Meet the Channel Expert: Vice President Americas Channel Sales Barb Huelskamp

[Shelby Whitzel (swhitzel)]

Q: What was your career path to Polycom?

Barb: I have held a diverse set of roles prior to joining Polycom. I participated in a work-program dating back to high school which led me into great opportunities with large companies such as Alberto-Culver and Polaroid. I held positions in administration, operations and accounting to learn all aspects of the business eventually leading me into marketing and sales. I moved from Chicago to Northern Virginia in 1994 and was offered a job with a Polycom reseller. I was the ninth employee and performed in a variety of roles with great leadership mentoring me into management. I loved proposal writing, customer demonstrations, and executive briefings, which ultimately led me to leap into field sales. I started on the federal sales team and while I “loved to fish,” I enjoyed “teaching others to fish” even more. With my tenure and success, I began to lead the federal sales team and expanded to East Coast and eventually the nationwide sales organization. My diverse background, great mentors, and desire to continue expanding my experiences led me to Polycom.

I have enjoyed a variety of positions and managers during my nine years at Polycom. I began as a strategic channel manager on our federal team to establish and grow a system integrator line of business. It was an exciting new focus that allowed me to leverage existing federal experience but learn quite a bit with Polycom management on establishing a new program. After a couple years, I was promoted to Director of Federal Channels and helped launched our very first Federal Certification Program. The success across several regions, partner communities and markets provided me with great experience leading up to a promotion to VP Channels, Americas in 2013.

Q: How is Polycom evolving to better serve and work with partners?

Barb: With the new global partner program as well as enhancements to other initiatives, Polycom has improved our enablement resources to help partners position Polycom and displace the competition. We’ve significantly increased the caliber of training and competency development curriculum through Polycom University and our channel SE organization. We also have to make it easier for partners to do business with us. We spent a lot of time last year improving processes, the partner portal, Polycom University and we are introducing new tools this year to improve this accomplishment. We are engaging partners in joint business planning that align with our priorities and their objectives to ensure we achieve growth in 2015.

Q: Give us one fun fact about you?

Barb: I’m a thrill seeker; my best Mother’s Day present was a weekend riding roller coaster and bungee jumping with my then 15-year old daughter. I will go skydiving someday soon!

Read the rest of our Q&A with Barb >>

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