Former Great Britain rower Sean Dixon has hung up his oars and is now pulling in sales alongside reseller partners at Henley-based service provider Fidelity Group.
At six feet four inches in height Scotsman Dixon has the perfect frame for a rower, but it's not just physical strength that gets you to the top in this highly competitive sport: There's mind games plus, of course, a teamwork ethic that he has replicated in his new telecoms career at Fidelity. Dixon joined the company in August 2014 as Sales Manager and wasted no time in building a like-minded sales team, a strategy that quickly paid off with a growing number of IT and mobile resellers benefiting from the resale of Fidelity's hosted voice solution and recurring revenue model. Dixon believes these achievements are due to his sporting background and a desire to win. And recognising these qualities as intrinsic to the sporting environment he has cleverly expanded the sales team with ex-professionals from rowing, golf and cricket.
Dixon's own sporting career began at school in Edinburgh. "Rowing was an extracurricular activity and I started for fun," he said. "My coach always taught me never to be satisfied with whatever level I occupied. I'm a highly competitive person and I always put myself in environments where I am challenged and out of my comfort zone. Working at Fidelity has filled the void left by rowing."
Dixon made his international debut for Great Britain at the tender age of 16. He won a silver medal at the World Championships two years later, an achievement that drew great interest from US universities. He was eventually awarded a full scholarship to row at Boston University where he read finance.
"Rowing in a US college team is highly competitive," Dixon recalled. "There's 50 guys training twice a day to be ranked in the first Eight, and all this while maintaining academic eligibility. During the winter we trained to improve techniques and strength, while keeping an eye on teammates for any chinks in their armour that could be exploited to move me up the rankings.
"But once selected for your crew the dynamics change. Rowers who were threats to my advancement could literally be in the same boat and you go from an individual looking to exploit weakness to one who wants to band together as one unit, working with combined strengths and covering individual shortcomings. There are many analogies between rowing and work, but the core of each is the same - a desire to win and doing so with your peers."
Dixon returned from America having contributed to a record year for Boston University winning all regular season 'duals' in the first Eight, except the last clash which he lost by 0.3 seconds over a six minute race. Naturally, Dixon wanted to carry on his rowing career in the UK and moved to Henley-on-Thames, home to the Royal Regatta as well as the most successful rowing facility in the world, the Leander Club.
Here, fired-up by ambition Dixon would row 30-40km on the water and rowing machine in the morning followed by a session throwing weights around, finishing training at 1pm. But rowing is an amateur sport and those not in the Olympic team have to fund themselves through part-time work, so Dixon docked at Fidelity Group in the afternoons to pay the bills. When his 2016 Brazil Olympic dream paled, Dixon hung up his oars and within six months had propelled himself to Sales Manager of the Top 10 Tech Track £7 million group, which also enjoys high status as a Gamma Platinum Partner and exclusive O2 JUC Partner.
"Sean has brought his success and hunger from rowing and applied it to his new role," commented Fidelity Managing Director Alan Shraga. "During his winter training he saw the productivity of the team diminish as individuals were focused on beating each other. Sean saw the same problems within the Fidelity sales team. They were focused on their own target rather than the company number and there was no motivation for peer collaboration. Sean changed the structure at Fidelity, aligning the targets with the team and company goals."
No longer stirring up the calm surface of an Olympic waterway Dixon is now focused on making bigger waves in the channel, and he has no regrets. "Since I hung up my oars I haven't looked back for one second," he added. "To compete at the Olympics for Great Britain is an honour, but I came to a crossroads where my work was suffering because of my rowing and vice versa - one had to go."