Читать книгу How to Be More Successful Selling Capital Goods - Christian Korte - Страница 8

The Author

My decision to go into sales was made when I was 8 years old, the first time I got to accompany my father on a business trip. He was in the construction equipment business, selling large earth-moving equipment to landfills, gravel pits, construction companies and construction equipment rental companies throughout Germany. We travelled in his big business car and he was welcomed with open arms everywhere we went. In the evenings, we would meet with a client, sometimes also with their family, for dinner at a fancy restaurant and sleep in what I considered at the time to be lavish hotels. I admired my father and asked him how he was able to pay for everything. He told me that the company takes care of it. And just like that, my decision to become a salesman was final. Keep in mind, I was eight; the prospect of paid luxury was very tempting. Today, of course, I think a little differently.

In retrospect, my father probably resented that he had let me tag along, since I was now bombarding him with countless questions. How does one become a salesman? What would I still have to learn? Probably for him the most annoying question was: Did we get their business? I also asked questions like: Who are we selling to next? How many sales does he still need to hit this month? How can I help?

8-year-old me asked every possible question about sales. I also started going to the office on Saturdays and played with the machinery when there was nothing else to do or there were no copies to make for anyone.

Even despite my endless questioning, he took me along whenever school wasn’t in session and I learned a lot. Sales felt like my thing.

So, after the German Armed Forces and earning a degree in energy and automation technology, I started as a salesman. You’re probably wondering why I even chose this course of study as a prospective salesperson? My academic strengths were always math and physics. I needed to actually comprehend things fully and not just learn them by heart. This was my main reason for choosing electrical engineering. In addition, I firmly believe that getting a degree, regardless of the discipline, teaches you to acquire knowledge quickly. All the specialty subjects only help you with “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” or “Trivial Pursuit”. I wrote my thesis at Siemens and quickly realized that I never wanted to work as only a number with a thousand colleagues just on one floor. It may sound arrogant, but many of these colleagues had already mentally checked out and were already in the first round of “Peters Plateau“⁽²⁾. I will go into more detail about this later. For now, let’s move on to what would be my first challenge in my professional life.

I looked for a job, in sales of course, with an American company. They were already talking about continuous improvement in 1992 and working for an American company helped me sharpen my language skills in English. In addition, I learned what KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) are and that you can really measure anything if you are willing to really think about the “how”. Yes, Americans sometimes overdo it a bit measuring even sales per phone call, for example, and many metrics are collected even though no one can truly evaluate them strategically - but there is certainly a lot of helpful takeaways from this approach as well.

So I sold labeling systems to manufacturers for things like best before dates on food products and traveled throughout southern Germany, equipped with an aluminum suitcase including a demonstration unit.

My advantage, which I didn’t realize until later, was that our equipment was a little different from the others (Hotmelt instead of solvent-based paint). It was 40% more expensive, more fragile, and required at least 20 minutes preheating time before the demonstration could begin. So I learned very quickly to keep the potential customers happy with small talk. If I didn’t manage to do that, they were bored after said 20 minutes and you can imagine how the subsequent sales talk went. In a year’s time, I had mastered the art of creating suspense for the demonstration with good questions and targeted suggestions. Consequently, my closing rate shot up by 30%. These 20 minutes became an opportunity and not the nuisance all my colleagues found it to be. It’s a matter of mindset whether to perceive something as a negative or to turn it to an advantage. You will read more about this in the course of the book.

The good thing about American employers is that they reward success. This really does benefit everyone, right up to the company’s head. I doubled the budget of my predecessor, who had left due to age, and after one and a half years I became Sales Manager DACH of seven salespeople. For me it paid off to sit and talk to customers with an open mind and to share my learned insights with headquarters. Since no one in America at that time (1992) had ever heard of an EAN barcode, I quickly became a sort of product manager, too. I explained the European requirements to the Americans, since they had no idea what was expected of customers there.

Lucky for me I had an excellent boss. Bernd W. Evertz was a seasoned leader who always pushed me assertively yet fairly out of my comfort zone. Unbeknownst to him, he became my first mentor (not including my father). It was a good, reserved and reverent relationship. Over seven years I soaked up everything he told me, because to me, he was a very successful man.

A headhunter convinced me to take the next step and placed me with a small medium-sized company - J.A. Becker & Söhne - in a management role. I was responsible for marketing and sales in the area of hydraulic lifting platforms and compressors. This was my first international assignment. We sold mostly through dealers, but sometimes also directly to the automotive industry and municipalities, e.g., lifting platforms for trains and buses.

Luck was on my side and once again it paid off that when it comes to customers I talk less and listen more. After all, we have two ears and only one mouth! I was visiting the largest Swabian car manufacturer and an employee described a problem to me: A new small car had failed the famous “elk test” and the shitstorm in the press forced the manufacturer to install an ESP system in every car. However, this could not be tested in the existing assembly lines. So after completion, each car drove a course designed with extreme situations to test the system. This caused a lot of damages and it was also very employee-intensive, as many drivers were needed. Within six months, we had designed an ESP test bench. We knew that the software would be a big challenge for an automotive company. But I was able to use my contacts at Siemens, who took over this part for us. You can imagine that the sales figures went through the roof. This led to great success with all the car manufacturers. I’m not telling you this because I’m so awesome, but because it once again clearly shows that so-called “breakthrough initiatives” are present everywhere and with a positive attitude, open eyes and ears, you too can discover them. When it comes to implementing the solution, the most important thing is to get the right people excited about working on it and then pursuing it with commitment. The rest is having fun while distributing a product that is exclusively yours. This is called the “first mover advantage”, which is not to be underestimated. More about that later.

