“Everyone can contribute and get involved with a good idea”

Esther Pohl is Senior Sales Man­ager at IP Dynam­ics. Last year she cel­e­brated her 10^th anniver­sary and there­fore has already expe­ri­enceda lot. In this inter­view, she answers excit­ing ques­tions.

What was your career like so far?

I stud­ied eco­nom­ics at the Euro­pean Busi­ness School in Reut­lin­gen. Dur­ing a semes­ter abroad, I was already able to com­plete my first intern­ships in the USA and France. After I suc­cess­fully com­pleted my stud­ies and received my diploma, I started my career as a trainee for sales and mar­ket­ing at NCR in Frank­furt. There I was able to gain a lot of expe­ri­ence. Later, I joined IBM in Zurich as a Sales Man­ager with divi­sional and man­age­ment respon­si­bil­ity.

How did you find your way to IP Dynam­ics?

Through per­sonal con­tact with one of the man­ag­ing direc­tors at the time, who asked me if I could imag­ine work­ing in a young and ambi­tious com­pany and help­ing to build it up. After many years in large Amer­i­can IT com­pa­nies, I found this excit­ing and a new chal­lenge, as I was con­vinced that I could con­tribute to IPD’s suc­cess with my many years of expe­ri­ence in sales in inter­na­tional IT com­pa­nies.

What are your respon­si­bil­i­ties at IPD?

My area of respon­si­bil­ity is very diverse and wide-​ranging. First and fore­most, of course, it’s about acquir­ing new cus­tomers and look­ing after exist­ing ones. Pre­sen­ta­tions have to be cre­ated and held, con­tracts have to be nego­ti­ated, and strate­gic plan­ning with cus­tomers is also very impor­tant. In addi­tion, there are other tasks such as coor­di­nat­ing the cus­tomer and inter­nal resources, fore­cast­ing, plan­ning the bud­get, prepar­ing and cal­cu­lat­ing pro­pos­als and sup­port­ing projects. Last but not least, net­work­ing with part­ners, con­sul­tants, ven­dors and cus­tomers is also an impor­tant part.

What has been your biggest chal­lenge so far at IPD and how did you over­come it?

Since I came from the IT indus­try, I had noth­ing to do with com­mu­ni­ca­tion infra­struc­ture, such as IP tele­phony or con­tact cen­ters. So it was new ter­ri­tory for me and I had to famil­iar­ize myself with the tech­nolo­gies and ter­mi­nolo­gies. I mas­tered this by ask­ing a lot of ques­tions, lis­ten­ing to col­leagues when they reported on their expe­ri­ences in projects, and also by read­ing and adapt­ing a lot on my own. At IBM, I was respon­si­ble for Busi­ness Process Man­age­ment, which involved a wide vari­ety of work­flows in process chains, and I was able to adapt this very well to con­tact cen­ters, which involve call flows. So I was able to get to grips with the new mate­r­ial quite quickly and also present myself con­fi­dently to cus­tomers.

How do you like the cor­po­rate cul­ture?

I like the cor­po­rate cul­ture very much, because there are no clas­sic hier­ar­chies like in some large cor­po­ra­tions. Every­one can con­tribute and get involved with a good idea. The team­work is very dis­tinct, even in Sales you are not really a lone fighter, but act in a well-​functioning team. The company’s inno­v­a­tive strength is another aspect that excites me about IP Dynam­ics. I find it very fas­ci­nat­ing to con­stantly learn new things and to always be up to date with the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments.

What makes IP Dynam­ics unique as an employer for you?

IP Dynam­ics is unique for me as an employer because the com­pany con­sists of a great team, but you also have the oppor­tu­nity to work inde­pen­dently. In sales, you need a cer­tain amount of free­dom to make deci­sions in order to be suc­cess­ful. This is granted at IP Dynam­ics and you get the cor­re­spond­ing sup­port from the man­age­ment. The cohe­sion among the col­leagues is extremely good, which also con­tributes to the fact that one enjoys work­ing for IP Dynam­ics. Last but not least, in sales you are always focused on suc­cess and of course pre­fer to work with a con­cept for suc­cess, which in this case is the com­pany itself.

Thank you very much for this excit­ing insight!