Fred van den Heuvel

Founder and Fractional Sales Director, Uphill Sales

Fred van den Heuvel is founder and Fractional Sales Director of Uphill Sales. He has worked in B2B IT sales in the Benelux for more than 20 years, with the emphasis on cybersecurity, data management, cloud and AI. Clients hire him as interim sales director, playing coach or business developer, usually for engagements of 3 to 9 months. He holds 5 Splunk accreditations from the commercial track and wrote the book “Claude for Sales Professionals”.

What I do

I work at the front line, not from the sidelines. That means I run the complex customer conversations myself and pull deals over the line myself. And while I’m doing it, I make your sales team better in practice.

Uphill Sales delivers 3 main services:

  • Sales support. Thinking with you and doing the work with you. I pick up accounts and opportunities myself and work next to your team rather than above it.
  • Training and coaching. MEDDIC, MEDDPICC and BANT, applied to your pipeline and your deals. No theory off a slide.
  • Business Development as a Service. Structural new business for companies that can’t or won’t hire a full-time sales manager.

Where I come from

I started at Ormas, in office automation. Then Impact, in data communications and networking, part of BSO. That’s where I got to know Eckart Wintzen, who taught me that an organisation that stays small works harder than an organisation that gets big.

Via a few detours I joined Libertel in 1998, the mobile operator that later became Vodafone. At ION-IP I worked in network and security infrastructure.

At CounterCraft I built the Benelux market. A Spanish cyber deception supplier with no name here, no customer base and no references. That’s the kind of work I’m best at: a proposition that’s technically sound but hasn’t landed commercially anywhere yet, and taking it to the first customers who sign.

Those 20 years are spread across networking, data management, cybersecurity, cloud and AI. That breadth is deliberate. A security deal is rarely only a security deal, and a customer who only wants to talk about the product ends up buying nothing.

 

What I’m good at

Closing complex enterprise deals
Long processes, multiple decision-makers, technical and legal review. Cycles run from 6 to 18 months, with 4 to 8 stakeholders.

Moving from product selling to the customer’s problem
Most tech companies sell features to people who have a problem. I help teams make that switch, with MEDDIC and MEDDPICC as the framework.

Playing coach
After a won deal or a difficult conversation I explain to the team straight away why it worked. That works better than a training day after which everyone slips back into their old habits anyway.

Security-led and value selling
Explaining value in the customer’s language, not the supplier’s.

What a 6-month engagement looks like

Weeks 1 to 4: foundation

I analyse the existing forecast and speak to team members individually. I work out where the friction sits: qualification, the value conversation, decision-making at the customer, or price. At the same time I pick up 2 to 4 live opportunities myself and go to the customer. I’m there to sell, not to observe. By the end of week 4 there’s a proposition and pricing logic that sales, marketing and finance have all tested.

Weeks 5 to 12: proof

I define 10 to 15 key accounts and keep a friction log that I feed back to the team every week. I run the complex conversations myself and afterwards explain why an approach worked. MEDDIC or MEDDPICC goes on the live deals, not on a practice case. I record 3 references with the story and the numbers, so the team can use them.

Weeks 13 to 24: converting and handing over

The first deals close. From week 16 I reverse the roles: the account manager runs the conversation and I sit alongside. After that I’m no longer in the room. Go/no-go reviews run on numbers from the pipeline, not on gut feeling.

What the team looks like in week 24

The team qualifies at the front of the process itself and lets hopeless deals go earlier. It runs the value conversation without me in the room. The forecast is predictable because everyone uses the same definition of an opportunity. My leaving changes nothing in the pipeline.

What I deliberately don’t do

I don’t promise signed deals in the first quarter. If they’re there, that’s a bonus, but the cycle in enterprise IT is 6 to 18 months with 4 to 8 stakeholders.

I don’t sell to customers whose proposition isn’t technically ready. I don’t set up a large marketing campaign: wrong phase, wrong priority. And I don’t close deals the organisation can’t deliver on.

Accreditations and publications

5 Splunk accreditations from the commercial track:

Proofpoint Certification:

 

All badges are on my Credly profile.

Author of Claude for Sales Professionals, on how sales professionals put AI to work in their daily job.

More than 10 Dutch-language articles about sales in the IT sector on this site.

Availability

I’m based in the Netherlands and cover the Benelux. Part-time or full-time, by arrangement. Depending on current engagements, available at short notice.

Looking for someone for a specific assignment? Call or email me directly.