Last week, our Senior International Sales Executive Rob Drain and Product Development Manager Maria Lea visited South Africa to spend time with our distributor, Creatori Health.
The trip was centred around the 20th birthday of Creatori and their Annual Sales Meeting. We used the opportunity to develop the product knowledge, positioning and sales skills of Creatori’s Consumable division by co-travelling with field sales teams in Gauteng and the Western Cape.
Below, we asked Rob and Maria to reflect on their visit.
Why was face-to-face contact important?
Maria: We get to position our products whilst out in the field which helps the sales guys when we’re not there. It’s also an opportunity for us to learn what products are used in their territory and why – mine and Rob’s territories were very different.
How were our products and support received?
Maria: Very well! It comes across that they’d not had training in this way before and they learnt a lot about our standard products.
Rob: It was discovered that whilst some products are already market accepted, there were other products that could meet market needs – such as Long Suctions and Kerrisons.
What were the takeaways from our product training session?
Maria: We talked a lot about sharps injuries, the cost of reprocessing and Kerrisons which made the team think about visiting SSU in their hospitals. We showed them the passion we have for our products and why. At the dinner we had one team member tell us she was going to be the top seller next year of our products and we were to ‘watch this space’.
“We showed them the passion we have for our products and why”
Rob: South Africa is a varied country and what is common practice in one region is not in another. Getting to know these unique requirements for each region will help us grow throughout the country. Our wide range of suctions really do offer an advantage in a market such as this.
How was your experience spending time with Creatori?
Maria: The values of Creatori as a company shone through. The leaders are so well thought of by the team and manufacturers – this speaks volumes. They celebrated staff who had been there many years – in some cases 19 years. During their birthday celebrations, their last award was for ‘Most Helpful Staff Member’. This summed up their whole company.
“The values of the company shone through”
Rob: The team are very professional. The way that field visits were arranged made full use of our time and helped us understand the regions we visited. Their sales training was very interactive, both in the questions asked and in developing opportunities raised by our training.
How does the visit tie into our wider export strategy in the region?
Rob: Creatori Health distributes our products in sub-Saharan Africa and it was good to have representatives from outside South Africa present. Opportunities to promote our products through Creatori’s Spine division also came to light. These two facts show how wide a group of customers our products are designed to reach.
We’re looking forward to working closely with Creatori Health in the future and extending our influence in South Africa.
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