Vicky Davenport thrives on rapid change. Beginning at Xerox, she quickly found her niche in sales. Tackling various leadership roles, she led seven sales teams specialising in the finance & professional services sector. Moving to Autodesk in 2015, she began as Manufacturing Sales Lead before transferring to lead EMEA Channel Sales. As the new Executive Vice President for EMEA, Davenport joins Graitec at a decisive moment. We sat down with Davenport to discuss her perspective on software sales, leadership strategy, and her vision for Graitec.
What drew you to Graitec?
Graitec was a business that I already had a strong relationship with while working at Autodesk. I like the software space because I’m interested in how digitization supports our Customers to become more productive and solve their problems. Obviously I am aware of the fantastic Autodesk portfolio and I’ve been impressed with how Graitec creates customer solutions that fill the gaps Graitec is a solution provider with a world wide presence and is investing and growing at an accelerated rate.
What is your perspective on sales strategy?
While there’s no one simple solution, listening to our customers is key. By understanding what their problems are, we are able to solve them. That’s what we should be doing. From an internal perspective, there should be a strong focus on productivity. In order to meet our customer’s needs we need to make sure the right people are collaborating with our customers throughout the customer lifecycle—whether that’s face to face or digitally.
What’s exciting about Graitec at the moment?
Graitec is growing very quickly. It was one of the first BIM software resellers to acquire in the US. It’s great to be part of a business that has high expectations, high growth potential, and high growth expectations. The acquisitions of different companies is fantastic and exciting, but it brings with it the challenge to bring us all under one umbrella by improving collaboration.
What is the future of Graitec from a sales perspective?
To move Graitec forward, we have to make sure that we hold the same vision as we move in the same direction. We have massive amounts of expertise, but we need to be consistent. How do we harness the expertise in different parts of the business in various regions to get the best for our customers and therefore the best for Graitec? Collaboration and communication. We’re all working towards growth, but by creating different cross-functional work groups focusing on various parts of the business, we use our resources in the best way. This also allows us to grow and transform different skills to our people when they take on new management roles for a project.
How does Graitec’s customer-centric mission resonate with your leadership approach?
I value leadership that focuses on group collaboration, developing our talent, and providing a customer-driven approach. Graitec is expert at filling the gaps between the generic provided by Autodesk and our Customers specific needs. Graitec is developing bespoke solutions to customer problems. It’s exciting to see how we can grow together.