hi Constantine thank you so much for attending the podcast show today it's such an honor to have you here so our first question for you is Constantine could you tell us about your experiences working at aigus how did you transition from technical sales to project management in robotic e-chains and eventually becoming an international sales manager yes thank you first of all for having me it's a pleasure to be here on this podcast I started as national sales guy in internal sales where I was handling the southern area of Germany with uh outside saes people and
you know IUS is a big company with 5,000 people worldwide and there are many different opportunities to grow and so after like three three and a half years um I was looking for a new challenge let's say it like that and after that discussion we decided to put me in what we call it the robotics division because the robotics division is a little different to as what people might think because we're handling seven exis of the robots and the cable guiding Management on the industrial robots and so I moved to the team of Matias Meyer
he's the head of this business unit and yeah after a couple of years because I was deal with every country in the world with our Specialists from that area and then we decided internally after growing and getting all the knowledge and visiting a lot of customers in Germany being on installations that it might be a cool idea to put me into International sales where we support the specialists in the country because in the robotics division at my second stage there is the development there is like exhibition planning there's the the sales numbers there's pricing everything
happens in there and for the international saes team where I am right now it's with the team of Patrick tysen he's my boss right now and there is really the deep focus on sales in the countries and especially for me then as a specialist for those robotic applications to solve all over the world with our colleagues fantastic thank you so much for sharing Constantine and the next question Aon would you like to ask yeah thank you Alina for going over the first question and for the second question uh as an international sales manager what are
some of the key challenges you face in managing sales operations across different regions you know when I first started in 2020 in the international sales team I was handling also the robotic applications but also what we call the linear applications for all the cable guiding Management systems and that would be on xs7 but there I had five countries to deal with so we were split it into different countries and I had India South Africa Italy Sweden France so many many different cultures and you think even when you have next door from Germany you have France
and the people you know you communicate and you have fun it's still a very very different topic of sales because the culture is just different and then you need to make international trainings for culture and behavior next week for example I'm going to India to visit our customers for some key projects over there and it's always good that you read and that you inform and that you ask your colleague what is the culture and what is there to think of because you know when you talk to your colleagues it's like a friendship that's what I'm
saying and then of course you speak more openly but always always at the customer you let's say you need to be in the position that you jump into the culture and try to behave as what they used to and not to I mean for me as a German saes guy to overwhel them and say like hey here I am and knock on the door and let's go and focus and start so yeah International or Intercultural training for all over the world that would be very good thank you yeah it's a very interesting Insight in how
the ch is of doing sales across different cultures and countries so now diving into the next question could you share some insights on the importance of adaptability and flexibility in a dynamic industry like manufacturing yeah well basically I would say it's more or less the same because for an industry or for a company in that specific industry the company needs to be very flexible and of course you and your personality needs to to be very flexible you need to be very open-minded the same as then your company and let's say the delivery process or information
structure of all the products that you have we need to be flexible so that's why also iess in nearly every country all over the world if it's China India USA Brazil Italy we have plans and they have also their stock to react on I mean I think it's very important to react fast nowadays and nothing is better than fast actions in Germany we as headquarter sold something to our German customers and then our customers ship it to their customers which might be in other places all over the world that the flexibility of reactions if I
don't know cables are uh not planned or need to be added into cable guiding chain and the shipment from Germany to the German customer so the supply chain needs to be very flexible and it's a very good thing that we can assure or that I could make the experience that works very very well yeah thank you for emphasizing the important of of flexibility in Dynamic industry so now moving on to the next question what are strategies or approaches have you found effective in building strong relationships with clients and expanding the customer Bas for your company
well I think every sales guy every person it is very different you know you and me we are also different and it's the same with the customers and the same with the colleagues in the country and so for me what I do I mean I'm a technical sales guy and I will present all the technical details and of course we need to figure out the way to present our product that they technically reliable but it's also very important for you as a person to be friendly to be open-minded and just try to be nice you
know maybe also go with them to to dinner and maybe do what is it called the extra mile this is what we also need to be flexible especially in the sales job and I need to say the colleagues all over the world they do a very very great job because for me it's not that I'm having the deepest contact to our customers it's like their pre-work to make the relationship and build it with the customer and then when I'm coming in there is already a relationship but we can just make it a little stronger because
we show that we care also International wise and not that every country is dealing their own things you know so that we are just one Global team this is what we need to focus on thank you for that interesting Insight once again so for the next question how do you stay updated with the latest trends and development in the automotive and Manufacturing Industries and and how does this knowledge impact your work that's actually very very good question because it's really hard because times are changing really fast and for us I guess we have many different
