A Word from the VP of Sales & Marketing - July 2019

I think I will start by telling you a bit more about me, my previous experience, my schooling, etc. so that you have a better understanding of my background and why I make the decisions I make and my general business orientations.

Quick overview of my curiculum

I graduated in mechanical engineering, a long time ago when TV’s were still black and white. That’s not true, but it was long ago in the 90’s!

I worked for 11 years in Montreal for gas turbine giants Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce as a Turbine specialist, team leader, and other roles. I then moved back to Quebec, my home town, where I joined Creaform, a manufacturer of Optical Metrology systems, mainly 3D scanners for dimensional inspection. We were 30 people when I started and when I left, this number was close to 600.  Revenues grew during my time from 1,7 M$ to over 150 M$. My last position was Head of Sales (same as VP) for the Americas, managing a sales revenue budget of 40M$+ with more than 1000% (10 times) growth from 2010 to 2019.

You can learn more about me on my LinkedIn profile.

Me joining Gentec-EO

And then I joined Gentec-EO, last November. Almost 9 months later, I am writing you these words.

It’s been quite a ride since then: I had many things to learn, many new people to meet, and a new business to understand. I have still some way to go to understand the business well and many more people to meet and get to know. I also have many things I have started at Gentec-EO that I want to put in place in the near future.

What I will focus on at Gentec-EO

My main axes for the future of the Sales, Marketing and support are as follow:

• Voice of customer for input into product definition and in-service performance improvements
• Branding: define and deploy strategies to ensure the Gentec-EO brand is recognized for what we want it to be recognized
• Growth: this shall be the inevitable consequence of the first 2 axes above combined with strict and reasonable price/cost management

We intend on better tracking voice of customer from the sales, marketing and support so that we can use this intelligence (data, information, etc.) to develop new products that are always better suited to customer needs, add new features to existing ones to keep them as current today as they were when launched, and ensure we fix chronic issues face by support so we have happier customer with less product complications and that we free our support people to spend more time on the important cases.

The brand also is very important. We need to make sure people know Gentec-EO and that when they thing Gentec-EO, what comes to mind, is what we want to come to mind. Think Apple, think Nike, think Ferrari. These brands have defined what they want people to think when their name comes to mind, and they have taken the actions across the whole organization to make sure this is well aligned with all the customer interactions they do. A brand is more than a logo and a catch phrase. If ‘Ford, built tough’ was just a slogan and the F-150’s were no more solid than the average sub-compact, the whole branding would fall apart. Walk the walk, talk the talk.

Growth is obviously the final, and first goal. Everything we’ll do will be in order to support growth. Sometimes even walking away from a deal, not reducing our price radically can support growth by supporting what we want people to know of Gentec-EO as a brand. 

All of this is concepts and marketing, behavioral analysis, financial trends, etc. but there is only one way to achieve it, it’s with the whole TEAM of Gentec-EO Sales & Marketing & Support and the great network of resellers around the world. Without you, I would just be speaking to my email and elaborating large theories. But without the application and the work of all of you, theories just never materialize.

I thank you in advance for the work you do and will continue to do in order to make Gentec-EO a more important player on the laser beam measurement market.  This I am sure will be a great ride!