AMB Trade show in Stuttgart, Germany

This week (Tuesday-Saturday) I am attending the AMB trade show (http://www.amb-stuttgart.de) in Stuttgart, Germany. This is one of the major shows in Germany for the general metal working industry, from sawing to grinding and drilling up and down to Laser marking.

I am here with NWL Lasertechnology (http://www.nwl-laser.de) and we are exhibiting two of their great Laser marking systems.

Now, on Saturday, 10:30 am the show is getting closer to the end at 5 pm and overall it was a good and sucessful show.

I am including some picture impressions, maybe I’ll see you there, someday.

 

Salesforce.com Mobile versions

If you’re into Sales and need to have access to your customer and lead information on the road, Salesforce.com has solutions for that!

You might want to checkout their Salesforce Mobile Blog.

I was using their Blackberry version and I was totally satisfied, I loved using it. As I was switching to iPhone 3G recently I was downloading their client for it and I need to say, that it still lacks some functionality, but they promise to load it with functions in the next weeks (see here) – and I tend to believe them.

 

ACT! by Sage

As I’ve been switching over from Act! to Salesforce.com to use as my CRM system (and I absolutely recommend it) I now decided to deinstall Act! as it was just there on  my laptop computer, in case I needed to look up any older data.

Well, I need to say that I was switching from Act! as it just did not perform in the way I was expecting it – to use a friendly expression. The software itself and especially the support from Sage was rather … lacking.

Again I am remembered of why I was switching over to another solution as this peace of software now took forever to deinstall and still I need to do some manual steps …

So, for me personally, Act! ist not worth any money.

 

Commodities

After some time trying to sell Industrial cooling systems the old fashioned way – cold calls, visiting prospects etc. – I finally have to learn, that industrial commodities like these need to be sold in ab different way.

Thus, I’m gonna setup a Webshop for these products.

 

Do you XING?

I am member of XING – a platform for business professionals – for a while now and would like to recommend this great service to just everyone that is involved in business.

No matter if you’re employed in any position, if you run your own business or if you’re the big CEO of a multinational company, XING can help you getting in contact with other business professionals easily.

Even if you meet people with completely different occupations which do not seem to be related to your job at all, this can be a great experience and help open your mind.

See my profile on XING.

 

Next step in business development taken

I finally signed the contract with Deltatherm, which makes me their Sales representative for all of Germany.

Next step will be to find Sales representatives, that will work with me – if you are interested, please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Market introduction of new products

As I was responsible for a lot off foreign business activities in one of my former (business) lifes, my company might be the right partner for your company to push your products into the German market.

My main responsibility was the American market and as I have learned a lot about that market and the people in the USA I would love to cooperate with American companies, especially as I always have enjoyed the straight-forward can-do-attitude of Americans.

So, if you run a business somewhere outside Germany, maybe in the USA, let’s just talk, perhaps we can get something started! If you run a German company that wants to introduce new products to the market or if you need contacts to the USA, you’re also more than welcome to talk to me (switching to German: Natürlich auch sehr gerne auf Deutsch!).

Feel free to contact me directly.

 

Whatever it takes …

Whatever it takes – have you ever heard this statement in Sales before?

Well, this of course could have a bad taste, when thinking about strange theories like ‘hard selling’ and more, but what I have learned over the years and again in the last days is, if you really do ‘what ever it takes’ to satisfy your customers, you’ll gain a winning attitude.

… and be sucessful …

Think about it, it works.

What do you do to satisfy your customers? Any success stories to share to help all the other Sales guys out there?

 

Geocaching GPS devices

For some reasons I was thinking about what kind of GPS device to use preferably for Geocaching. I use my old Garmin Forerunner, which I actually use for keeping a log of my jogging results.

This device however has no map capabilities and I use to think that this makes Geocaching more adventurous than using a GPS with map capabilities or even with spoken directions or other sophisticated features.

What do you think? What device are you using? Any comments are appreciated and warmly welcome!

 

Geocaching information

We (my family) have discovered Geocaching to be a perfect hobby to get your kids of the TV and back out to nature.

Giving your kids the alternative to go out on a treasure hunt is obviously more exciting than going on a hiking with good old dad.

If you’re new to this, you can find a comprehensive overview on Wikipedia.org (English) or Wikipedia.de (German).

You might also want to have a look at www.geocaching.com, you can find me there under my alter ego mapese.