Account Manager
Westcoast Ltd, November 2010 to November 2011. Where I first learned the commercial side, and first started staring at a process thinking there had to be a better way.
Westcoast Ltd
November 2010 – November 2011 · Theale, England
My time at Westcoast was where I really began learning the commercial side of business. It wasn't simply about selling products. It was about understanding customers, building relationships and finding the point where what they needed and what made commercial sense could meet.
Building Relationships, Not Just Sales
As an Account Manager, I looked after customer accounts, produced quotations and worked with pricing and cost information to put together competitive deals.
A big part of the role was building rapport.
That included developing existing accounts, keeping customers engaged and reaching back out to dormant customers to understand why they'd stopped buying and whether we could win their business back.
I quickly discovered that people were far more valuable than spreadsheets.
Although the spreadsheets were fairly important too.
Understanding the Numbers
The role gave me much greater exposure to the mechanics behind a sale.
I worked with cost information, pricing structures, contractual terms and sales performance, while tracking weekly figures that could be reported back to senior management.
It meant looking beyond "Did we make the sale?" and thinking about whether the deal actually worked for both the customer and the business.
Looking at the Competition
Westcoast also taught me the importance of understanding what competitors were doing.
Knowing your own products isn't enough. You need to understand what alternatives your customers have, why they might choose them and where your own business can offer something better.
That way of thinking has stayed with me.
The Beginning of a Bigger Idea
Looking back, there are threads from this job that still appear in the way I work today.
I naturally found myself interested in improving processes, making customer service more effective and understanding the information behind business decisions.
At the time, it was account management.
Today, those same instincts tend to result in me staring at an inefficient process and thinking: