ISM Qualifications - A story

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

ANDREW MATTHEWS is an OEM account development manager for engineering company Siemens. He is a Fellow of the ISM and an ISM Mentor. 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.

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.

THE ISM DIPLOMA Learning the trade through following others and the techniques they use can be compared to learning to drive a car. You can pick up bad habits quite easily, but it’s not until you are taught by an instructor that these become apparent. I undertook the ISM Diploma in Sales Management because I wanted to become more professional. I wanted to learn more about myself, to draw comparisons between what I was doing and what I was being taught, and put what I learned into practice to achieve more success.

I recall some years back being thrown off guard by a confrontational customer and left thinking what his problem could be – and I took it personally. Through the ISM Diploma I’ve learned to ask why people behave in the way they do, and to meet the challenge of turning a negative situation into a positive one, and come out on top.

Today, in the B2B environment I work in, I not only take time to get to know the individual in front of me, but also to understand their business, its drivers, its issues and the hurdles it faces. I can start to build up an image of the business that helps me to understand the reactions of the person I’m talking to. I question whether the person is under pressure from legislative constraints, political uncertainty, marketforces or hidden issues that are not always considered; are they reacting to internal forces? Taking the time to understand your customers, and employing insight selling techniques in a B2B sale, can reveal avenues to explore where you can tailor a solution to your client’s requirements. This builds trust and fosters the relationship between you and your customer, so you become the trusted adviser they dearly want.

MOVING ON TO A MASTER’S Towards the end of my ISM Diploma I became aware of the Master’s degree in sales management offered by Portsmouth University. I had thoroughly enjoyed learning with the ISM and the thought of attaining the Master’s standard with a little more work was a definite draw. “A little more work” was not quite what it turned out to be and, if I’m honest, I was totally out of my depth at that point. But it was my choice to do something different, to put myself outside my comfort zone, and I was determined to strive to be a more professional individual, which meant putting in some effort. I found myself learning another language – one I’d never heard before – the language of academia. The way academics write, the terminology they use, the stringent rules on referencing, plagiarism and the ethical protocols one must employ before collecting any data for research, were all foreign to me. Not only was I undertaking a Master’s degree and a research project, but I also had to adhere to language, methods and rules I had never considered before.

My dissertation looked at the effect middle management has on the performance of a sales organisation. There are thousands of books written about sales methods, and how to increase sales performance, and they are all focused on the salesperson. My new language informed me that I needed to find a gap in the literature and so I decided to turn the tables and look at the hierarchy in an organisation. I ignored the subordinate and looked at the management structure, in “I undertook the particular the middle layer. I unearthed almost 100 papers, ISM Diploma because books, journals and articles, I wanted to become spanning a period from the 1960s to the present day, which more professional” were relevant to my research. My conclusions suggested that middle management in sales is seldom given the credit it deserves – but that’s a subject for another day.

PASSION FOR LEARNING The university advised that for those in full-time employment, limiting the amount of time they have available to study, then a good piece of work would probably be graded around 50%55%. My work was awarded 66% and the reason for this was that I became totally engrossed in my research. I had chosen a theme that had been the subject of some study by the academic community, but it had not been researched to death, leaving no gap to be found. I’d advise anyone undertaking a research project for their dissertation to choose a research subject that they are truly interested in. This sounds obvious, but you must ask yourself what literature exists already and whether you can add to the academic pool of knowledge on the subject. Crucially, will you still have the same passion for your subject halfway through your studies?

I trust I have provided some insight into my journey from ISM Diploma to Master’s with merit. I wanted to share my experience with fellow ISM members in the hope of enthusing others to undertake the path I took and enjoy the learning pleasure I got from the ISM Diploma. By combining my experience with my qualifications, and being an integral part of the organisation through ISM membership, I have now become an ISM Mentor. I welcome dialogue with anyone who is contemplating a career in sales, or is considering higher education and wants to know what it’s like to undertake a qualification while in full time employment. Feel free to contact me through the ISM.