{"id":6795,"date":"2023-03-07T06:50:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T05:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sw.fst.com\/magazine\/?p=6795"},"modified":"2023-03-20T17:46:51","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T16:46:51","slug":"women-in-sales-not-favored-not-disadvantaged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sw.fst.com\/magazine\/en\/2023\/03\/women-in-sales-not-favored-not-disadvantaged\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in Sales \u2013 Not Favored, Not Disadvantaged"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not unusual for a girl or woman of our generation to be interested in technology, to select a technical course of studies or pursue a technical career,\u201d said Jasmin M\u00fccke. Laura Loebnitz agreed: \u201cFor the first time, half of the students were women in our industrial engineering program at DHBW in Mannheim, Germany. In the past, there might have been just a handful. That has changed \u2013 in classrooms as well as careers. Women just need to be confident and open to technical careers. Then they have a good chance of success.\u201d Between 2018 and 2021, the two women participated in work-study at Freudenberg Sealing Technologies (FST) and took industrial engineering courses at the Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) in Germany. They have now worked in Sales General Industry (GI) for more than a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Laura Loebnitz chose to study and work at the interface of engineering and business. \u201cBusiness studies alone would have been too dry for me. And I didn\u2019t want to study mechanical engineering since I didn\u2019t intend to work in product development or manufacturing. From the beginning, my goal was to build up my technical knowledge so I could coordinate processes,\u201d she said. After what she described as a \u201cshort and snappy course of studies,\u201d she took on two assignments at the start of her GI career. One involves Inside Sales: She handles commercial processing for a specific customer group in coordination with account managers. In this role, she also deals with requests and sample processing in coordination with Lead Centers. \u201cI am becoming very familiar with sales processes and systems here \u2013 including SAP 1) and CRM2) \u2013 and am in contact with customers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Her second area of responsibility \u2013 phone selling \u2013 builds on those duties. In this case, her job is to further develop relatively small regular customers and acquire new customers by telephone. Sales GI has established phone selling as a complement to the work of classic account managers and Inside Sales staff. The move is a response to the growing importance of telephone sales. In her bachelor-level studies, Loebnitz developed a handbook describing the content and objective of phone selling and the duties of staff entrusted with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI enjoy approaching people. It\u2019s in my nature,\u201d Loebnitz said. She could easily imagine herself moving to GI External Sales in the medium term. She has felt welcome in the FST sales organization and believes she is in good hands there. \u201cIt is nice to see that my work makes a difference. If I can clarify something today, customers can have their sample parts on-site and start a new project tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her contacts at the customer\u2019s purchasing department are often women without a technical background. \u201cThanks to my level of knowledge, however, I can present and explain technical issues understandably. They get an idea of our rationale. This often helps me in my everyday work. But on the customer\u2019s technical side, I am almost always communicating with men. I let my technical knowledge flow into these discussions<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They revolve around facts. I want to get the idea across that I don\u2019t just handle processing \u2013 I have good understanding of what\u2019s involved. As a woman, I feel I am neither at a disadvantage nor am I given preferential treatment. It\u2019s nice that we have a good working atmosphere here at Freudenberg,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1) SAP is the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that FST uses for its core business activities such as purchasing, production, material management, sales, marketing, finance and human resources. 2) The term Customer Relationship Management, or CRM for short, refers to the systematic organization, maintenance, and administration of customer relationships, along with their documentation with IT processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jasmin M\u00fccke<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Not aware of reservations<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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How do you convert a rectangular passageway into a curved arch? Several years ago, Jasmin M\u00fccke and her father asked themselves the question at the family\u2019s apartment. She had just learned how to determine the vertex of a parabola in her math class. \u201cI just set up a functional equation and calculated the arc. That\u2019s how we actually ended up doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
On the theoretical side, she was interested in math and physics early on. Her practical explorations took the form of \u201crelatively small craft and construction projects with mathematical components,\u201d she said. \u201cTechnology is not just something for boys and men. There are girls and women with the same technical capabilities and interests. In our generation, I rarely see a clear-cut distinction by gender,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her first position in GI was in the Strategy & Business Support area. To put it simply, M\u00fccke provides GI management with a data-based foundation for business decisions and alternative courses of action, using data analysis and consolidation. She supports centralized processes, coordinates the strategy process and helps with pricing. Her passion for figures and mathematics serves her well. She was quickly up-to-speed with the IT programs used in her job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI develop standardized templates for the processes that I support. All the GI segments can use them, which makes us more efficient,\u201d she said. During her bachelor-level work, she developed an Excel file for so-called \u201cstrategy implementation reviews.\u201d On one hand, the goal was to enable the segments to minimize the amount of work and time spent on the reviews, and, on the other hand, provide uniform presentations. The work was a big help to her: \u201cI was able to familiarize myself with processes and the entire sales group. That\u2019s a good starting point for many positions where I could end up working,\u201d M\u00fccke said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, sales is still male-dominated today, she said. \u201cBut I haven\u2019t seen any reservations about me as a woman. Being female is not an issue at all in my everyday work. In general, whether you are a man or woman, the company\u2019s doors are open to you. Freudenberg is already quite diverse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But she likes the idea of women forming their own networks within the company to share ideas and support one another. And she appreciates the fact that Freudenberg increasingly ensures that women, and not just men, are depicted on posters or in its postings for technical jobs. \u201cI think women subconsciously notice this. It gets their attention.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And after a year on the job, how is her work-life balance holding up? \u201cI quickly learned to shut down in the evening and attack the work the next day with vigor. Since then, I\u2019ve been able to get the balance right. I haven\u2019t neglected my private life.\u201d<\/p>\n
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