an applications engineer supporting the sales function. In 2007, I joined major German engineering company Siemens, and in 2011 I became responsible for the business development of a particular product in the same company. Today I am in the business-to-business original equipment manufacturer (OEM) sector.
MY SALES LEARNING JOURNEY ANDREW MATTHEWS describes his path to an ISM Diploma and Master’s degree in sales I have worked in a sales environment for 13 years now. Why am I telling you that? Because my background is of a technical nature, not in sales. ENGINEERING AND SALES I gained a HNC in electrical and electronic engineering in 1992 and travelled the world commissioning industrial control systems – until 2005 when I decided I’d done enough travelling. At that time I left the job that had provided so much pleasure travelling to places such as Norway, Bahrain and Vietnam, and which had allowed me to sample different cultures, and I moved on to a well-known Japanese company as 16 WINNING EDGE
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ANDREW MATTHEWS is an OEM account development manager for engineering company Siemens. He is a Fellow of the ISM and an ISM Mentor.
CHALLENGING ROLE As OEM account development manager, I operate at the core of UK manufacturing. This challenging position requires me to understand the business of the OEM and the issues they face. My aim is to use my technical background in a sales environment to help OEM customers reduce their design time, development and machine build costs, while producing world-class machines through innovation. In a tough global market, developing an innovative solution with an OEM, providing them with a competitive advantage, is paramount. Embracing the digital world has provided new challenges. In an increasingly competitive environment, customers need to find new ways to optimise asset value and performance. Digitisation can leverage data to increase availability of assets, optimise maintenance intervals and improve performance. Translating this for an OEM, creating value and insight, has raised new discussion points, moving the sales conversation from the traditional format. These are exciting times... SALES PERSPECTIVES Working within such large organisations with a global presence provided me with a view of so many salesmen and women, some of them having a lifetime of experience. It allowed me to observe a broad range of techniques and different styles of selling, and to filter out the styles that I, or more importantly the customer, did not agree with... When I look back to my engineering career, the perception of salespeople was that they drove around in new cars, taking customers out on jollies and enjoying lavish lunches. How misguided I was. There is so much more to the position of salesperson than is often perceived. The qualities of politician, psychologist, diplomat and ambassador are among those that are rarely mentioned – enough to scare many job applicants off and have them running for the hills. But in everyday life we employ all of these skills – we just don’t think about them. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
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