest · Revenue Growth Officer, Merlin5
Chris Thomas
Thirty years in remote and inside selling. Global Head of Digital Sales at Vodafone Business for a decade, building the organisation from 25 people to 400 across six hubs and from nothing to €500m. Before that he built Qlik's centralised EMEA operation from zero to $50m in two years, ran demand generation and digital sales programmes for Apple, Microsoft, Xerox and Oracle at Harte Hanks, and led sales at Alcatel-Lucent and Cabletron, where he set up the European inside sales hub. Now Revenue Growth Officer at Merlin5, building and transforming the same capability for clients.
Vodafone
Qlik
Alcatel-Lucent
Cabletron
Harte Hanks
€500m
Build it, transform it, or scale it across markets
Merlin5 is a specialist digital sales transformation partner. Whether the capability is new or already exists, the same things decide whether it performs. The operating model, the customer data, the playbooks and the management rhythm underneath it.
The diagnostic reviews your model, customer data, pipeline process, CRM discipline, sales technology, team capability, playbooks and management rhythm, then shows leaders what to strengthen first and what it is worth. Every quarter you wait is another quarter of buying decisions made without you in the room.
