This is the fifth episode of the “Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.” Every other week, the IEPS posts a new show with Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Julie Murphy from Sage Communications.
Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.
The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.
FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!
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Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!
On today’s show, Fred and Julie meet with Tony Celeste, President of Ingram Micro Public Sector. Tony makes his second appearance on the podcast. Listen to his first episode in 2021 here.
Find Tony on LinkedIn.
TONY’S TIP: “Credibility is earned. It’s not claimed. You build it by listening, learning, and leading , and showing up where customers make decisions, asking questions, and bringing real insights.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: I’m excited today. I’m with Julie Murphy from Sage Communications. Today we’re doing one of our very well received Marketing and Selling Effectiveness Podcast. Julie, our guest today, Tony Celeste with Ingram Micro, was on the show before. It was January, 2021. Believe it or not, it was episode 313. Julie and Tony, we’re approaching episode 800, and we’ve had about 15 million interactions with the show, and it was quite interesting.
Julie Murphy, it’s great to see you. What are your expectations for this show as we prepare to bring back Tony?
Julie Murphy: I’m really excited. Obviously, I was not involved in the first podcast interview of you, Tony, so I’m excited to be involved now. I’ve actually known Tony for many years. He’s been a sales leader in this space for a long time. I first met him when he was a sales leader at Brocade many years ago, and now he’s been at Ingram Micro for six years. I think, Tony, you’ve been someone who’s always embraced thought leadership in the different times that I’ve worked with you. I think this is going to be a great conversation, not only because you know how to navigate this marketplace, but you really also know all the players in it, and that can get very complicated. Welcome, Tony. We’re excited to have you.
Tony Celeste: Thank you, Fred. Thank you, Julie. It’s great to be here with the two of you.
Fred Diamond: We’re excited. For people who don’t know Tony, give us a little bit of an overview of Ingram Micro. Julie had alluded to you lead the public sector efforts, B2G, etc. Also hit on the relationship between primes, prime contractors, systems integrators, distributors, and customers, and where does Ingram Micro fit in that mix?
Tony Celeste: Ingram Micro is one of the world’s largest technology distributors and aggregators. I lead the US public sector business, where I serve as the president for Ingram Micro Public Sector. It’s the wholly owned subsidiary we created to focus on this market. We did so to provide greater agility for evolving compliance and mission requirements, and we found that this enables us to actually better serve the partners as well as the federal, state, and local government and education markets.
I think what’s really interesting about this space is the public sector’s complexity, the regulatory compliance, security, and mission-driven buying that they do. It’s really quite unique. In this ecosystem, you mentioned spending a little bit of time on the primes, the distributors, the customers. You have prime contractors, distributors, and customers who all play distinct and interconnected roles. The prime contractors are most often the direct interface with the government and the end customers. They’re really tasked with execution.
Distributors like Ingram Micro, we bring scale, breadth, compliance, infrastructure. We are the business enablers, ensuring that technology solutions are innovative, available, secure, and most of all, compliant today with regulations. We all hear about CMMC, the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or NISP, the National Industrial Security Program. My role is like that of a conductor, orchestrate the value chain, aligning vendor partners, resellers, and the government customers so that missions are accomplished securely and effectively.
Julie Murphy: I love that you gave the analogy of a conductor, because that role is critical and it’s a really complex environment. The other thing to think about is when you have so many different people involved, or entities involved, it’s really important to provide credibility. Where are you providing value? My next question for you is, where do you see thought leadership playing into this and providing value and credibility? How have you personally embraced thought leadership throughout your career?
Tony Celeste: That’s a really interesting question, Julie. Throughout my career, I’ve always believed that credibility is earned. It’s not claimed. You need to be constantly inquisitive and have a growth mindset. It’s not about what we know, but what we don’t know, and it’s the ability to recognize it. What I’ve found is what’s been most valuable in being successful is doing that, knowing what it is you don’t know, and then how to go find it out. In sales and marketing, you build value and credibility through insights, consistency, and by showing up where the customer is making decisions, and you show up there to do what? To ask questions and listen. I try to embrace the mindset of listening, learning, and leading.
I’ve also leaned into thought leadership and I’ve done so by participating in panels, writing about procurement shifts, hosting partner webinars, and for example, during times of uncertainty like continuing resolutions or new executive orders, I’ve used thought leadership to cut through the noise and provide clarity to our partners and the customers. We’ve done so by always focusing on the opportunities that those shifts create. The role that marketing plays here is that of amplification. It’s not just about brand awareness. It’s about positioning yourself in your organization as a trusted advisor. You can’t wait to build rapport in person anymore. Think back to the day you used to knock on a door, walk in an office. You could pick somebody’s photograph or get a hi, you build rapport. You have to build that rapport today online. When partners see you consistently bringing insights, market trends, and actionable advice or intelligence, it deepens the relationship and creates aligned interests. That’s what helps to drive sales.
Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. Customers, they can be much more discerning now where they really, what we found, and we talk about this a lot on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, is that customers don’t need you if you’re not providing real value for their specific challenge. I like the way that you talked about creating these insights and then finding ways to amplify them. Give us some on-the-ground actions that you’ve done, like how have you structured your teams or internal processes to ensure that marketing is enabling more effective selling, and maybe even vice versa. How are you making that at the ground happen and take place?
Tony Celeste: I think you even touched on it in your question. It starts with alignment. Too often sales and marketing run in parallel lanes. I’ve worked to create an integrated approach where marketing provides both air cover and enablement for sales. They’re out there, put it in military terms, softening the beaches. It begins with having a plan. It’s aligned around a common mission statement tied to your long-term vision. Then it’s all about executing on it. That means marketing builds awareness, demand generation, and thought leadership. Sales, we are bringing back the intelligence from the field and the interactions we have, and then we loop that feedback back into our messaging so we’re always speaking to real-world challenges. This requires a lot more upfront work than ever was involved in sales before. You really have to do your homework, you really have to do your preparation, and marketing plays a big role in it.
On my teams, we hold cross-functional planning sessions, sales, marketing, vendor management, all at the same table. We measure success not just by leads, but on pipeline quality, partner engagement, and ultimately the closed wins that we get together. Then when everyone’s aligned around shared goals and metrics, the synergy between sales and marketing becomes incredibly powerful.
Julie Murphy: Absolutely. You become part of one team. It’s great to hear that you’ve been ahead of the curve in even structuring your teams that way. I would love to hear an example, if you have one, of maybe a really big or complex win where marketing was able to directly contribute and help your sales team.
Tony Celeste: I’ll put it in these terms. One strong example was a campaign around the federal busy season. We knew year-end IT spending was under pressure because of budget constraints and policy changes. Instead of just pushing product or a specific solution, we developed a campaign of webinars and market insights and briefing materials to help the partner understand where the dollars would flow and how to align with agency priorities. We also leveraged our solutions, finance team, and our external partners to build as a service offerings and financial solutions, spreading the costs over time and allowing partners and customers to execute today with limited funds. How do you stretch those limited dollars further to get that mission done and accomplished? The awareness we built positioned us as a go-to distributor for guidance and not just for transactions.
As a result, several large resellers turned to us for support on some complex opportunities, specifically on the federal side, and then also on the education. That investment content directly led to multimillion dollar wins in both federal and the education space using that ability of as a service or to spread the cost to do more with less funds today, but get that solution implemented faster.
In prior roles, thinking back, we also built campaigns around open standards, digital transformation, modernization, whatever the priorities of the day were. These served all as disruptors to the status quo in IT acquisitions, unseating incumbents, and introducing innovative mission-enabling technology solutions across the government and across education markets. It reinforces the idea that smart content builds credibility and that credibility drives sales.
Fred Diamond: You used the word disruption. You were on the show before in the middle of the pandemic. We talked about how you can lead through that, what selling professionals should be doing to just have the right mindset, etc. We’re doing today’s interview in August of 2025. I’m just curious, give us some of your insights on how to be successful in professional sales during times of great change. This year has been nothing but change. We talked about this on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, Julie, before. Time of Doge and times of cutbacks. The government is rethinking a lot of ways of not really what its mission is, but how does it go about achieving its mission? Give us some of your insights. What are some of Tony Celeste’s insights on being successful during times at great change?
Tony Celeste: That’s a really interesting question, and I think I will first agree by saying we are in a time of unprecedented change, and maybe haven’t experienced so much change at such a rapid pace as we’ve seen right now. We are at a technology inflection point with AI, and relative to information, technology is going to completely reinvent the stack. We are in that period of tremendous change, new administration, new leadership in agencies, new compliance requirements, the AI disruption, supply chain pressures, and change creates uncertainty. But it also creates opportunity for those who can provide clarity. That’s the key. It’s a double-edged sword. That uncertainty creates opportunity, and we think about uncertainty in terms of opportunities. That’s number one. It’s a mindset shift.
We’ve seen and navigated administration changes before, shifting priorities and spending challenges and new technologies, but not on the scale that we’re seeing right now or at its pace, never all at once. My vision for dealing with this has been to stay informed, stay engaged, and then overcommunicate. We can’t be communicating enough. To coin a phrase from the Marines, “This is a time to improvise, adapt, and overcome.” My approach has been to avoid wait and see, and instead have a bias towards action, leaning into education and enablement. Instead of marketing as noise and saying the same thing, we’ve positioned our marketing around guidance.
This year, we launched targeted content for partners around AI adoption in the public sector, cybersecurity, supply chain risk management, and procurement reform. That’s not just marketing. It’s enabling sales conversations. The vision has been clear, it was to help partners navigate change by being their source of trusted, actionable intelligence. The success we’ve seen is not just in sales growth or revenue, but in stronger partnerships, deeper trust, and being invited earlier into the customer decision cycle. You’re there sooner, you’re there faster, you have the opportunity to really shape those opportunities and you’re increasing your win probability while you’re shortening those sales cycles.