From the company that sold lifting platforms and compressors, I returned to the packaging industry and it is here I have remained loyal to this day. I personally think that positioning yourself is important. Later in the book, I explain what that means and how it can lead to lasting success. The start at OPTIMA filling and packaging machines, LLC was a bit bumpy, as my predecessor was not due to retire until a year later. In retrospect, I can only advise against such setups. The synergistic and constructive transition that the owner had hoped for did not take place. Again and again, the “seasoned hands” try to show that they are the big fish in the pond and that the newcomers have no idea about business. They want their departure to be felt and this leads to personal goals that no longer match those of the company. I pushed through and found my way. One day I found myself sitting in the office of a large coffee manufacturer in Holland. The buyer showed me a prototype of a new coffee machine and let me test my first single serve pad coffee. After just a few questions, it became clear that no one was able to build a machine that could make these new pods fast enough. There were production machines from Italy that made 100 pods per minute. We took the case and had paid a quote for a machine that made 1,000 pads per minute. Never do something like this without first splitting the costs with the customer!

In no time at all, we had built a machine for 500 pods per minute and then one for 1,000. But since the patent was not protected very well, all the coffee manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and collected 25 euros per pound of coffee instead of the usual 6 euros collected with vacuum packaging. We became the specialists in the field of individual coffee packaging and after a short time we were also selling machines for the plastic capsules. We went from 0 to more than 30 million euros in sales in this segment within three years. The crucial element was understanding the potential customer’s task and then putting together the right team that brought the solution. The enthusiasm of the new team and the passion for the idea and the new market allowed us to solve every problem that arose. Another attractive aspect was that all the pads were the same size, since they had to fit into the same coffee machine. In packaging machine manufacturing, it is quite rare for machines to be built more than twice, since all the packaging is different. This greatly increased our margin effect, which of course had a very positive effect on our overall profit.

During this time, we were looking for a good trainer for leadership and sales. After many pitches, we found Günther Baudenbacher⁽³⁾ out of Stuttgart. A wonderful person and coach who remains an important mentor to me to this day. His teachings can be rediscovered through many of today’s trainers and coaches. From Dirk Kreuter to Christian Bischoff to Boris Grundl, whom I particularly appreciate, I always find I come back to approaches that I first heard from Günther Baudenbacher 15 years ago. Later on, I will go into many of their findings and explain them in more detail. Another valuable mentor for me was the owner of the Optima company, Hans Bühler. A good man who always lives five years in the future. Many colleagues have difficulty understanding him because he never wants to discuss the now. He lives almost only in the future. He gave me a lot of freedom and demanded high goals. This freedom allowed me to make mistakes which I learned a lot from.

After nine successful years, I left the company as Managing Director of the Consumer Division with sales of around €90 million.

The next stop was the private equity company Oystar, which at that time had bought IWK packaging technology. I was managing director of six LLCS in the packaging machinery sector and responsible for business in the USA, Russia, and also a manufacturing company in India. The biggest challenge here was to bring together companies that had been in competition for years and weren’t exactly friendly with each other, but had to establish a joint sales organization together.

Following this, I moved to Belgium to assume the role of Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) and take over sales, marketing and service for the Danaher Group, Esko. After six exciting years as Vice President of Industry and as a board member for Bizerba SE & Co, where I was responsible for the business unit industry and marketing, I am now Chief Sales Officer for the food division at Syntegon Technology GmbH. Syntegon was formerly Bosch Packaging and was acquired by CVC Capital Partners in 2019. CVC Capital Partners is one of the ten largest private equity firms in the world.

I could tell a hundred more stories from that time and eventually I’ll do that in another book. To this day sales has a hold on me. That’s why I sit in the car with one of our salespeople as often as I can and travel with him. Both as a coach and to keep learning. I still enjoy being with customers or prospective customers and understanding their challenges. I have made all my major breakthroughs this way and continuously read almost everything there is to read about sales in German and English. Good training was always a welcome opportunity to constantly work on myself and put knowledge into action. Those who take action expect success, those who simply attempt can expect obstacles. I don’t remember who originally said that, but it has stuck with me all my life.

Summary

The principle “You can only manage what you can measure” is crucial. Find meaningful performance data indicators and measure yourself against them to give yourself the best chance at constant improvement.

Even small improvements, every day, eventually add up to big ones.

Turn alleged negative circumstances into positive circumstances for you and use them to give you an advantage.

Go through life with your eyes and ears open, in doing so you will find the emerging trends early enough to work out beneficial solutions for your customers.

Beware of “seasoned old timers” who want to prove that their unchanged methods still work today.

Those who take action expect success, those who simply attempt something expect obstacles that will eventually give them the justification to stop.

What are my top 3 takeaways from this chapter?

What are the changes I may have to make to my current approach?

What can I concretely implement in the next 6 weeks?

(2) The Peter Principle Laurence J. Peter ISBN 9780330025195

(3) Günther Baudenbacher Führungsakademie, www.baudenbacher.de