business units and we also do little robots all from polymer this is what our main focus is and what our knowledge is especially and so with our lubrication free products we are basically in every industry and every customer every day when they give us technical details we learn as well something and maybe need to develop different materials for bearings we also a specialist for bearings and if you have a high load and really high speed you need to have a polymer which is lubrication free but also lasting very very long you know it's basically the
maintenance free idea behind it and where I personally get a lot of information and future Trends is LinkedIn this is where I inform myself a lot I'm very active on LinkedIn you see a lot of future Trends and I'm connected to a lot of people all over the world which are not presenting their own applications but they are influence ideas from their customers or from different platforms where they have seen it and this is the inspiration and of course talk to people I mean nowadays people look on their phones a lot of times but still
we need to exchange face to face or like we do in in Virtual meetings and this is what we do also with our friends from other countries and so we get also new future Trends thank you for highlighting that importance of using LinkedIn and networking as a tools for expanding knowledge uh not only for career development but I guess industry knowledge it can uh be a very effective tool so now moving on to our last question as the manufactur in Industry continues to evolve what opportunities or Trends do you foresee in the sales and marketing
landscape maybe it's not the best expression but I'm saying people I I wouldn't say they they get lazy but they want to have Solutions and because the workload is getting more and more and more people want the solution out of one hand and not going to get to the solution every single step by step maybe an example I just created a Marketplace couple of years ago it's called rbx.com and first of all we tried to make some little robot arms with polymer gears and stuff and now it expanded we're presenting full Working Solutions so if
the customer is going on that platform and saying I need a robot with a payload of 3 kg and accuracy of whatsoever and s x is because of the flexibility ility they can click themselves through and then they will will get different solutions not only from migus we also get other manufacturers on there but we we're saying it's it's like a cool slogan it's like test before invest because with that much of what we are saying is we get your technical data we set it up we make a solution that we think it's the cheapest
solution that will work for you it's our lowcost automation division that's what we also call it and then you can provide a full workking solution with that so this is one of the ways that we can do and and handle all the future Trends in being fast and react fast and also I think online presentation is a really really big thing and one and a half years ago when I started on LinkedIn super not active I had an account but like you know really small and after a while it's like The Water Hole of the
engineers and to present your own product there and present customer use cases is also a very good opportunity for salese to meet you know because you have no borders anymore you have no scale you have no zip codes or whatever you just go all over the world and you can make relationships it's online relationships it's still for me when I'm saying that online relationship it's different but be present on platforms like that and of course making the website as easy as possible making online shops configurators we have like a full big range of configurators where
you can click yourself through put in your cables and all this stuff and then you click on done and then you get a data sheet with all the pictures so you have also not only the part numbers because part numbers you know it's in every system but nobody can work with with it and I would say that people are not that big or deeply interested in the part numbers but if you have a picture next to it make it visible that you can imagine what it is it's like food you know it's for your eyes
you know your eyes eat with you that's what we're saying in Germany I don't know the English expression actually but to make things visible for customers for people I think this is a a great way Tik Tok and all this stuff it's also different I don't know what kind of plat forms will come or how LinkedIn will extend their range or their opportunities in in different Tools in there so yeah I think online will go big and of course it's still good to be in the face Toof face meeting you know the good old fashioned
way maybe also pick up the phone sometimes and say like hey how are you doing and what are the new projects talk this is yeah I think this the the way where it will focus on thank you so much Constantine for for addressing how having a strong online presence as well as of course face tof face uh meetings is is ever so important in this uh growing world of sales and marketing so yeah that was the the last question we have today on this podcast we thank you so much for coming out and being so
gracious to share all your wonderful uh industry knowledge with us I think a lot of our viewers will be very thankful and hopefully gain some uh good insights from all the stuff you shared here today maybe I have one thing more to add because I was thinking because this is also a thing what I'm following not too deep but it's also a way that we're getting into with I this augmented and virtual reality maybe that you have what we're trying to do is to have real customer use cases to present in a virtual showroom you
know to give a little insight we have some other companies that work with us and we put put their application their machine for example a laser machine we put in there and then you can meet in China Germany Canada us and Brazil all in the same room and look at the same application to discover of course we have like huge massive cable guiding in there but you can really experience with the joysticks and grab some things and you can scale it and then you have View Vision of how things really look like so the customer
is profiting because we are presenting application and we're also profiting because we can show our products how they work this would be cool if it would be in the future like really really big word lots of people need that would be cool definitely I think if such an addition would be made more globalized I think that could definitely revolutionize a lot of different Industries and really change the way how you know investors are able to judge where to invest and we to not invest correct yeah so on behalf of aluminade and everyone I thank you
again for coming on the podcast thank you Constantine for your time
