Redwood City Ð The revamping of NeXT's North American sales and marketing organization began last month as new Vice President Warren Weiss consolidated marketing functions and began new sales initiatives.
Product marketing, which had previously been separated from other marketing operations, will now report to Weiss. In the shift, Brett Bachman, formerly the director of product marketing, resigned and was replaced by codirectors Margaret Chan and Rick Jackson.
In July, the marketing department, which also includes corporate marketing under Ron Weissman and marketing communica- tions under Karen Steele, launched a new series of NEXTSTEP seminars with an event in New York. The road show will make stops in major cities throughout the country.
On the sales side, there were new initiatives involving both direct and indirect sales. Vice President of Direct Sales William Wesemann is creating a tele-sales department responsible for outbound selling in support of each of the four North American sales regions. The unit will target sales of less than $50,000.
Indirect sales will be boosted with a new four-member team focused on midsize system integrators, a market projected to provide ten percent of NeXT's revenue in 1994. Existing groups under David Wertheimer and Richard Marquez are responsible for OEM and VAR sales. The department also covers software distributors and resellers. District sales managers will continue to handle high-end integrators and VARs.
The two new sales units are designed to "get customer service out on the street," Weiss said.
Eventually, Weiss expects to hire heads of marketing and indirect sales to complement Wesemann as vice-president of direct sales. For now, Weiss is acting in those roles.