Julie Murphy: I love that you set a bias toward action, and I can tell that you’ve always led that way. I would say, just based on what you just said, you also have a bias toward optimism. I mean, keep learning, identify where the opportunities are, who can you partner with next? I think that’s terrific. I think that’s great, especially in times like now where change is happening very quickly. You have to embrace it. A lot of people freeze, but you’ve got to embrace it and see how you’re going to push forward. That’s terrific.
I have a fun question for you, Tony. You had mentioned also a lot of companies are out there saying the same thing, and in addition, I would say there are a lot of marketing sales buzzwords out there that are really overused. I would love to hear which one you’d like to see retired.
Tony Celeste: Well, it’s not any one single word, but I’ll give you two phrases, and I use them often myself too. It’s hard to avoid them. IT modernization and digital transformation. They’ve been so overused they’ve lost their meaning. I find myself every time I use them explaining what I mean by them, so that people understand the context. Every company claims that every solution is tied to it, but customers are fatigued by the terms. They just, “Okay, what’s the difference?” What really matters is mission enablement and mission outcomes. Are we helping a federal agency protect against cyber threats? Are we helping a school system modernize learning? Are we enabling first responders with better tools? Those messages really don’t get to the heart of the mission. They sound good.
I’d like us to move away from jargon and focus on what truly matters, outcomes that advance the customer’s mission. That means preventing terrorism and protecting critical infrastructure, improving health outcomes for veterans and citizens, safeguarding our war fighters and first responders who put themselves in harm’s way, and delivering better educational outcomes for our children. Those are the missions that will resonate, versus saying, “Hey, we’re giving first responders better tools,” or, “We’re helping schools modernize or federal agencies protect against cyber threats.”
Fred Diamond: Actually, you mentioned in a previous question that Julie had asked about being proactive. One of the main trends that we’ve seen in professional selling is that customers don’t need you unless you’re providing value. I like the way you said that it’s not just IT modernization, more productivity, that doesn’t really work anymore. You need to understand specifically, what is that customer being challenged with today that you can bring solutions to them that they haven’t thought about, maybe by combining various technologies together to help them get to a place where they need to get to to achieve that mission. Improve the healthcare for the veterans, whatever it might be. That is where the professional sellers that are succeeding today, Tony and Julie, we see, they are being proactive. I like the way you talked about how you need to be working with marketing to figure out ways to get those messages to the right people at the right time so that it will accelerate sales.
I liked also the point you brought up about overcommunicating. It’s like a thin line where you can’t keep throwing stuff out there where people aren’t going to listen because they keep saying, “There’s another email about,” whatever it might be. But you need to stay at top of mind and showing them the value. Thanks for all your great insights today, Tony. I love this show because we’re talking about things that professional sales organizations need to be doing to be successful.
Tony, I’m going to ask you for your final action step. You’ve given us a lot of great ideas. I want to give you the opportunity to say something specific people can put into play. But Julie, do you have any thoughts that have emerged? I know you have tons of them, like I have, but anything you want to follow up with before we ask Tony for his final action step?
Julie Murphy: No, I’m excited to hear a final action step, because you’ve been in this business for so long, Tony, and you’ve done a great job of escalating yourself at each role that you go to. I know that you have great career advice. I’m with Fred, I love the overcommunication and the bias for action. I think it’s really already a great tip.
Tony Celeste: I will say one thing about overcommunicating. It’s two way, and if you’re doing it properly, you’re asking lots of questions, and asking lots of questions, people are always interested in talking. I think that’s a good way to transition into what my advice would be, and it’s pretty simple. Invest in learning and invest in relationships, and you do those hand in hand. How do we learn? By being inquisitive, asking lots of questions. It doesn’t mean you don’t go in prepared and do your homework, but you have to do that. That will help you to build long-lasting and meaningful, impactful relationships.
On the learning side, keep sharpening your understanding of the market, compliance, the customer’s priorities. Customers expect you to know their world as well as you know your own products. More planning, more upfront work is required than ever before. I think I’ve reiterated that multiple times to be effective in today’s public sector market. On the relationship side, build trust by showing up consistently, adding value, and listening more than you speak. Ask lots of questions. Your credibility as a sales or marketing leader comes not from what you sell, but from the problems you help solve. If you do those two things, continuous learning and relationship building, you’ll not only advance your career, you’ll become an indispensable asset to your customers and to your team.
Fred Diamond: That’s great insight. Actually, 30 years ago, what keeps you up at night was a valuable question. Well, it’s not anymore. The question now needs to be really focused on specific things. There’s no excuse for a selling professional who isn’t prepared, who doesn’t know what the mission is of a customer. You could find that many ways, what they’re dealing with, you got to be following the trades and even just typing into certain AI tools, we’ll find that out. Julie, any final thoughts before we wrap up here with Tony?
Julie Murphy: Tony, I also love the showing up consistently, which I think is important. Before we would talk about just making sure that you’re actively involved in these events, but you noted in the beginning of the podcast how important that online presence is, or online engagement and LinkedIn. I would say showing up consistently there is really important too. That’s great advice.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo