Darren Stallard9 Ayrfield Grove, Dublin 13, Ireland, +353 1 87 1200 769

Email: darrenstallard@gmail.com

Summary

I am a creative and strategic thinker with 18 years of experience within the IT industry.

Since August 2014, I have been the Storage Technical Champion for Digital Sales Europe. I provide technical leadership to our Digital Sales community. This begins with co-ordinating with European Marketing for the planning, adaptation and delivery of effective marketing campaigns for our Digital Sales clients across 16 European countries and follows through the entire opportunity process to solution design, configuration and delivery to clients.

I work with Brand Digital Sellers and Business Development representatives, training and advising them on the technical capabilities and positioning of our solution set and ensuring they have appropriate skills to support our campaigns, solutions and strategies. I work with our local teams, as well as technical teams and leaders, business leaders and other areas of the wider Storage business to lead our Digital Sales teams to the effective execution of our strategic vision.

Prior to that I have held various in roles between 1998 and 2014 in IBM supporting mobile and desktop systems for the consumer market and various internal Service Management roles as well as 8 years as a Storage and Server Technical Specialist at IBM Inside Sales.

Experience

IBM

Systems Hardware Solution Specialist at IBM Digital Business Group – July 2016 to Present

Responsible for technical skills among our Systems Hardware Digital Sales population at IBM Digital Business Group.

Initial technical and product training of newly hired Digital Development Representatives

Ongoing coaching of new and experienced DDRs on a sales opportunity by opportunity basis

Providing education on new product announcements and marketing campaigns for specific solution or to sell to particular industry segments

Digital Development Representative at IBM Digital Sales Europe – January to June 2016

Responsible for responding to inbound inquiries from prospective customers (video, phone, email and web), as well as, executing outbound calling/Digital campaigns to targeted prospects. Responsible for attaining key data to qualify the prospect and generating “sales ready” qualified leads for the IBM Systems HW sales team and Partners to close new business.

Storage Technical Champion at IBM Digital Sales Europe – August 2014 to December 2016

Providing technical leadership to the Digital Sales community through marketing and strategy, sales execution, technical enablement, pre-Sales technical advice, system configuration.

Planning, adaptation and delivery of marketing strategy and campaigns, working with IBM European Marketing

Providing technical and solution positioning education to new hire Sales Specialists Ongoing whiteboard, roundtable and presentation based technical enablement on new

product or strategic announcements and product changes One-to-one consultative planning and advice on an individual opportunity level with Brand

Digital Sellers and Business Partners working across 16 European countries Planning, configuration and solution assurance on technical solutions offered to our clients

Storage and Server Technical Specialist at IBM Inside Sales - May 2006 to August 2014

Primarily specializing in IBM System Storage, Networking and IBM Pure Systems. Secondary support on IBM Power Systems and System x server families. Responsible for education and coaching of sales population.

Providing pre-sales technical support to IBM Inside Sales Engaging with clients and field sales teams in planning of storage and server solutions to

meet specific client business requirements Creating configurations for order to meet client technical requirements Responsible for technical education on existing products for newly hired sales specialists at

IBM Inside Sales Responsible for ongoing technical development and education on new announcements and

releases for IBM Inside Sales community

Problem and Change Analyst, EMEA CSC - July 2003 to April 2006

Solely responsible for monitoring and improving the performance of resolver groups within IBM Service Management for Europe

Advising and training resolvers on more effective problem resolution Educating colleagues who have been assigned to assist in the same function Report to Customer Service Centre management and European Executives on performance

of Service Management resolver groups with regard to management and control of problem management tickets.

Team Assigned Subject Matter Expert, EMEA CSC - January 2003 to July 2003

SME for IBM Customer Service Centre providing technical advice, handling escalations from internal clients, identifying and passing complex issues to relevant resolver groups across Europe.

Assigned as an SME to a specific English language team in EMEA CSC Co-ordinated the incremental training of the Customer Support Representatives assigned to

my team. This involved improvement of knowledge where I saw that it was required and also training on new products and services

Acted as focal point for the SME group for liaising with management and other area of the business

Acted as a back-up SME for other, non-English language, teams

Second Level Support (Product Analyst) EMEA CSC - August 2001 to January 2003

Provided Second Level Technical Support to Customer Service Representatives in the IBM EMEA Customer Service Centre Helpdesk.

Advised on problem management tickets to all language agents and dealt with escalations on a variety of technical issues

Passed problems to relevant support groups when they could not be resolved by me or the Customer Support Representative

Diagnosed, managed and escalated critical problems for IBM’s customer service and support groups

Customer Service Representative - October 1998 to August 2001

Provided First Level Technical Support to IBM EMEA internal customers on various applications, networking, hardware and operating system issues. Provided First Level Technical Support on IBM Laptop and Desktop Computers providing Operating System and Hardware Support

Skills and Certifications

IBM Certification Exam Developer - Level III – July 2016 IBM Certified Specialist - Midrange Storage Sales V3 - 2016 IBM Certified Specialist - Enterprise Storage Sales V4 - 2015 IBM Certified Specialist - Midrange Storage Technical Support V4 - 2015 Software Defined Storage Top Gun - Top of Class - 2015 ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management –2014 IBM Certified Specialist - PureFlex Technical Support V1 - 2012 IBM Certified Specialist - System x Sales Fundamentals V7 - 2012 IBM Certified Specialist - PureFlex Systems Sales V1 - 2012

Education

Colaiste Dhulaigh College of Further Education – Theatre Studies Diploma - 1998 St Pauls College Raheny - Leaving Certificate in Irish Second Level - 1994

Interests

Creative writing Cinema Music writing, playing guitar, recording and live performance

References on request