Current Mood:
Happy
Since I don’t have anything of any real interest I feel like writing about, I figured I would give you all a little update on how work is going. Albeit a bit boring, it is nonetheless a large part of my life. For the ease of your reading, I have divided up into three categories. First of all before I forget, Baris is gone. He is working in a summer camp – we knew this since before he started. His last day was Friday. He is still in Istanbul, but is no longer staying with us, nor is he coming to the company. I am hoping to see him this Friday.
The Company’s School of Business: I am slowly learning the many aspects of international sales, and it is no easy task. Communication problems with my colleagues, and Murat’s… I am not quite sure what, but he has a lack of it. I really haven’t received any kind of direction from him, and no one else really speaks English now that Baris is gone. So, for the most part I am learning things on my own.
In my trip through the UK last week I learned a tremendous amount. I was meeting with various managers and directors all of whom have tons of experience with compressors. In noting their questions and concerns (I attempted to answer a few as well), and listening to them talk about their local market; I managed to put together a plan in my mind about how to tackle the UK market. The thought of setting up a UK-wide distribution network makes me laugh. Who am I to do something like this? I have no qualifications for a task like this. That doesn’t bother me though. No one else here can do that, so why not give it a shot. In my mind it’s like a game, say Railroad Tychoon, only more in detail. We have to think about the overall market, look at what niches are under served, look at various localized markets, work with distributors to modify our product to make it more tailored to UK preferences (mainly energy efficiency concerns), consider various options, look at each distributors credit and weigh the risks, create pricing lists and schemes, and in general come up with a strategy for positioning ourselves in one of the most difficult Western European markets. So I ask again, who am I to be doing this? I am excited about the challenge, but am afraid of under performing, and ultimately letting myself down more than anything. Unlike in a computer game, there are many unseen factors, hidden information, and various other obstacles that cannot be seen. It is not possible to sit back and look at all the governing rules of this world as I do in a game. Thus there is no optimal strategy. It’s a lot of guestimation. I suppose in one year, we will see how successful I have been.
There other thing that has been quite educational for me here at the company was my meeting yesterday with a representative from the shipping company we are planning to use for our international sales. Alper (purchasing manager) and I met with her (she spoke English very well) and went over everything there is to know about shipping logistics. I could pass for knowing-what-I-am-talking-about if I had to. We covered various methods, political issues, export-import disparity between countries, critical density, taxes, customs, risks, strategic scheduling of shipments… the list goes on. It was actually very interesting, and I feel like I learned more in those few hours than I learned in any one week since I got here.
Of course, I know a thing or two about compressors now, but that is by far the least interesting. I have also been using my French reasonably often (some random guy from Algeria showed up today unannounced who didn’t speak English, so I took him around).
Reassignment of responsibility: Murat is a busy guy. Since it’s his family’s company, he is involved in every aspect of the business. Also, Murat is not the most effective person when it comes to communicating with people. He is not responding to emails promptly, he is forgetting things, he is sometimes ignoring people he doesn’t want to talk to. He is by far the most knowledgeable person in the company, but he doesn’t make that knowledge readily available to the rest of the staff because of a lack of documentation. To put it short, he’s not very well organized.
He therefore has been passing more and more of his workload to me. Remember the map I put up of how we divided up the world? It showed which contacts we would be responsible for following up on organized by country. Well Murat has been redrawing that map. It seems I am picking up Spain and Portugal now, and probably Southeast Asia as well. When I asked him about this he said take everything (except for the OEM customers). He says I am better at that kind of stuff. Good management decision I think. Until we start getting some contracts signed, I don’t have much to do except communicate back and fourth with potential distributors, and visit them. I don’t have any trips planned at the moment, but in the back of my mind, I will hopefully be going to Germany, Spain, Bangladesh and Egypt in the near future.
Greater comfort in my job: I am a lot more comfortable with my job than I was before. I was extremely stressed out about not having a good idea of what I should be doing and how to do it. Now I am gradually finding my place here. The others in the company seem to trust in me to be responsible and do my job well. They don’t seem to have much interest in watching over me like a manager. I feel that I can come and go when I please without repercussion. This is a very nice feeling. So easily being shown this kind of trust is tremendously motivating for me. I feel like this kind of situation is rare and that I should do my best to ensure that things stay this way. For example said I will not work Saturday anymore because there isn’t much point to it. I was met with no protest. The downside to this is that if I don’t perform, I am going to be in trouble. Kemal and Atila have high expectations for our international sales that I feel confident I can meet if the rest of the company is supportive. It will start slow the first year or so, then our international sales will climb rapidly if we support our distributors well. It’s like planting Pachysandra or poison ivy. You plant a few seeds (I know that no one plants poison ivy but I couldn’t think of another example) scattered about and slowly the first few plant break through the soil and mature. From there, the plants spread like wild fire and will eventually fill the available area. If your garden was a map of the world, that’s sort of how our international distribution network will grow as long as we stay price competitive.
In summary, it’s getting better all the time. I am learning a lot, gaining respect and trust, and gradually finding my place here. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but I will take what I can get.
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