AF ELS 18C Pre-Reading

Sam Seto, Commercial Sales

Management Team I don’t have line of sight to that but they’re acting more like a high-tech company. There’s a sense of urgency, almost borderline panic. Which is good, don’t get me wrong … as long as everybody gets it. Commercial Customers In the commercial space, we’ve got the early adopters, techies who love technology and don’t care how friendly it is. With a new product release, they’re the first in line. Unfortunately they’re a small share of the commercial market. Marketing Department We’re turning it around. We’ve got the right structure to deal with the overall market, so I hope you’re not planning to touch that, know what I mean? Commercial Market They’re a bunch of users who are tech-dependent and love to have sexy products but they aren’t tech-savvy. They’re a tough sell for us. They value appearance, ease of use, the kind of stuff our competitors have but we don’t. We could learn from them. The Solution Make R&D more accountable to the rest of the business. Listening to us in Sales and Marketing is a good start. When R&D’s on board, Manufacturing will follow. What I’m saying is that it has to be a total team effort.

GlobalTech’s New Direction It was a great play to shift from a territory focus to a product focus. Kudos to Cathy for that. I can better understand and focus onmy segment this way. You know I’m in the commercial space? Okay I didn’t know what you knew. About 90% of the technology is the same. It’s the segment which is different. You get to know it and it’s way easier. Opportunity analysis is just one example. Cathy Lalonde In the last year, you can tell who’s in charge. She gets pressure from Johnson, she’s got new people in new roles and she stepped up. Cathy motivates, ask anybody on the team. Everybody’s working hard, engagement’s good and that’s not easy to get when the rest of the company is running around like a headless chicken. R&D Department The engineers in R&D, who develop new products and features, they work in a cocoon. Almost arrogant. They don’t have a clue that they’re missing the mark.

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