Hotel industry to Telco leadership...Curious how? Have a read!
I have 12 years of experience working in different business functions in 3 different industries. Started my career as marketing & sales intern in a 5* Ramada Resort Complex, than I moved to the world of multinationals and accepted an entry level customer service role at GE Lightning HQ dealing with UK based wholesalers advanced to the Senior Strategic Customer Service Agent managing the biggest lighting projects within the UK from orders till warranty management. Great couple of years. Worked with amazing people, built a solid foundation of basic soft & hard skills which enabled me to take on new challenges. Last but not least, seen and experienced amazing and terrible examples of leadership. Post GE joined to _VOIS (Vodafone Shared Services that time) as a Billing Transition Coordinator, where implemented the biggest customers of Vodafone into the wide spread of billing systems enabling the company to issues invoices and turn contracts into revenue! Doing the operations for 2 years with successfully applied for my first leadership position and became the Billing Transition Team Leader, which after a couple of years advanced to the Junior Manager of NE Sales Support Team, which is my current role.
Freeing sales teams from non-selling activities across Northern Europe
In my current role I am leading a team who's vision & goal is to create an environment for the MNC sales teams (who are dealing with biggest customers of Vodafone) across Northern Europe in which they can purely focus on generating pipeline, closing deals, and delighting our customers without any distracting administrative activities.
My responsibilities are very thorough from staying closely engaged with my main stakeholders (such as vertical sales managers / heads of sales / sales directors) in the countries supported , building and planning team strategy, build strong and value generating cross-functional initiatives, create best practice processes and so on, till the general people management activities.
The world never stands still, neither do we! I can move the world
Working for _VOIS is the most exciting adventure I've ever been on. An adventure of keeping up with the on the edge technology and the changes happening with the speed of light. It's a place where you never get bored and that's what keeps me excited even after 8 years. Telco is one of the quickest changing (developing) industry and those changes are part of our daily routine.
I've always been into sales and sales processes so leading a team (and being able to impact senior sales leaders with my ideas) which works directly with the biggest markets of Vodafone is a "living the dream" kind of motivation for me.
Be yourself & shoot for the stars!
I try to be very short (& wise) here - based on my experiences the below always worked:
Be curious!
Be humble!
Take responsibility!
Always challenge the status quo!
Don't afraid to make mistakes!
And finally always Be Yourself!
Delivered the highest efficiency saving of the team ever!
Managed to deliver 33% efficiency saving without a single role been cancelled in the 1st year in role!
Keeping the momentum of growth and efficiency generation are key in every MNCs / Shared Services nowadays, though the HOW is always a big questions.
This question gave me a bit of a headache as I could mention several big achievements (like awards I've received or exceptional operational performance) though the one I am the proudest of is this one. It took me and my entire team a man-trying hard work through an entire financial year to deliver the above mentioned ambitious number of efficiency. It worth every minute of work and as a side effect it has formed a stronger than ever bond & cooperation amongst the team members.
