Samsung has crowned Graham Long as the UK veep of corporate and IT sales following a restructure of the division to help its push into B2B.

The Korean giant asked its internal sales team to reapply for their jobs, after "aligning the roles" to seven vertical markets. Whereas previously the sales force pushed either mobile PC, print or display kit, they will now promote all three.

Long confirmed a "small batch" of staff had left but insisted the "objective was not to reduce the numbers" and it will "increase the team threefold" to 15.

"This was purely about having the right people with the right skills in place to address the verticals we are going after. Unfortunately we lost a few people but we are recruiting heavily," he told The Register.

"We asked individuals to tell us which vertical they wanted to head up and they had to demonstrate a good knowledge of that vertical," he added.

The verticals structure covers retail, hospitality, central and local gov, health, education and finance. Each vertical sales manager will then hit these sectors in conjunction with a group of 12 partners including XMA, CC, Softcat and Misco.

Long said: "Historically we may have been successful at selling specific products into existing customers but not at cross-selling the rest of the portfolio to them."

He added that Samsung does not have the "capability or desire" to sell directly.

The need to carve out a greater swathe of the business market is made all the more strategic by the lacklustre spending in the B2B space. ®