Have you always held the role of a salesman?
No, having in fact grown up in the company it was impossible for me to look and not touch. So I secretly started using first the lathe, then the milling machine… I was also very curious about the assembly workers, I followed and imitated them in their daily activities. By the age of 12 I knew all the parts of the machines by heart and knew which ones they were to be mounted on.
When I finished high school, I started commercial work out of necessity. At that time there was no real sales person in the company.
So my father decided to offer me an experience in the United States to learn the language, which I obviously caught on! After my year there I returned with the specific purpose of opening the company to the American market. In 1996-1997, 25% of sales came from the United States.
Tell us more about your experience with the American market….
I was very young, and often customers, seeing a guy in his early 20s coming in, would start out prejudiced. But I did not demoralize myself; I had a good strategy in mind. First, I let my beard grow to set the tone and a few more years, and then I would not let them go!
I would meet them the first time, the second time, the third time, until I became a familiar face, they took confidence in me and realized that despite my young age I knew the industry well and was attentive to their needs. So I was able to sell the first machine, the customer was satisfied because it worked well, word began to spread, and we all know that a good word of mouth is worth a thousand words spoken by a salesman.
One of the greatest satisfactions for me was selling a machine to a large company that bought one machine from the industry leader and one from us-they became our loyal customers.
