Huthwaite International has appointed Nigel Owen as business director for IT. Owen joined Huthwaite International in 2005 as account manager and in 2007 was promoted to the role of business development consultant, project managing and delivering the full range of the company’s skills-based training programmes across all target sectors. Previously he worked for specialist leadership consultancy, Quaestus in running senior leadership development and executive coaching programmes.

In his new role, Owen will have specific responsibility for heading up the company’s new business activity across enterprise, application, communications, IT services and hardware organisations. At the same time, he is especially keen to drive the increased use of IT across all aspects of Huthwaite’s solutions.

“Huthwaite has a well-deserved reputation for being a ‘safe pair of hands’ when creating and implementing sales effectiveness solutions. The longevity of its client relationships is testament to the performance improvement it repeatedly delivers”, he says.

“At the same time however, the recent introduction of the Huthwaite Virtual Training Campus (VTC) shows we lead the field in maximising the use of IT in a way which best meets the needs of today’s hard-pressed and often dispersed workforce.” Added to it, “the newly launched Sales Toolbox provides practitioners with the software to help embed best practice and boost win rates”.

“As in other sectors, today’s IT industry faces a new set of sales challenges, in a tough economic climate in which professional procurement continues to assume a greater role within the buying function,” says ceo, Tony Hughes. “In response, Nigel’s broad sector experience will help IT businesses develop their capability in building value for their sales proposition and become revenue generating at every customer touchpoint and across all channels.

Owen, whose early career also included nine years in the Royal Marines, has an MA in Human Resource Management from the University of the West of England and is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management.