Meet the expert: Jakub Abramczyk, Polycom Eastern Europe Sales Director

[Sonal Bisht (Sonal Bisht)]

In this blog piece we talk to Jakub Abramczyk, Eastern Europe Sales Director, who tells us what the success is looking like in the region after completing first year at Polycom

How was your first year at Polycom?

My first year at Polycom’s Eastern European hub in Poland has been extremely busy but on the same note extremely well spent. I have seen all the efforts we put translate into positive results and in all honesty I wasn’t expecting such a quick turnaround for the business. This result is a team achievement by all means which was reinforced over the course of the last year with several new hires. We recently welcomed Helena Soukupova as Sales Manager for Czech Republic and Marta Gutowska as Sales Executive for Poland.

What were the main highlights of your first year?

In the previous year, we have done many notable things – we extended our partner network with specialised telephony and Microsoft partners for one, which has allowed us to achieve the double-digit growth in Eastern Europe.

In addition, we also launched a brand new Ambassador Programme for our reseller community. We designed this programme as a team to give the Account Managers in our channel community the opportunity to become Polycom specialists. We are now working closely with our reseller community to provide market knowledge, industry specific use-cases and technical updates so that they can be the Polycom brand ambassadors within their companies.

In addition, as Polycom is a company that truly appreciates your hard work, I am pleased to say that I was awarded the CEO Award for Sales Director of the Year in EMEA in 2015, in recognition for leading the team to significant growth in the Eastern European region. This once again goes to the teamwork as I wouldn’t have been able to achieve it without my strong team there to support me.

Did you make any significant changes?

When I joined Polycom, one of the key tasks allocated to me by Jens Brauer, DACH and Central Europe Area Sales Vice President, was to realign the regional business plan. It was an obvious decision to also think about key items such as removing unwanted admin by gaining full access to the central resources. We identified and implemented a few other similar ideas which the team brainstormed together during an offsite relationship building meeting. One other key thing that I introduced was encouraging the team to focus on short-term goals, for example quarterly individual objectives, and build these up to achieve the mid and long-term goals. This new way is helping the team remain focused on their individual contributions and at the same time achieve the best possible results for the business. Recently we closed major deals for some of our new solutions, such as Polycom® Media Suite and Polycom® RealPresence® Clariti™.

We have a renewed emphasis on the regional marketing within the region as well and have taken steps to reach out to more customers to help keep them informed as much as possible using new digital tools, such as local language webinars. I am aiming to continue this from here on and improve our tactics further for the business.

What is your opinion about the video collaboration market in Poland, the main Eastern European hub for Polycom?

According to a new report, the global unified communication market size is expected to reach USD 75.81 billion by 2020. The demand for UC solutions, including for audio, video and content collaboration, is at a record high and is evidently on the rise. We are also witnessing this growth in the Polish market. The market is growing and therefore we have made it our mission to reciprocate by launching innovative new solutions for customers in the region.

Which verticals do you target in Poland and the rest of the Eastern Europe?

Over the years, Polycom has built strong relationships with customers across civil and social service departments through to the oil and gas industry leaders in Poland. We are growing our business slowly in the rest of the region as well.

There is a rising demand for UC across vertical industries, whether it is financial, government or manufacturing. Polycom has extensive experience formulating the right UC solution for verticals and to name a few, we have recently worked with Instytutu Fizjologii in Poland for the audibly impaired and Auchan Poland to optimise business communications for the retail business.